This is a unique moment for Kauai (and Hawaii...) | Sept 2026 Kauai Housing Market Update

I'm Annie Elissen. This is your September 2026 Kauai real estate market update. Buy the beach house, live the dream. This is usually something I say at the end of my video, but today I'm going to say, if you're watching this, please hit the like and subscribe button. It matters. Currently, there are 470 properties for sale. That's holding about steady. In homes, we have 213. These are active listings. Condos, 150, and parcels of land, 107. Now, I should put in this caveat that says these are only fee simple properties, no land leases. I've also excluded condos that are a hotel room. There's nothing wrong with those. I just don't include them in my updates because it's such a niche property. You can't get loans on them, so they're cash only deals, and they tend to skew the numbers. But there are some great hotel rooms you can buy on Kauai that make really good investments. Call me if you're interested. There's also one condominium complex that I pull out of these numbers, and I say this every month or almost every month, and it's because they've been building them for three years. Nothing's closed. They show like 98 pending. So I just remove those numbers because once again, it skews the greater numbers. So the people that are just getting numbers from like Grok, Claude, ChatGPT, they're going to get the numbers wrong unless one of these AI bots is watching this video, which is a possibility. Pending shows the activity in the market currently, right? Once something has closed, it's like kind of past performance. But what is happening in the market now? What's pending? So total pending homes, condos, parcels of land, 82. That's a pretty good number. 48 are single family homes, 24 are condos, and 10 are parcels of land. Okay, now what has closed, right? This means they put in an offer where they negotiated the deal, the buyer and seller came to terms, and they made it through escrow. All of the disclosures, all of the discovery, they purchased the property. The property has changed ownership. And in the month of August, we closed 46 properties, 28 homes, 14 condos, and four parcels of land. Condos and parcels of land closed, that's down from what it has been. But when you look at condos right now, there's 24 pending and 12 closed. So that number will probably jump next month. Now, let me just say, if the numbers didn't scream it to you, we're in a buyer's market. Buyer markets are very rare on Kauai, in the state of Hawaii as a whole. Now, why is that? Well, you know, like for me, for example, I do a lot of vacation rentals. They're often investments. One of the reasons why selling, even if a property is listed, a seller could be like, well, they're generally making money on it, right? So if they're not getting the number they want, they can just continue to rent it. Most of these sellers are not hardship sellers, but there are some, and we're going to talk about those. So let's just break down some of the market segments. On the island of Kauai, of the 470 properties for sale, 65 of them are priced over $5 million. 65. Of the 65, can you guess how many are pending? Put it in the comments below. What's your guess? It's five. That's a low number. What sold over 5 million last month? How many? Do you think it was five? Do you think it was more than five? Two. Two properties sold last month priced at over $5 million. That's a struggling price point, which means there's an opportunity. So one of these homes was a beautiful house in Hanalei. It was an oceanfront. It wasn't on Vecchi Road, the most valuable road, but it was a nice house. Now it wasn't a house really with a mountain view and no ocean view. Often homes in Hanalei that don't have an ocean view have a mountain view. So this wasn't a view property and it's still sold for $5.5 million. No short-term rental rights. It did not come with a vacation rental license and it had jungle views. So that is a testament to the value in Hanalei. You don't get that many properties there. This one came on the market. It sold basically immediately. It's like three or four days. So that's a real testament to Hanalei. The other property that sold was in Kukuiula, another hotbed for luxury property. It was a four bedroom, four and a half bathroom. It is in Kukuiula's VDA, visitor destination area, which means it does have short-term rental rights. It's also located right above the 10th hole of their golf course, which means your direct view is not going to be overlooking homes or rooftops. You have a clear golf course view kind of to the edge, and then you see some distant homes along the coastline and great ocean views. The only slight knock I would have on the location of this property is that it's the last house on the street, so it borders a road. Now it's not a busy road, it just does border a road in Kukuiula. This road only has one turn before you get to the Kula Makai neighborhood, which is the most expensive part of Kukuiula to own in. Homes the last home that sold in there sold for I think it was $16.7 million. Larger lots, bigger ocean views, but this was a great purchase and it sold for $7.7 million. It takes 30 to 60 days to close on a property on Kauai, so when we see the sold numbers, what we're really seeing is what was happening one to two months ago. So what is pending? Now there are five properties pending over $5 million. One is a 5.4 acre industrial park in Lihue. Is it a residential comparable? Not really, but important to know. Like someone's buying an expensive industrial park, that's great. One is 30.06 acres in Kalaheo. Now that includes three TMK numbers, which means three are currently designated parcels, three water meters. There are view locations where you can see Ni'ihau. You're going to have year-round sunsets. Someone's getting something that's pretty special. The third one that's pending is a home in Poipu Beach Estates. Now it's not just one home, it's two. When Poipu Beach Estates was developed, it was developed in a way where every parcel had the right to build a home and an ADU. Now when that happened, this was a big deal because that was unusual, so these were more valuable. Since then, the County of Kauai has passed a law that says every residential lot, and ag lot for that matter, has the option of building an ADU. Now some subdivisions have outlawed them, so in some areas they're not allowed, but the County of Kauai has also passed a law saying no future subdivisions can outlaw additional dwelling units. But going back to this current one in the market, it's a beautiful home, it's a beautiful ADU, it's six bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms, one of the homes has a home theater, it borders the Waikomo Stream, and it might be the largest lot within Poipu Beach Estates. It's 1.24 acres, so it's a great property. Now I have a feeling someone's getting it for a very good deal, but it is an escrow, and it is, for the two homes, it is priced over five million dollars. All right, the third one is what I'm calling the Hanalei Auction House. Now this is a house in Hanalei that had been on the market for up to 23 million. This is a house without an ocean view. 23 million for a house in Hanalei without an ocean view, that's a big price, so it was not selling. They decided to use an auction company so that they could sell it immediately. So that has happened, and it's now pending. The price in the MLS still says 8.25 million, which I have a suspicion is the price it will close at, but we'll have to see. We'll have to watch it close, which I should have in my next monthly market update. Now this was a beautiful home. They bought an older home. They tore it down and built a new house, so it was a beautiful house. The location within Hanalei, I mean the best locations in my opinion, are closer to the pier. Some mountain views, no real views. We'll see where it sells at, but right now in the MLS it's showing 8.25 as an asking price. The fifth home pending, over five million dollars, is a home in Kukui'ula. Four bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms in the Makani Kai 2 subdivision. You are going to have great ocean views, but you will be looking over rooftops, right? It's not like the one that closed that month, last month, which is on the 10th hole overlooking just green, you know, to the ocean. You're going to have the street that's lower in front of you with a bunch of homes on it, so you are overlooking rooftops. You're still in Kukui'ula. It's still a great location. It still has amazing amenities. What about the rest of the market? Well, between three and five million, there are 87 active listings, and seven of those are pending. So between three and five million, what is selling? Where are those located? Four of them are in Poipu within the visitor destination area. One is in Kapa'a, go east side, and two of them are on the North Shore. Now, what's sold? Well, sold, one was a house in between three and five million last month. One was a house in Lihue, which overlooks Nowiliwili Harbor. Beautiful views, stunning property. There's some true high-end luxury property in Lihue as well, and you can look at Timbers for an example, but some of these homes that sit up on this hilltop that overlook the Nowiliwili Harbor. Beautiful. One was a home in Princeville, and one is a home in Aliamanu Estates, which is just the north side of Anahola, kind of the northeast corner of the island. What about two to three million? What's going on in two to three million? We have 74 active, six pending, and four that sold. One to two million. We're going to start seeing more activity. One to two million. We have 142. That's more than a fourth of the market, right, is between one and two million. So we have 86 active single-family homes, 59 condos, 18 parcels of land. So not a lot of land. What's sold? Eight homes, seven condos, and one parcel of land. What's under a million? Is there anything under a million? Well, there is, and it's a very active segment of the market. So under a million, we have 13 single-family homes. We have 70 condos. That's a lot of condos. And 54 parcels of land. What's sold under a million? What's sold are 11 homes, 14 condos, four parcels of land. Now what I think is so interesting and good to know about this lower price range on Kauai is we currently have 13 homes, 13 priced under a million, and we sold 11 last month. That means these homes are selling. People trying to get into the market, they are watching that market. And when a good deal comes up, they jump on it. And that is a good way to approach this market. I currently have four properties in escrow, and they're all amazing deals. So that's the important thing to know. I am getting more and more calls from buyers, especially investors who want to take advantage of the tax bonus depreciation, which means they have to purchase and receive rent in this year. Now to do that, they need to get something pretty quickly. And so there is some energy in this market, right? And I think it's really interesting to see in the under one million, 13 active, 11 sold. That's almost 100% of the market. Generally speaking, people looking to buy a single-family home, not a condo. They don't want those high HOA laws. They're generally people who live here. They don't care about short-term rental rights. They are watching the market and on top of it. And when a good deal comes up, they grab it. Anything interesting you learned in this market? Anything you'd like to know more about the market? Please let me know in the comments below. What I can tell you, which I think I've already said, this is an opportunistic market. So will you make your opportunity happen? I don't know, but I'd love to be a part of it. If you're interested, curious, if I can help, call me. I'm Annie Elison, your Kauai Real Estate Pro, and this has been my September 2026 Real Estate Market Update. And if I haven't said it already, just remember, life is short. Buy the beach house. Live the dream.