Isle home sales soar 41%

From staff and wire reports

Home resales on Oahu hit a three-year high last month as prices were significantly lower than a year earlier, according to the monthly report of the Honolulu Board of Realtors.

Sales of previously owned single family homes were up 40.8 percent from July 1996, for a total of 214 sales compared with 152 in the year-earlier month.

Condominium resales were up 3.7 percent at 196 in July, compared with 189 a year earlier.

The median price among single family homes sold last month was $308,500, down 13.5 percent from the $356,750 year-earlier median, the price at which half the homes sold for more and half for less. The condominium median price last month was $160,000, down 5.9 percent from $170,000 a year earlier.

C. Scott Bradley, president of the 4,100-member real estate trade association, said the renewed demand for residential properties and a stabilization in prices may signal that the market has passed the bottom and is now on the upswing.

Contracts for resales expected to close within a few months are also higher, showing that strength is returning to the housing market, he said.

Even the weak condominium market showed improvement in July with more sales than there were in any of the past 12 months, Bradley said.

He called the sales reports "spectacular" and said prices have been firming over the past few months.

Despite the fact that July prices were lower than a year earlier, single family home prices for the past three months have been above the 12-month low median of $279,000 reported for April.

The median price for condominiums in July was nearly 10 percent higher than the 12-month low of $145,700 reported for January.

Bradley said July's results may be a signal that the bottom of the real estate market has been passed and that strength is returning to the market.

"The activity we see over the next few months will confirm whether or not the market will be able to sustain this expansionary trend," he said.