Does Days on Market Matter in Big Island Real Estate?

Those of us trying to parse the state and direction of the Big Island real estate market (or the entire Hawaiʻi real estate market) are obsessing over data. So much data.

There is the 2025 Hawaiʻi Housing Fact Book, recently released by the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization (UHERO). That one has 100 pages, including data for each Hawaiʻi zip code. I did try using AI to make sense of it, but disagreed with almost all the conclusions.

Then there are the slides we review at the monthly Hawaiʻi Life statewide meeting with year-over-year and month-over-month statistics. Often though the data set is small and therefore one extra large sale skews the median price. Or the total number of transactions is so small that one or two more or fewer sales shows up us a huge percentage increases or decrease.

The basic conclusions that are clear:

• Transaction volume is low. Very low. As low as during the Great Recession. But it has been constrained by inventory for a couple of years.
• Listing volume or inventory of homes and condos for sale is creeping up from the post-pandemic desert low.
• Buyers have more negotiating power than they did a year ago, so the spread between asking price and final sales price is increasing slightly.
• With a bit more inventory and slightly lower volume, median days on market is creeping up. 

BUT there is a huge a caveat about days on market. Letʻs dig into two aspects of that, and the ramifications for buyers and sellers.

Median Days on Market of Active Listings is Significantly Higher Than Median DOM for Sold Listings

This is really my number one point when talking to Sellers about the market and Days on Market. I had been saying – based on anecdotal evidence (and my own experience representing buyers in this low inventory market) – that well-priced listings, meaning listings priced close to the most recently sold comparable properties in the area, were selling quickly. And that listings with ambitious pricing, as if the market were still going up at a dramatic rate, were lingering and eventually reducing significantly in order to sell.

Here are the supporting data, using condos at Waikoloa Beach Resort as an example.

A summary table of condominium listings SOLD in the past 12 months at Waikoloa Beach Resort looks like this. At least one listing sold before print; the longest took well over a year. But the median was about 1-1/2 months from release to accepted offer, and look at the gap between sale/original price and sale/current price, indicating that at least half took rapid price reductions to correct if they were not getting showings:

And here is a table showing currently active listings. The median days on market is 85, average 109. In other words, they are already sitting for twice as long as it took the sold properties to sell. They are also slightly skewed towards the higher end of the market – but not as much as I would have guessed.

Sellers, listen up! The conclusions up at the top are pointing to a buyers market and decreasing price trend – and when I say decreasing I do not mean from asking prices, I mean from previous sale prices. If you are not getting showings, or not getting offers, your only lever to pull right now is asking price. Changing the marketing strategy or listing agent is not so important in a world where everyone has all the listings and data at their fingertips.

Conversely, if you are a buyer and you see exactly what you want at a price in line with comps, why hesitate when you clearly have negotiating power? Although inventory is increasing, some of it is stale inventory – and there is still plenty of demand out there, just watching and waiting for their stock portfolio to stop flipflopping or their property somewhere else to sell. I laugh at the fact that four buyers out of the many showings on one of my listings want to be told if we get an offer in. Why? If it is a good offer, you will be too late already.

In Resort, Second Home, and Retirement Buyer Markets, Days on Market Is Always Longer

Resort properties are typically sold to second home or retirement buyers who might not look or make offers until they arrive for a trip planned months into the future. Hence the properties take longer to sell.

Mentioning pent up demand sitting on the sidelines right now watching the economic volatility brings me to another point. We have always seen properties take longer to sell in my West Hawaiʻi markets where the buyer is not already here on island. The buyers are not just switching neighborhoods to be closer to a job or school, so we wait for them to come take a look.

Even analyzing these Days on Market charts historically can be misleading. “Back in the day” – meaning pre-pandemic – we always joked about wanting to be the third listing agent. Thatʻs because listing sometimes took a couple of years to sell for no other reason than there were t0o few buyers relative to the number of listings on market. That is no longer the case! Inventory levels are around 6 months, maybe a bit more, creeping into Buyerʻs Market territory. Again, it seems there are still plenty of buyers in the wings, with the money and the desire. If you are one of those buyers, and  hoping that we might have a significant, post-2008 apocalyptic fall in prices – I do not see that happening.

But I have been wrong before. So trust your gut, your own experience, your agent – and the data.