Is Big Island Hawaii Real Estate A Boom Or Bust? January 2026 Update

Happy New Year, everyone. Happy 2026. And I pray for a blessed year for all of you. This is the January Market Update. And what is in store for the Big Island in 2026 real estate? I'll tell you coming up next. Lots going on this 1st of January. It is 2026. Can you believe it? Another year has come and gone. And here we go starting all over again in the real estate market here on the Big Island of Hawaii. Aloha, everyone. Dan Palomino from the Hawaii team and KW Big Island. Well, in this month's Market Update, we're going to be talking about our Luxury Report, Seller Pricing, we're going to talk about Interest Rates, and we're going to take a peek at the early statistics from 2025. All right, so let's start with our Luxury Report. If you guys want to know what's happening in all of your favorite places here on the Big Island from Kohaneiki all the way down to Mauna Kea, Pu'u Ko, Mauna Lani, Waikoloa Beach, all the places that you like and have always thought or dreamed about getting a place or maybe you have a place already there and you want to know how those areas performed in 2025. Well, then reach out to us. Email us immediately at team at the hawaiiteam.com. Say, I would like a copy of the 2025 Luxury Report and we will email that out to you. Later on, we'll be posting it on our website as well. But for now, send us an email. Next, Sellers. If you're thinking about selling here on the Big Island, if you want to win in 2026, then your price is the key to success. Seller pricing is your entire strategy for 2026. And what I mean by that is you cannot go on the market. And you've heard me say this before. You can't go on the market with a competitive price. Like this is competitive with the market value of everything that's happening in the neighborhood. You can't go on the market with a competitive price because your property is just going to sit. You have to go on the market with a compelling price. Compelling. Meaning you're daring the buyer to pass up this deal. You're daring the buyer to write a contract. You're daring the buyer where they walk in. They say, you know, shoot at this price. I can't pass this up. I got to write an offer on this. That's the pricing strategy that's going to win in 2026. Now many of you say, well, that's something I want to do. I'm not giving the place away. It's not a fire sale. I'm not talking about any of that. I am talking about pricing ahead of your competition. So your property sells before theirs does. And there's other factors to it, obviously, as well. Which is where is your property located? How is the layout and the finishes? But remember this, when a buyer walks into your place, they ask and answer three questions. And if the answer is yes to all three of those questions, then you're getting an offer. But if the answer is no to any of those questions, then you're not getting an offer. It's not more difficult than that. I mean, people want to make it really complicated about a bunch of different things. Well, it was the copy. It was the photographs. It was the marketing. It's not any of that. A buyer walks in and they ask themselves the first question, which is, do I love the location? And if the answer is yes, that's good. We're off to a good start. Then they say, do I love the layout and the finishes? Again, if it's a yes, great. We're two out of three. But we got to get the third yes. And the third yes has to be, do I think it's appropriately priced for both A and B? If they say yes to all three of those, congratulations. You're getting an offer and you're selling your home. If they say no, it's just one of those. You are not, right? So I want you to keep in mind what the strategy is for selling in 2026, and we can tell you more about that. All right, interest rates. Don't get too fixated on interest rates here in 2026 because they're all going to continue to hover around 6%. It's not going to get a ton better. It may dip into the fives, somewhere between 5.5 and 6%. But don't look for any drastic drops. There is going to be a change at the Federal Reserve. That's going to help. The monetary policy by the governors, they seem to be in board with dropping interest rates. I think things are going to get better. But don't hang your hat on interest rates waiting for something dramatic to happen. Finally, let's take a look at the stats for 2025. There's not a lot out. There's everybody still compiling. Everybody's still looking and still analyzing. But one of the things that I always tell people because I do a lot of short-term vacation rentals and people are always calling me about buying a short-term vacation rental and they always want to know how the appreciation is going to be and how the short-term vacation rental is going to perform. And my answer to that is always, hey, this island appreciates about 6% per year, year-over-year. That's an average. Some years it's better, some years it's a little less. But for the most part, it's about 6% per year, year-over-year in appreciation. When I look at South Kohala, when I look at the resorts of Waikoloa Beach, Mauna Lani, Mauna Kea, all of the places that you love to visit and are interested in buying, that South Kohala area right now appreciated 8.37%. So better than the average. Almost two and a half points better than the average. It's up 8%. You guys can do the math. You know what 8% is on a million dollars, right? You know how much you made in 12 months. If you want to see the data on the year-over-year statistics, just reach out to us here, team at the hawaiiteam.com. We'd be happy to provide them. And if you have any other questions about our property management company, what we do to manage your property after you purchase, you want to talk to our title people, our mortgage people, we're happy to lend all of our resources. That's it for this market update. I look forward to hearing from you. You can always call me on my cell phone, 808-987-3306. Again, 808-987-3306. And until we talk again, aloha.