Gary's Blog

You might be surprised to see some of these statistics. Please shoot me an e-mail if you would like the pdf of all stats in the County of Maui for 2011.

Wailea Average Sales Price for single family residences up 20%.

Wailea Median Sales Price for single family residences us 32%.

Wailea Dollar Volume of sales (SFRs) for 2011 up 24% to over $134 mm.

Maui county-wide Average Sales Price for single family residences up 5%.

Maui county-wide Median Sales Price for single family residences down 6%.

Maui county-wide Dollar Volume of sales for 2011 up 16% to over $707 mm.

Wailea Average Sales Price for condos up 2%.

Wailea Median Sales Price for condos up 6%.

Wailea Dollar Volume of sales 2011 up 1%.

30-year mortgage drops to 3.89% Part of the reason for the surge in sales in 2011 are the record-low interest rates we are seeing. Freddie Mac announced last week that the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 3.89%. That's below the previous record of 3.91% reached three weeks ago. The average on a 15-year mortgage ticked down to 3.16%, also down from the previous record of 3.21%.

Tourism Up Tourism is the largest single source of private capital in Hawaii. According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, tourism makes up $1.05 billion of the total state tax revenue in Hawaii. As of October 2011, the percentage of visitor arrivals increased by 2.7 % from 2010. The largest number of visitors came from the US West with 41.2 %. On Maui, the visitor arrivals were up by 3.8 % as of October 2011. More than 104,000 arrived on cruise ships, a 14.5% increase from 2010. South Korean visitors numbers are up due to flights to and from Seoul four times per week. Hawaiian Airlines plans to increase those flights to daily beginning in July.

Hawaii bankruptcy filings declined in 2011 Hawaii bankruptcy cases in 2011 fell for the first time in five years. Data from U.S. Bankruptcy Court show there were 3325 cases filed during the year, down 15.9% from 2010. Nationwide, bankruptcy filings were down 12% from 2010.

Retail Sales: America's retailers enjoyed a record 2011 and their first $400 billion sales months ever. December was the second straight month that sales topped $400 billion.

Employment: The nation added 200,000 jobs in December in a burst of hiring that drove the unemployment rate down two notches to 8.5%, its lowest in almost three years. This was the sixth month in a row that the economy added at least 100,000 jobs, the longest streak since 2006. The economy added 1.6 million jobs for all of 2011, quite an improvement over the 940,000 new jobs in 2010. Economists project the nation will add almost 2 million jobs this year.

Manufacturing: Manufacturing rose 0.9% in December, the biggest gain since December 2010. Factory production has surged 15% above its lows of 2.5 years ago. Over the past year, factory output has risen 3.7%.

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