Last week, I took a look at the the Maui North Shore Real Estate Market statistics for the first half of 2011. Today, I am going to take a look at real estate sales for Upcountry Maui during the first six month of the year. The Upcountry area includes the communities of Makawao, Pukalani and Kula. I will provide an overview of sales volume and medians for the three different communities. I will include a few other stats of note and some thoughts on what these numbers may mean.
A Comparison of Upcountry Maui Real Estate Sales volume for the first six months of 2010 and 2011
Maui Realtors reported 30 home sales in Makawao during the first six months of 2011 at a median price of $337,500. By comparison, the Realtors reported 21 houses sold at a median of $415,000 for the first half of 2010. This represents a 43% increase in volume and a 19% decrease in median prices. During the first six months of 2011, Maui Realtors reported 2 land transaction for Makawao at a median price of $279,000. This compares to four sales during the first six months of 2010 at a median price of $574,750. This represents a 50% decrease in volume and a 51% drop in median prices.
- There were 14 bank owned sales in Makawao and 2 short sales. That translates to 53% of the sales.
- This is similar to the 2010 percentages when there were 8 REOs and 3 short sales or 52% of sales.
- The highest sales price was $2,000,000 for a house and cottage on two acres in the gated Maunaolu Plantation Subdivision. This subdivision also produced the high sale for the first half of 2010 at $2,100,000.
Maui Realtors reported 30 sales in Pukalani at a median sales price of $437,500 during the first half of 2011. By comparison, there were 32 sales reported at a median price of $436,000. This is a 6% drop in volume and a less than 1% increase in median price. There was a single land sale reported in the first half of 2011 at a closing price of $190,000. The Pukalani land market saw an equal amount of activity during the first half of 2010 with one sale reported at the sales price of $252,500.
- There were 3 bank owned (REO) sales and 8 short sales in Pukalani over the first six months of the year. This translates to roughly 37% of the inventory sold.
- By comparison, there were 4 REOs and 2 short sales during the first 6 months of 2010. That represents 19% of the sales over that period.
- The high sale for the first six months of the year was $815,000. The high sale last year was $1,250,000.
Maui Realtors reported 31 sales in Kula during the first six months of 2011. The sales median was $629,000. That compares to 21 sales during the first half of 2010. The median during that time span was $550,000. That translates to a 48% increase in sales volume and a 14% increase in the median sales price. There were 5 land sales for the first six months of 2011 at a median price of $385,000. Last year, there were 6 sales over the same time span at a median price of $240,000.
- There were 6 REO sales and 2 short sales in Kula during the first six months of 2011. That translates to 26% of the total sales.
- By comparison, there were 2 REOs and no short sales in Kula during the first six months of 2010. That translates to just under 10% of the overall sales volume.
- There were 13 sales over $700,000 during the first six months of 2011. There were only 6 sales over 700K last year.
- The high sale for the first six months of 2011 was $4,500,000. That compares to a high of $2,328,568 last year.
Looking at the numbers above, I think there were a few things worth discussing. The one thing that really stands out to me was that Makawao and Kula saw a real jump in sales while Pukalani was relatively flat in activity. I can’t give any absolute reasons for these trends, but I can give a few thoughts on contributing factors. The bump in sales for both Makawao and Kula can partially be attributed to a bump in bank owned inventory. Bank owned properties have been generating a disproportionate share of market activity. Many REOs are good opportunities and buyers have been responding to these values. The bump in REO inventory has contributed to sales. For the Kula market, there also appears to be a bump in the $700,000+ market. We saw a similar trend in Haiku when I looked at the North Shore mid year stats. I am not sure if it is a matter of improved inventory, renewed market confidence or both, but we have seen more buyers looking and buying in this market segment.
It is a little harder to account for the decrease in activity in the Pukalani market. The most likely culprit is the decrease in bank owned sales compared to last year. Whether it was a lack of inventory or poor pricing, there was less activity among bank owned properties. That alone accounts for some of the decrease in activity. That being said, the lack of bank owned sales was offset to some extent by an increase in short sale volume. It is tough to say if there were any other contributing factors in the decline in activity. It may just be market variability. It will be interesting to see what happens during the second half of the year. Was this just an anomaly or will this trend persist?
The changes in the year to year median sales among the different communities appear to be driven in part by changes in values and in part by shifts in the price ranges where sales activity occurred. I already mentioned the bump in sales over $700,000 in Kula. I would argue that this was the biggest driver for the increase in median prices as there are no indications that values have increased in the community at all let alone by 14%. Makawao saw a pretty sizable decrease in median price due in part to decreases in value and in part due to the increase in bank owned activity. There were more bank owned sales at the lower range of the market. In Pukalani, there was no big shift where market activity was occurring. That may help to account for the the flat median sales price.
Land activity was the same or slower across the board. With the exception of a couple of communities, this appears to be a trend across the island. Pukalani tends to have limited land sales volume since there is less vacant land available for sale. The majority of the land sales in Makawao are in the more rural Olinda community located above Makawao town. The Kula land market will be interesting to watch over the next couple of years. You can’t blame the dip in sales volume on a lack of inventory. There are currently 69 listings in Kula with only 5 under contract. There will need to be an increase in buyers, a decrease in prices or both to increase the absorption rate of inventory. Median sales figures for land have limited value due to the incredibly small sample size and the variability of the properties sold.
You can contact The Maui Real Estate Team if you have any questions on the Upcountry Real Estate market. You can also browse MauiRealEstate.com to explore the Upcountry inventory. Our site has all of the MLS listings for Makawao Homes for Sale, Pukalani Real Estate and Kula Homes for Sale.
