Post from: Hawaii Real Estate Reporter

September 2008 Hawaii Real Estate Discussion – Focus On Foreclosures

According to the article, analysts claim that this slump will not end until inventory (amount of homes for sale) declines.  Unfortunately for many mainlanders, foreclosures are pushing more homes onto already flooded markets, keeping inventories high and extending the market’s recovery time.

If this is a good synopsis of our Real Estate problems, Hawaii has two reasons to be optimistic:

First, Hawaii’s conservative construction practices have spared us the inventory disasters that trounced Mainland cities like Las Vegas, where overdevelopment of new homes flooded the market, driving prices down.  We didn’t overdevelop to that extent, so our inventory problem is not nearly as bad.

Second, conservative lending practices in Hawaii has spared us a dramatic foreclosure crisis.  Hawaii lenders were more careful with “exotic” subprime mortgages than many of their mainland counterparts.  The result- Only 1 out of 3676 homes in Hawaii are in foreclosure while 1 out of 501 US homes are in foreclosure.  We aren’t experiencing a devistating surge in foreclosures that threatens to flood the market with inventory.

Post from: Hawaii Real Estate Reporter

NAR Reports Dropping National Sales Figures. What does this mean to the Hawaii Market?