Luxury Market Update for Kauai, Maui, and Hawaii Island: Quarter 1 2025

Aloha, good morning. This is Karambi Davis of Karambi Realty International. Most everyone's had a wonderful week and ready for a long Memorial Day weekend with the family and friends. I believe everyone loves those three-day weekends these days. We certainly are, and apart from showing homes, we'll take a little R&R off hopefully this weekend. But anyway, this is always a fun talk and we're going to actually be commenting on the quarter one of the Neighbour Island sales of homes and condominiums. Let me put up some... I'll share my screen here so we can look at some of the homes that have sold on the other islands recently. We'll start off with Kauai. Generally speaking, Kauai definitely increased in activity quarter one versus quarter four at the end of 2024, so we're finding a very active market in Kauai. Sales were up about 52% and the total sales volume was up 26%. The house here that I'm sharing on my screen right now was the, you know, the larger sale there for quarter one. This sold at $8,250,000 and this was in Kui Kuaula, Kiloa. It was a six-bedroom house with five and a half bathrooms, a little under 3,800 square feet with a lovely large land area of 20,000 square feet. And what made this property very special was it's like a tropical haven, you know, lots of exquisite puka lava stone, beautiful mature foliage around the house and a wonderful infinity edge pool, which a lot of people just go, ah, when they see it, of course. And then the top condo sale there in Kauai was at the Timbers Resort in Lihue and this was a four-bedroom, four and a half bath condominium, absolutely gorgeous and a big selling feature of this townhouse was of course the views of the ocean and this sold for about $7.3 million to buyers from Montana and actually in the single family home was sold to some buyers from Arizona, so we're seeing a lot of mainland buyers still on the outer islands. Moving on to Maui, again, you know, quarter one definitely increased in sales over last year's quarter. Sales were up about 8% and the total volume of sales was up 7.3%. The highest sale for Maui was in Wailea and Kihei, a four-bedroom, five-bath home over 4,000 square feet and half an acre of land. This was at the exclusive community of McKenna Sunset gated community. We find a lot of buyers from the mainland love that gated community sense, especially, you know, they're probably second home, second homeowner, homeowners and they're not there all the time, so that sense of security is wonderful to have on top of, of course, always have that security system in your home. McKenna Sunset also has the convenience of a professional property maintenance, fully furnished homes, which is wonderful that, you know, someone comes in and makes sure everything's maintained, you know, on a very ongoing basis and, of course, they probably allow rentals. Most of our rentals these days are 30 days or more. The short-term vacation rental's very difficult, if not illegal, to do still here in Hawaii. Moving on to the highest condominium in Maui, and we've had a few of these condominiums. South was at Wailea Point. As you can see, it's gorgeous vistas of the ocean and this four-bedroom, four-bath home sold for a little under $13 million and the buyers were from Arizona also. So we're seeing a lot of buyers from Arizona. The house we just spoke of is from Texas. These are still bringing in, you know, a lot of good luxury buyers to all the islands, buying all over, actually. The Big Island, always a favourite. Sales were up a little under 40% and total sales volume was up 80%. So some very large sales there on, you know, the Big Island. The condominiums were up 83%. There was 22 sales in quarter one versus only 12 sales in quarter four, and the median price was up about a little under 13%. Total sales volume was incredibly up, 136%. And, you know, just seeing a lot of big sales still there on the Big Island. And the house we're looking at right now, just to give you a little bit of information, this was the top sale for the Big Island, and this was in Kukio, and it was a six-bedroom, seven-and-a-half bath home, a little under 7,500 square feet interior. As you can see, one level, which is always very favourable. Unfortunately on Oahu, we don't have many one-level homes of this size, but of course you get a lot more land area on the outer islands. And why this property was spectacular, it's in a great location close to Kukio Bay, beautiful beaches, golf course, the Four Seasons Hualai to use the facilities there. And this sold for a $23,250,000. This sold to a company from California. Wonderful sale there on the Big Island, and very much still in demand. And as far as the condominium top sale was at the Kuahu Cottages in Kailua-Kona. This was a five-bedroom, five-bath cottage, and that sold for a little under $11 million. And this was located between the Kaheo Beach and Golf Club and Kukio Beach. So, you know, that beach side living that people love when they come and buy luxury homes or condominiums here on the islands. So I hope you enjoyed seeing the houses. I wanted to give you a brief rundown of what's going on on the outer islands, but we'll definitely have links to this presentation so you can study the statistics a little more. But with that, I just wanted to wish you again a wonderful weekend and much mahalo for joining us, and we will be in touch next week. Mahalo.