Posted on: Friday, October 15, 2004
Home prices up over past year
By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer
A typical four-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath house in Honolulu costs less than a comparable home in Napa, Calif.; Queens, NY; and 41 other North American cities, according to a survey by Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp.
Lucky you live Hawai'i?
Maybe, maybe not.
At $614,750, the average price for such a house in Honolulu this year through July was about $100,000 higher than last year, according to Coldwell, which analyzed sales of roughly 2,200-square-foot single-family homes at its offices in about 350 U.S. and Canadian cities.
The increase pushed Honolulu's ranking up from 162nd most expensive last year to No. 44.
Still, a comparable house would cost $681,125 in Stamford, Conn., $763,333 in Chicago and $952,500 in San Jose, Calif.
At the top of the list was La Jolla, Calif., at $1.7 million, followed by Beverly Hills, Calif., at $1.3 million. At the bottom was Charlottetown, Pa., at $104,988.
Of three Hawai'i markets in the survey, Kailua in Kona on the Big Island was No. 10 at just under $1.1 million. Kihei, Maui, was No. 50 at $591,630.
Local real estate experts caution about drawing conclusions from the survey because of its limited sample and fundamental differences in Hawai'i's real estate market.
For instance, Coldwell's survey compares similar size homes, but doesn't factor lot size, which tends to account for significantly more of the price of Hawai'i homes than in most other markets.
That can mean "comparable" homes in Mainland markets may come with acres of land compared with ones on a 5,000-square-foot lot in Honolulu.
Also, using an average rather than median price can skew prices in markets with one very high or low price among few sales.
A second-quarter National Association of Realtors study put the Honolulu median home prices fourth-highest among roughly 140 metropolitan areas, behind Orange County, Calif., San Francisco and San Diego.
Coldwell surveyed markets it considered typical areas where a middle-manager would live. The average price for Coldwell's subject home was $354,372, up 11 percent from $318,172 last year.
Reach Andrew Gomes at agomes@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8065.
