Posts tagged Hawaii

The Big Island, which is Hawaii County, is also officially known simply as the island of Hawaii. The island is the largest of all the Hawaiian islands — larger even than all of the other islands combined, at more than 4,000 square miles — and has a population of around 180,000. Like other Hawaiian islands, Big Island homes for sale have struggled in the most recent years as the market in the U.S. for real estate crashed around the time the financial crisis began, set off by an untold number of subprime mortgages. As these mortgages saw their rates reset, almost always to higher rates, many found themselves suddenly unable to refinance at lower rates and unable to make the increased payments, leaving them out in the cold. When these things happened, the number foreclosures on the Big Island, as well as across Hawaii, rose to levels rarely seen before.

The Hawaii County or Big Island real estate market has mostly leveled off as of late, but some spikes in prices can still be seen as things jump around trying to settle down and get back to a sense of normalcy. The number of homes sold, which had been steadily rising in every quarter since the beginning of 2009, actually saw its first decline since then in the most recent quarter, the second, of 2010, with about 1,000 homes sold, down from the previous quarter, when there were around 1,700.

The median price for home sales in Hawaii County saw a small peak in size at the end of 2009, but then in the beginning of this year it fell again. In the second quarter of 2010, the median price was around $250,000, which was up ever so slightly from the first quarter but down from the fourth quarter of last year, when the figure was around $280,000.