The sound of crickets in my email inbox from people looking to purchase a home in Hawaii lately has me thinking that the pundits are right about demand pulling back from a very hot housing market. From October-February, I was answering dozens of emails monthly from people wanting to get away from the mainland and move to Hawaii, and homes were selling almost in synch with how many requests I was receiving.
Interest rates have been inching up, buyers are tired and the pandemic seems to finally have a light at the end of the tunnel with vaccinations. Maybe my friends at Altos Research are correct in that April will be the peak of the spring buying season (we have four people arriving in April to look for homes in our referral business and none in May).
Just as I knew there was going to be a flood of people trying to escape the mainland and move to Kona in the past year because of the requests to join my 365 Kona Newbies group on Facebook (which happened) and the growing lack of rental housing (because where once the Kona Newbie people were responding to and sending listings to people needing housing on that group, now that too is a room of crickets) it would appear that buying demand has slowed.
I also just took a look at the views on my monthly real estate market report on YouTube and we had over 2,000 views on the October and February reports and only 869 views for March. We also had over 5,000 views on a “How to buy a condo” video we created 3 months ago and soon after my husband helped place over 10 buyers with our Realtor partners.
This should have sellers taking advantage of the multiple offer market now, as it may be a different story come summer and beyond.
My Realtor partner, Lance Owens, and I will be doing a live real estate update on April 8th in my private real estate group on Facebook and releasing that conversation onto my YouTube channel afterwards. I am attending a real time real estate data discussion that morning and will be discussing what I learned in the discussion, too!
If you are part of our 365Ohana, I invite you to join us live at 5 pm HST as we look at the March numbers and look ahead as possibly inventory will increase and buyers will drop out of the race, or at least stop chasing the lead horse so hard! Bring your questions!
