Time to check in on the real estate market in Haiku, another town on the North Shore of Maui. Haiku town is a rural community spanning a large geographic area.
Located on the windward side of the island, it is a popular community for year round residents. It has also seen a growing number of second home buyers over the last few years.
It’s been a while since our last Haiku market update. This update provides data from the year to date with comparisons made to not just the same time frame of 2022, but also the first half of the year going back to 2018.
This gives a better sense of how the recent market compares to conditions prior to Covid. I also gives some thoughts on the outlook for the rest of the year.
Notable Haiku Home Sale Numbers for The Year to Date
- Twenty-six homes sold in Haiku between January 1, 2023 and June 14, 2023. The median price of the homes sold is $1,452,500.
- For the same period of 2022, 52 homes sold with a median price of $1,524,000. Changing composition of sales drove the shift in median as opposed to decreased home values.
- The lowest priced home sold for $540,000. The 1932 Vintage Hawaii Plantation Style Home sits on a 13,656 square foot lot just up the street from Pauwela Cannery.
- This was just one of four sales under $1,000,000.
- The highest price sale for the year to date closed for $4,050,000. The 5 bedroom, 4 bath home offers 3,567 square feet of living space and a pool. It is located on 12.4 acres on the oceanside of Hana Highway.
- This is one of 8 sales to close for over $2,000,000, and one of three that closed for over $3,000,000.
- There were 15 land transactions in Haiku between January 1, 2023 and June 14, 2023. The median price of the land listings sold is $867,765.
- In 2022, 12 pieces of land sold during this same period of January through June. The median price of the land listings sold for that period is $887,500.
Looking at the Haiku Home Market Over The Last Five Years
While I can’t say year to year comparisons are completely without value, the period between 2021 and at least the first half of 2022 was an outlier. For that reason, I wanted to look at the last five years for some additional context, and to specifically compare the current market to “normal” pre-Covid activity.
It’s been a pretty quiet year for buyer activity in Haiku. Looking at the chart above, 2023 for the year to date is tracking well behind pre-covid levels of sales volume and buyer activity. You need to go all the way back to 2011 (not shown on the chart) to find a year with fewer home sales or pending home sales.
Looking at the Haiku Land Market over the Last Five Years
Looking at the chart above, the Haiku land market is also trending behind pre-Covid numbers. That said, it is worth noting that 2018 and 2019 were particularly busy years in terms of transaction volume.
That’s due to the Haiku Town Acres subdivision and Kauhikoa Farms subdivision. Those were new projects that drove sales in 2018 with a number of additional CPR land sales in 2019.
What the Numbers Mean About the Haiku Market
The first question that bears answering is why the big dip in activity in the Haiku market? The answer like with the rest of the Maui market is a combination of constrained inventory and decreased demand due to lower affordability.
On the supply side, the inventory level of active Haiku homes has ranged from the high teens to just below thirty active listings since the start of the year. Back in the couple of years prior to Covid, the inventory of active Haiku Homes for Sale usually came in somewhere around 45 active listings. In other words, the inventory this year’s been 33% or more below normal.
From an affordability side, increased prices and increased mortgage rates thinned the pool of buyers. It’s hard to quantify the decrease in demand. We just don’t have any good data. That said, we can speak a little bit about how much affordability decreased over the last few years.
The chart above speaks for itself. Between January 1st and June 14th 2018, 72.34% of all the sales in Haiku closed for less than $1,000,000. Between January 1st and June 14th of 2023, only 15.38% of all listings sold for less than $1,000,000.
Appreciation in values is a big driver for this change, but not the only factor. Increased prices and increased mortgage rates make it extremely difficult for the average “step-up” buyer. That means fewer entry level homes are coming to market via sellers looking for bigger homes.
Haiku’s higher end real estate market underwent a pretty substantial shift over the last five years. Pre-covid, there was substantial inventory for sale over $2,000,000, but the number of properties sold were few and the days on market were long.
The chart above shows a shift in the Haiku luxury home market. The percentage of homes sold over $2,000,000 during the first half of the year is up substantially from the Pre-Covid era and even 2021.
Days on market and inventory in this price range are both down as well. The data shows that there are a substantially higher number of affluent buyers in the Haiku market.
I just wanted to provide a couple of quick notes on the land numbers. I already provided some context on why the current land sales are well below 2018 and 2019. Like the Haiku home market, the land market is seeing a higher percentage of high end sales.
One third of the transactions for both the year to date for this year and the same period last year sold for over $1,000,000. In 2018 and 2019, those numbers were 8% and 0% respectively.
Finally, this isn’t reflected in the numbers, but land in Haiku is becoming scarcer. No projects like Haiku Town Acres or Kauhikoa Farms are on the horizon. Peahi Farms is largely sold. The bulk of the sales going forward will likely be individual lot sales, CPRs or smaller subdivisions.
Outlook for the Rest of The Year in the Haiku Real Estate Market
As reticent as I am to make forecasts these days, I can’t foresee any big changes in the Haiku market during the rest of the year. No significant influx of inventory appears to be imminent at this point.
Meanwhile, it seems as if it would take even higher mortgage rates or some sort of additional economic headwind to significantly curtail demand.
For sellers, the low inventory is to your benefit, but there is still some nuance to this market. Affordability and construction costs have fewer buyers looking at fixer-uppers.
There is also some variability in conditions depending on price points. We have seen days on market creeping up at the lower price points as entry level buyers struggle with affordability.
Buyers entering the market will of course continue to be challenged by lower inventory levels. The market does not appear to be as competitive as it was in 2022, but well-priced properties in good condition can still attract multiple buyers.
You can search the current inventory of Haiku Homes for Sale and Haiku Land for Sale on MauiRealEstate.com.
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