The luxury home market is improving in East Oahu according to Locations, an article from Bizjournals.com stated.
Locations LLC is one of the largest real estate companies in the region and it has proudly claimed that it has made 226 transactions for its luxury real estate line during 2015. This is an increase of 7 percent during the year and were located in key areas in East Oahu such as Diamond Head, Hawaii Loa Ridge, Kahala and in Waialae Iki. These four locations accounted for about half of all the luxury homes purchased in the area with homes at the $2 million and under range.
But why homes at $2 million? According to Locations LLC Executive Vice President Scott Higashi, during an interview with PBN, "$1 million can be very valid in most US cities, but here in Oahu in some neighborhoods it could be considered [not luxury]."
He said that $2 million is the benchmark that defines a luxury home. Locations also studied the neighborhoods and used a new approach to identify the luxury market. This includes areas that were developed as luxury residential projects from the outset compared to modest neighborhoods with home prices higher than $1 million mark as a result of the state's housing shortage.
At present, median home sale prices increased 9 percent in places such as Diamond Head, 6 percent in Waialae Iki and 4 percent in Kahala as compared to prices in 2014.
Local folks make up 66 percent of luxury residential property sales in East Oahu in 2015 and the remaining were from the US Mainland and also from Asia. A large number of buyers from Asia were from Japan with 54 percent while Chinese buyers were at 27 percent, 10 percent from Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and Malaysia.
According to Higashi, "Asia accounts for 12 percent of our business," he said. "It's not as big as people think. It is largely Japanese buyers still - there are Chinese buyers but not on the scale as everyone hoped. We were hoping for a lot of sales [in 2015]."
