Honolulu real estate prices normalizing after pandemic frenzy

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - For the first time since July 2021, the median price for an Oahu single-family home is below a milliion dollars. The condo median price is just under half a million.

Ruthie Kaminskas, realtor-associate with Corcoran Pacific Properties, joined HNN Sunrise Weekend anchor Annalisa Burgos for a housing reality check at Cafe Kopi in Kailua, a neighborhood that saw many homebuyer bidding wars during the pandemic.

“I think that we have to change our dialogue. I think we have to change the mentality of what a lot of buyers and sellers are thinking right now that everything’s dropping, everything’s going down. We gotta wait to buy, we gotta wait to, you know, we got to sell now before everything goes down. No, no, no, no, I really, really, I think my main message this morning to all buyers and sellers, is that we are finally normalizing. We’re normalizing what happened in 2020 to 2022,” Kaminskas said. “With our COVID bubble was a frenzy. It was an unprecedent amount of sales, it’s, we’re really not supposed to really experience anything like that more than once in our lifetime. And it’s just not something we can compare to. So what I do when I’m talking to my buyers and sellers is I’m I’m going back to when we were normal, which is 2019.”

She adds that in 2019, the median price of a single family home on Oahu was $769,000. When compared to January 2023′s median price of $970,000, she says it’s still a considerable gain.

She suggests buyers work with their financial advisors to see what they can afford and advises sellers to have a home inspector go through their properties and find out if there’s any issue that can break a deal when they go into contract.

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