Remember when the Dow Jones plunged, the "bailout" talks started & the sky was falling? A lot of that was mid September.   Those going into contract then equated to November closings! I unfortunately had 3 deals fall apart on me during all this.  Guess what? We're all still alive & breathingJ  I've since put several deals back under contract.  As predicted, November 2008 would be an interesting month with our stats. 

Through the month of November, everything seemed to be down across the board.  Year to date, our total volume of sales on Oahu is down from $4.65 Billion to $3.447 Billion.  This is a 25.9% decrease from 2007.  The total number of sales on the island is also down over 30% as well.  You would think this would equate to higher prices, right? Wrong- the reason why our volume is down less than sales is there were some monumental sales in Diamond Head and Kailua.  As the saying goes "those with money, will always have money"...  So what did happen to prices? Our median sales price for a single family home is also down at $594,500 which is the 3^rd time in the past 3 years we've dipped under the $600,000 mark.  Condos were also down with a median sales price of $316,000 which actually wasn't as bad as November.  There are two areas of interest to note that stuck out at me:

•1.       The number of Condo sales on Oahu was 201, down from 316 the previous month and the lowest number of sales since 1999!

•2.       The number of days on market for condos was 88, up from 53 the previous month and the longest time on market since 2000!

 What does this mean? The condo market is slowing down dramatically! There were months over the past year when we were having more sales in a project than we did the whole island last month! What's also interesting is there were over 500 new condo listing that came on market.  Existing inventory is 2,655 units, actually down from 2,663 the previous month.  Well if 500+ came on market & only just over 200 sold, how is inventory down? A number of reasons: sellers pulling their place off the market to rent (I have several clients considering this) or the listing could have expired.   If only 200 units sold and 2655 are on market, as a seller you have to ask yourself: What will it take to get my place in the less than 10% of listings that are actually selling? PRICE! Places that are priced right will sell!

What does this mean for buyers? It's a great time to buy! Both homes and condos are sitting on the market longer, sellers are motivated, you can get a better buy than you could over the last few years and interest rates are back to the low 5% range!