January Stats out for Oahu- Some Strengths among the Weakness...

The Honolulu Board of Realtors has released the latest stats for January of 2008.  The median sales price of a single family home on Oahu is down 10% from the previous year- from $600,000 to $539,500 which puts us back to Feb./March of 2005 levels.  The North Shore led the way- down 51.8% from the previous year.  East Oahu held strong w/ a median sales price up 2.2% from 2008! Remember- ALL MARKETS ARE LOCAL What may be happening in one neighborhood might not be happening in another... Our median sales price for a condo is also down 5% from $324,000 to $305,000.  To show how slow the North Shore is, there was not one condo sale there in January.  We are also now at 71 days on market for Single Family homes & 59 days for condos, which isn't too bad compared to the rest of the mainland U.S.  Our inventory is actually down slightly from Dec. of 2008 w/ 70 less homes on the market and 140 less condos & these numbers are real close to where we were this time last year.  What has really slowed down dramatically is the number of sales on Oahu.  There were 122 homes and 159 condos that sold in January, down 46% and 51% from previous year and down 37% and 35% from December of 2008.  These were the lowest numbers of sales since the mid-1990's.  In hindsight, this was the best time to buy real estate here.  Nobody has a "crystal ball", but now could be a good time as well...