Oahu home prices plummeting

The Honolulu Advertiser carries this report:

There's been a dramatic turn in O'ahu's residential real estate market in the last year.

It's as though value is evaporating into the salty air — $50,000 here, $150,000 there, $720,000 in Choi's case.

This turn hasn't been reflected in regularly reported median sale prices, which continue to be up in year-to-year comparisons. The median price for a single-family home on O'ahu in August was $635,000, up 1.6 percent from a year ago.

The whole article is a must-read. This is the one that we all knew was coming; irrefutable proof that we're transitioning to a buyer's market. More highlights:

According to O'ahu home sale data available at Kaufman's Web site, OahuRE.com, there were 1,798 cases of sellers dropping their asking price last month, compared with only 633 a year earlier.

The number of price drops for homes on the market, which includes more than one drop for the same property, has been steadily rising from 1,081 in January to 1,604 last week. The average drop for single-family homes was 7.6 percent.

It's a fire sale, folks!

The median list price on O'ahu hit a peak in May 2005 at $850,000 and now stands at $770,000. Median list prices for single-family homes have been below their year-ago levels in each month this year except January.

The whole thing, including some nifty graphics, is here.