January's combined home, condo resales on O'ahu shoot past 1990 record

By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer

More existing homes on O'ahu sold last month than in any previous January during the past 12 years, according to statistics released this week by the Honolulu Board of Realtors.

The average single-family home and condominium also stayed on the market for a relatively short period of about a month and sold at modestly higher prices compared with January 2002.

The board expects robust resales to continue in step with low mortgage rates, despite growing threats of war and slow economic growth.

"Conditions could change at any time in the event of a war or other conditions that have an impact on Hawai'i's economy," said Harvey Shapiro, research economist with the board. "For now, however, the housing sector continues to be the strength in our economy."

There were 278 single-family homes resold last month, up 9.4 percent from 254 sales in January 2002. The median price was $350,000, up 12 percent from $312,500 a year ago and unchanged from December.

For condos, there were 476 resales last month, a 46.5 percent increase over the 325 sold a year earlier. The median condo price was $158,300, up 14.7 percent from $138,000 a year ago and down 1.1 percent, or $1,700, from December.

The last time there were more combined single-family and condo resales in January was in 1990 when there were 797 transactions primarily driven by 551 condo resales. The 246 single-family resales in January 1990 were fewer than last month's figure, which Shapiro said is an all-time January high.

Anne Keamo, chairwoman of the Realtor board and president of Properties Unlimited, called the continued market performance over the past 13 months "spectacular," and predicts more records will be broken this year.

"This year I can already see we're going to have champagne again," she said, noting that 2002 was the best year in about two decades for Properties Unlimited.

Keamo said Hawai'i Kai has been really active in the high end of the market, while most of the overall volume has been coming from Leeward O'ahu. She said homes under $100,000 have been appreciating rapidly and selling fast, helping build total-dollar volume and transaction speed.

Last month's total-dollar volume was $206.7 million, a 36.2 percent jump from $151.8 million in January 2002. The one-month average that homes stayed on the market in January was down from 42 days for single-family homes and 58 days for condos a year ago.