If you weren’t aware of it we are now ⅓ of the way through 2025.  Time has gone by in the blink of an eye it seems but the Kailua-Kona Real Estate Market has remained hot according to a report that I ran off of Realtors Property Resource (RPR) .  In this month's edition of the Island Land Company’s blog I  will compare what the report has found to my own experience in the market day to day.  

The first item from the market report was the median home value has increased to $1M.  This is up 8.4% over the last 3 months.  My bare knowledge of investing tells me that 7% is the desired return on an investment, thus meaning that Kona is still a great place to put your money for an investment.  

  • From my own experience I have noticed a bit of a stalemate in the median priced homes.  I would take an educated guess that this is because this particular set of properties in this price range are very interest rate sensitive, and we all know where the interest rates are now and how they have moved (or not) since the start of 2025.  I also have noticed that there is an increasing amount of people “waiting” for the upcoming election and possible interest rate change.  Will these changes come? Will the possible changes be beneficial for buyers? This is the billion dollar question, and frankly if I had the answers to them I would not be here writing this blog, I would be on my yacht somewhere in the pacific ocean sipping a nice cool drink.  

The second statistic I found interesting is that the median sales price is up 3% over the last 3 months and the median list price is down 14% over the last 3 months. 

  • What I take from this is that a lot of the properties that are being transacted within the market are lower value properties such as condos and smaller residential homes.  It seems to me that the lower price point condos and residential homes are being listed in higher numbers than the larger estates as well as the higher end residential homes.  Personally I would not say that I feel that the list prices have gone up significantly, but I would say that I personally feel that the condo market is hotter than the residential market at this time. 

The last statistic that I have for us today is that the number of properties listed month to month in Kona is down to 80 last month when in January there were 104 properties listed (down 23%).

 

  • The numbers do say the market now is a sellers market, but I think what I take away from this number again is that most folks are finding themselves waiting.  This is a strategy nonetheless, but one good quote that I had heard from someone whom I was able to meet at an open house was that “there is not a good or a bad time to move on a property as long as you do it with knowledge,  patience, and conviction.”  This gentleman who told me this was very successful in the real estate investment game and had a portfolio of about 60 properties across the United States both residential and commercial.  While arguments could be made for not buying a house in an inflated market, I tend to agree with him.  If you find a property that emotionally, statistically, and regionally makes sense you should drop the pen to paper and not look back.