Diamond Head Real Estate

Diamond Head, Hawaii, refers to the area on Oahu near the volcanic tuff cone, so named because explorers in the 1800s thought calcite crystal in the rock were diamonds. Today the area is one of the islands’ most popular tourist spots and is a U.S. monument. Diamond Head real estate tends to be rather high-priced, as the area is in high demand, and it consists of both single-family homes and a number of condominiums.

According to statistics published by the Honolulu Board of Realtors, the Diamond head area residential real estate sector has continued to struggle a bit into 2010. In March, there were 23 new listings of Diamond Head homes for sale, down 28% from a year earlier. There were 22 homes sold in March, better than last year, when there were just 20 sold. The median sales price for homes in March was down 4% to $710,000, and the average price was down 27.5% to around $722,000 from more than $994,000. Homes are selling more quickly, though. The average number of days homes spent on the market before selling was 42, down 57% from a year ago, when that figure was 97 days. At the end of the month, there were still 97 homes on the market for sale, down from 124 one year ago. Thus far in 2010, however, the median price of homes in Diamond Head is up 5%, at $775,000, though the average year-to-date is down 8%.

The condo market shows similar trends and is, on the whole, showed much room for optimism in March. There were 21 new listings in the month, the same figure as last year, and at the end of March, there were 82 condos still left on the market for sale, down by four from a year ago. There were 10 condos sold in Diamond Head in March, up from just four sales in March 2009. The median sales price was off just a slight 0.8% from a year ago to $470,000, while the average sales price was up more than 40% to around $769,000. Condos for sale spent an average of 72 days on the market once listed, a decline from last year of more than 45%, when condos spent 131 days on the market, on average, before selling. So far this year, the median condo price in Diamond Head is up 13% to $396,500 and the average price is up 70%. There have been 23 condos sold in the first three months of the year, up from only eight at the same time last year.

Miami Beach Real Estate

The Miami Beach real estate market seems to be slowly stabilizing, as is the rest of Southern Florida. According to a May 5, 2010 article in the Miami Herald, “Propelled by low prices, attractive interest rates and federal incentives to lock in offers by the month’s end, the number of new contracts on South Florida homes soared in April. Compared with March, pending sales of single-family homes and condominiums increased last month in both Miami-Dade and Broward, mirroring the national upward trend in contracts signed, according to data released Tuesday by the Realtors Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches.” The article, written by Hannah Sampson, continued to say that “Compared with last April, the number skyrocketed. The number of pending home sales overall ticked up by 6.6 percent in Miami-Dade in April, with 10,392 compared with 9,751 in March. In Broward, pending home sales increased from 8,173 in March to 8,525 in April, up 4.3 percent.”
On the other hand, Miami Beach homes for sale may be adversely impacted by a much higher than normal rate of foreclosures. According to an April 29, 2010 article in the Miami Herald, “The number of foreclosures in South Florida shot up more than 71 percent in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the same time period last year. Even with one in every 46 homes in some stage of foreclosure, the region still doesn’t break the top 10 large metropolitan areas in terms of foreclosure rates.” The piece, composed by Hannah Sampson, continued to say that “According to a RealtyTrac report on foreclosures in the metropolitan areas with a  population of at least 200,000, the area that includes Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach ranks eleventh.”
This same serious problem for Miami Beach real estate was echoed in an April 29, 2010 article from CBS 4 News, which said that “The foreclosure crisis may be subsiding in some areas of the country; but in South Florida, the bottom continues to drop out of the market. According to numbers from RealtyTrac, foreclosures in South Florida have grown 71 percent in the first quarter when compared to the same time frame in 2009.”