Tracie Martin just bought her first home in May — a two-bedroom, two-bath condo in Pearl City — but it's hard to disguise the disappointment in her voice when she talks about it.

Martin, 35, looked at dozens of single-family houses for more than a year and finally surrendered to the realization that she could not afford a house for the family she plans to raise someday, complete with a yard for the dog she hopes to own someday.

"It's not bad, but it's not what I want," Martin said of her new condo. "You have too many people around, and it's more of a cramped space. I'm used to being able to see something other than another building right in front of you."

Martin's condo purchase put her among the latest generation of O'ahu home buyers who now have a foothold in Hawai'i's real-estate market but still find themselves disappointed, outpriced and unable to realize their dreams of owning single-family homes.

"It was all about price, yes," said Martin, an assistant store manager for Safeway. "Right now, my mortgage takes up two paychecks a month. A house would have taken up all four."

Demand for condos is on the rise as many buyers find themselves priced out of the single-family home market.

In February, the median sale price for a single-family home on O'ahu was $613,500 while the median condo price was $315,000, according to the Honolulu Board of Realtors.

One indication of the increasing demand for condos is that the median price — meaning half sell for more and half for less — has continued to rise in recent months for condos while leveling off for single-family homes. In the last six months, the condo median is up about 10 percent, and the single-family home price is down 0.2 percent.

Another indication is that condos have been selling faster than single-family homes. The median number of days on the market for condos was 31 in February compared with 42 for single-family homes.

The data suggest that buyers are being priced out of the single-family market but are still keeping the condo market relatively busy, said Manuel August, president of Asset Mortgage of Hawai'i.

"A lot of borrowers I've met lately really want single-family homes," August said. "They don't want to be surrounded by people above, below and to the left and right of them. They want to have a yard with animals and have their kids play in the front yard. Even with a three-bedroom, two-bath condo, it's just not the same."

The disappointment in not being able to afford a single-family home can have profound implications on frustrated parents and their children, said Barbara Yee, chairwoman of the University of Hawai'i's Family and Consumer Sciences Department.

"That's the American dream — to have your own house," Yee said. "But I'm sure many parents are quite disappointed at not being able to fulfill their dream.

"The quality of life on O'ahu has deteriorated because home prices are so high, and it's stressing the families economically and socially," she said.

"In some cases, children are stuck in a big condo with no one else to play with and no playground or a park nearby to go play with the dog. For parents, they're being stressed in terms of economics and family pressures. Many, many people in Hawai'i have two or three jobs just to meet the basics of being able to feed their family — then they have a new mortgage."

UH sociology professor Stephen Yeh said many O'ahu condo owners fail to realize that their frustrations don't mesh with the rest of the world's experience.

"This strong preference for single-family housing on the global basis is strongly American," Yeh said. "If you go to Europe, the overwhelming majority of the urban dwellers never have the American dream of owning a single-family unit. Therefore, apartment living is the way of life. Especially if you look toward a future with increasing urbanization, the trend is that more and more people will be owning condos because of affordability and rising housing costs. My personal view is that if you can only afford a condo, be glad, and get used to it."

Chili Takeda, a 43-year-old accountant, was born in Tokyo and now lives in an 800-square-foot Punchbowl condo with one bedroom and 1 1/2 bathrooms that she says is much larger than similar homes her friends and family have in Japan.

"One of my cousins lived in a company-subsidized apartment that's laid out about the same," Takeda said, "but each room is much smaller than what I have here. ... Even with single-family homes — the rooms are smaller in Japan, and there's hardly any yard space.

"In Hawai'i, we are lucky that the living spaces are bigger than other places like Japan and big cities in Europe," Takeda said. "But they're still smaller than what people take for granted on the Mainland. So I don't know how lucky we are."

Bob and Mary Wood are trying to fall in love with their new condo.

They returned to O'ahu in June with their two teenage daughters and quickly realized they were priced out of the Manoa market and were constantly being outbid on the single-family homes they could afford in Hawai'i Kai.

So they finally settled on a three-bedroom, three-bath, split-level, Hawai'i Kai condo for $690,000 that came with a monthly maintenance fee of $1,100.

The carpet was shot and the Woods referred to their 1970s-era kitchen as "The Vomitorium."

"The first time I saw it, there was not a chance I would buy this place," Bob Wood said. "But after seeing everything out there possible in a price range of up to $800,000, this became such a viable choice."

The Woods and Leilani Cunningham, an agent with Coldwell Banker's Kahala office, calculated the prices of the homes they looked at by square footage. They determined that the single-family homes were priced at $430 per square foot compared with $355 per square foot for the condo.

"It was by far the best deal," Bob Wood said.

The Woods invested another $50,000 to replace the old carpet with laminate flooring, repainted the inside and completely gutted the kitchen.

While Bob Wood still winces at the maintenance fee, he has learned to enjoy his view of the water, access to boat docks and the condo complexes' pool and tennis courts.

"It's definitely resort living," he said. "I'm sitting here right now overlooking the mountains and the water. Buying a single-family home, moving up and having to get out of here, is not such a priority anymore. It's actually a nice place to live."

But Celeste Borges can't mask her frustrations at not being able to afford a decent, single-family house on the Windward side.

She and her husband, Joe, have always rented homes on the Big Island, Maui and O'ahu as they raised their three children. Now they're about to lose the lease on their three-bedroom, two-bath house in Kane'ohe, where they run their home-renovation business and live with their two youngest children, two pit bulls and a Chihuahua.

They have looked at about 30 houses in the $700,000 price range and are willing to do plenty of heavy lifting to get any home in shape.

Still, Celeste Borges said, some of the houses were "scary, including one where the agent put the condition delicately as 'deferred maintenance.' I said, 'How about another word — neglected?' "

Priced out of the single-family market on the Windward side, the Borges have begun grudgingly looking at condos in the $450,000 range that all lack the storage space they need for their work truck, cement mixers, pressure washers and "lots and lots of tools.

"Moving from a house into a condo with two children and the dogs — we'll be more cramped," Celeste Borges said. "But we're kind of in a tight spot. I'm not sure what God's trying to teach me here yet."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.