The housing numbers are in for April 2014 and some of them may surprise you. While the median price of a single family home was up to $648,000 (not surprising), the number of sold homes compared to April 2013 was down by nearly 12 percent (almost a 4 percent decrease from last April). Condominiums had a decrease in the number of sales year over year from 457 to 445 but they too had an increase in median sales price from $335,000 in April of 2013 to $355,000 in April of this year. That's a 6 percent increase.
Although the number of home sales dropped in April, the supply of homes and condos is still very limited so the drop isn't necessarily a reflection of lack of demand. The low number of days on market is a positive indicator that the demand is still strong and that the rising prices reflect a stable market.
The average sales price for single family homes was $762,071 in April, a drop of 5.4 percent, while condos saw an increase of just over 1 percent at $420,524. As predicted, we are seeing slight changes with home prices as we head toward 2015. Have we reached our plateau? Hard to say since the large majority of single family homes were sold for the original list price in April (99.7 percent in fact) and condos weren't far behind at 97.3 percent.
Will be interesting to watch the market on Oahu in the coming months. Stay tuned and check back with me for the juicy details!
Author: Michelle Trimmell, RA