Surf, sand, sun – and about 16 luxury homes sold every week for 39 weeks in a row.
Aloha, Hawaii, where the top-end property market has never been hotter. More than 600 homes sold for $3 million or above in the first three quarters of 2021, double the number of a previous record set in 2017, according to a Hawaii Life Real Estate report cited by CNBC. Some $3.7 billion of luxury homes were sold, twice the prior all-time high four years ago.
″The volume and the velocity of Hawaii’s real estate market have shattered every record and historical norm previously held,” said Hawaii Life CEO Matt Beall, who has been selling property in the state for 23 years. Buyers are making offers sight unseen, seeking a two-week closing in which they fly in on the 12th day, meet home inspectors and then “move in on the 14th day,” he said.
Sellers are benefiting from pent-up post-pandemic demand, low mortgage rates and a buoyant stock market, the same factors driving luxury sales elsewhere in the nation, where sales and prices ballooned as the virus began to recede. The market has started to cool over the last few months, though, and demand will probably fall further next year as rates rise and inventory catches up with demand that some analysts say isn’t as strong as it seems.
In Hawaii, where prices jumped about 12.4 percent this year, some 64 transactions above $10 million were inked this year. They included the second-priciest sale in the state’s history — the $45 million sale of a Maui mansion to retired hedge funder Adam Weiss and his wife, actress Barret Swatek.
[CNBC] — Dennis Lynch