The Oahu Housing Market in Late 2026: What the Median Price Doesn’t Tell You

If you look up “Oahu median home price” you’ll get one number. That number is close to useless for making a decision on this island, and it’s worth understanding why before you look at anything else.

Oahu isn’t one housing market. It’s at least two, and in late 2026 they’re behaving very differently. On top of that, a handful of rules (on insurance, rentals, accessory units and property tax) shape what a specific property is actually worth to a specific buyer far more than the island-wide median does. This guide walks through where things stand using Honolulu Board of Realtors data through September 2026, plus the policy changes buyers and sellers should have on their radar.

Why the headline numbers mislead

National and portal-level coverage usually blends condos and single-family homes into a single median. On Oahu, that hides an enormous gap. In September 2026 the single-family median was $1,110,000 and the condo median was $523,000. Average those together in any proportion and you get a number that describes almost nothing anyone is actually buying.

The automated estimates on Zillow, Redfin and similar apps have a different problem. They’re built on mainland assumptions, and several things that matter a great deal here are mostly invisible to them:

• Fee simple vs. leasehold. A leasehold condo and a fee simple condo in similar buildings can look alike in the data. They are very different purchases, with different financing, different resale pools and a lease rent or expiration date that changes everything.
• What the maintenance fee covers. In some Honolulu buildings the monthly fee includes electricity, central AC, water, cable or internet. In others it covers almost nothing beyond the building itself. Two $800 fees can represent completely different monthly costs.
• The building’s master insurance. Whether a condo association carries full replacement coverage decides whether a conventional lender will finance a unit there at all. No algorithm sees that.

That’s why serious pricing on Oahu starts from the MLS, split by property type and broken down by neighborhood and building, rather than from a portal estimate.

Single-family homes: still a fast, tight market

Here’s what September 2026 looked like for Oahu houses:

• Median price: $1,110,000, down 3.9% from $1,155,000 a year earlier
• Closed sales: 293, up 6.2%
• Median days on market: 16, compared with 26 a year ago
• Sold above original asking: 31%, up from 25%
• Active listings: 798, unchanged from a year ago

A falling median next to faster sales and more above-asking closings looks contradictory, but it usually isn’t. Monthly medians move with the mix of homes that happen to close. A month with fewer Kahala and Hawaii Kai sales and more Ewa and Waipahu sales will pull the median down even when competition is getting stiffer. The year-to-date number is steadier: through the first nine months of 2026 the single-family median was $1,180,000, up 3.1%. July set a record at $1,224,500.

Supply is the real story. With roughly 800 active listings and close to 300 sales a month, Oahu has somewhere under three months of single-family inventory. A balanced market is usually described as around six. And this is all happening with mortgage rates higher than they were a year ago. The 30-year fixed crossed 7% in late September, peaked at 7.40% in mid-October, and was 7.32% in Freddie Mac’s October 22 survey. A year earlier it was around 6.2%.

If you’re buying a house: on a well-priced home in a sought-after neighborhood, plan to make your best offer first. Also ask whether the seller’s loan is assumable. An FHA or VA loan locked at a 2020–2022 rate can be worth more to a buyer than a price cut, and it never shows up in the list price.

If you’re selling a house: pricing at market, or slightly under, tends to work in conditions like these. Overpricing is the main way a house ends up sitting while comparable homes sell around it.

Condos: a slower market with room to negotiate

The condo side of the same island in the same month:

• Median price: $523,000, up 2.8%
• Closed sales: 375, down 8.1%
• Median days on market: 41, about the same as a year ago
• Sold above original asking: 12%
• Active listings: 2,509, up 7.8%

That’s roughly six to seven months of supply, which is buyer’s-market territory. Prices aren’t collapsing, and the condo median is up slightly year to date. But condo buyers are weighing much more than the price. They’re looking at the maintenance fee, the building’s insurance situation, reserve funding and any pending special assessments, and all of that feeds into what they’re willing to pay.

If you’re buying a condo: there’s real room to negotiate right now that mostly doesn’t exist on houses. Closing cost credits, a seller covering a pending assessment and flexible timing are all reasonable asks.

If you’re selling a condo, especially in an older building, pricing has to be sharper than it was a year ago. Your buyer is comparing you against several similar units, and they know it.

Condo insurance and why some units can’t get a loan

This is the issue that most often kills condo deals on Oahu, and most out-of-state buyers have never heard of it.

Over the past few years, hurricane insurance for Hawaii condo associations became scarce and extremely expensive. Only a handful of carriers were writing master policies in the state, and many buildings saw premiums multiply. Some associations responded by buying less than full coverage because owners couldn’t absorb the cost.

That has a direct lending consequence. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac require a condo building to be insured at 100% of replacement cost. If a building is underinsured, units there generally can’t get a conventional mortgage, and owners can’t refinance into one either. That shrinks the buyer pool toward cash buyers and portfolio lenders, and a smaller buyer pool means a lower price.

The state has stepped in. Legislation enacted in July 2025 allowed the Hawaii Hurricane Relief Fund and the Hawaii Property Insurance Association to write coverage for condo associations. By May 2026, the relief fund had issued roughly 82 hurricane policies to condo and townhouse associations, covering about $2.2 billion in insured value, and the state launched a revolving loan fund to help buildings make repairs needed to become insurable. Some buildings have solved their coverage problem this way. Others haven’t, and you can’t tell which is which from listing photos.

If you’re buying a condo: once you’re under contract, read the association documents carefully, especially three of them: the master insurance certificate (is it at full replacement cost?), the most recent reserve study, and the last 12 months of board minutes (look for insurance renewals, assessments and deferred repairs). Don’t get attached to a unit until those check out. Talk to your lender early about whether the project is eligible for the loan you’re planning on.

If you’re selling a condo: find out where your association stands before you list. If the building is underinsured, expect a smaller buyer pool and price accordingly. If it recently secured full coverage, say so in the listing. That’s a real selling point.

Rental income: what’s legal and how it’s taxed

A lot of relocation buyers build their numbers around rental income, then discover on arrival that the plan doesn’t work under Oahu’s rules.

Under 30 days: rentals shorter than 30 days are generally illegal in Oahu’s residential zones. Legal short-term vacation rentals are limited to resort-zoned areas such as Waikiki, Ko Olina and Turtle Bay, plus a small number of properties holding nonconforming use certificates. Fines for illegal rentals are steep.

30 to 89 days: the city’s 2022 short-term rental ordinance tried to raise the residential minimum from 30 to 90 days. A federal judge blocked that change, and a 2023 ruling permanently protected lawfully established 30-to-89-day rentals. How that applies to a rental you’d start today is a question to confirm with the city’s Department of Planning and Permitting and an attorney before you underwrite anything shorter than 90 days.

Mid-term furnished rentals (roughly three to six months) are where much of the realistic opportunity sits. Demand comes from traveling nurses on contract at Honolulu’s hospitals, military families waiting on base housing, visiting faculty, and people on work assignments or extended medical stays. Furnished mid-term units usually rent at a meaningful premium over unfurnished annual leases, in exchange for more turnover and some vacancy.

The 180-day tax line. This is the detail most investors miss. For state tax purposes, Hawaii treats any rental shorter than 180 consecutive days as a transient accommodation. That means the transient accommodations tax applies on top of the general excise tax:

• State TAT: 11% (raised from 10.25% on January 1, 2026)
• Honolulu county TAT: 3%
• General excise tax on Oahu: about 4.5%

That’s roughly 18.5% of gross rent under 180 days. On a lease of 180 days or longer, the TAT generally drops away and you’re left with GET, so the difference on the same unit is around 14 points of gross rent. One caveat: a 180-day lease doesn’t automatically exempt you. The burden is on the owner to show the stay wasn’t transient, so structure and document it properly, and run it past a tax professional.

Accessory dwelling units: more doors on some lots

Honolulu’s Ordinance 25-2, which took effect in September 2025, expanded what many single-family lots can hold. The main changes:

• A lot can now have both an ohana unit and an ADU if it meets the standards, meaning up to three dwellings (main house, ohana and ADU) where the old rules allowed fewer.
• Maximum ADU size went up to 500 square feet on lots under 5,000 square feet, and 1,000 square feet on larger lots.
• ADUs are for long-term occupancy only, not short-term rental.
• ADUs aren’t allowed on lots that have been split into condominium property regime (CPR) units, so check how the property is held before assuming any of this applies.

At the state level, Act 39 (2024) requires every county to allow at least two ADUs on residentially zoned lots by December 31, 2026. If a county misses that deadline, it can’t deny a permit for up to two ADUs based on unit count alone. Honolulu has pushed back: the City Council asked the Legislature to repeal the mandate, but the 2026 session didn’t pass a repeal. As of this fall, Honolulu’s own code still allowed only one ADU, so watch what happens at the end of the year.

In practice, sewer capacity, parking requirements, permitting timelines and construction costs still decide whether a second or third unit actually gets built. But a lot that can legally hold more housing is worth more to the right buyer, and that’s worth knowing whether you’re buying or selling.

Property tax: new tiers starting July 2027

Honolulu taxes homes that aren’t owner-occupied and are assessed at $1 million or more under a separate, higher-rate class called Residential A. Today it has two tiers: one rate on the first $1 million of value and a much higher rate on everything above that.

Ordinance 25-44, passed in October 2025, restructures it starting with the tax year beginning July 1, 2027:

• Residential A will start at $1.3 million instead of $1 million.
• Three tiers instead of two: up to $1.3 million, $1.3 million to $3.5 million, and above $3.5 million.
• Transient vacation units get their own three tiers: up to $900,000, $900,000 to $2 million, and above $2 million.

The rates for the new tiers haven’t been set yet. The City Council sets rates each June, so the first numbers under the new structure should come in June 2027.

What this means in practice:

• A second home or rental assessed between $1 million and $1.3 million drops out of Residential A entirely. That’s right around the island’s single-family median, so a lot of investment owners are in line for relief and many don’t know it.
• Owners of non-owner-occupied property above $3.5 million face a new top tier at a rate no one can quote yet. If you’re buying in that range, model a conservative tax number and factor the uncertainty into price. If you’ll live in the home and claim the home exemption, Residential A doesn’t apply.

Fewer people, higher prices: how both are true

Hawaii’s population fell by 2,132 people between July 2024 and July 2025, to 1,432,820, according to Census Bureau estimates. About 8,900 more people moved from Hawaii to other states than moved here. Honolulu County has been losing population at around half a percent a year since 2020. Yet the Oahu single-family median hit a record this summer.

The two numbers measure different things. Population counts everyone who lives here. Prices are set by the much smaller group of people actively buying, and that group hasn’t shrunk the way the headcount has. When a resident leaves for the mainland, their home typically sells, often to someone with more purchasing power: equity from a pricier market, a job that travels with them, or cash. Interestingly, statewide housing units grew about 2.4% between 2020 and 2025 while population fell, so this isn’t purely a supply story. It’s about who is doing the buying.

For relocating buyers, the takeaway is not to read the population trend as less competition. For sellers, it isn’t a reason to cut your price. Your buyer isn’t the person who left; it’s whoever is replacing them.

Before you write an offer

• Know which market you’re in. House and condo tactics don’t transfer.
• For any condo, confirm fee simple vs. leasehold, what the maintenance fee includes, master insurance at full replacement cost, the reserve study and recent board minutes.
• If rental income matters to your numbers, confirm zoning and the minimum rental term, and model taxes at the right side of the 180-day line.
• For a single-family lot, check whether it’s CPR’d and whether it could add an ohana or ADU.
• If the home won’t be your primary residence, figure out where its assessed value lands against the 2027 tiers.
• Check the flood zone. Oahu’s updated FEMA flood maps took effect June 10, 2026, so recheck anything older. Our Hawaii flood zone lookup shows the zone, whether insurance is required, and whether the map changed.
• Ask whether the seller’s loan is assumable.

Most of what moves value on Oahu right now comes from rules, not rates. If you’re planning to buy or sell on the island in the next year and want to talk through how any of this applies to a specific property, start here if you’re buying or here if you’re selling.

Market figures are from Honolulu Board of Realtors resale data through September 2026. Rules and tax rates change; confirm current requirements with the relevant agency, your lender and a tax professional before relying on them.