Business life: My finance news blog

Home sales on Oahu plunged by more than 30 percent in June and are off by more than 25 percent for the first half of 2008.

But sellers are hanging tough on asking prices. Even though single-family home prices fell 9 percent in June from a year ago, the median price for the month was $625,000, still a strong number.

Only 232 single-family homes sold last month on Oahu, a drop of more than 31 percent from June 2007 when 338 homes sold, according to the figures released Tuesday by the Honolulu Board of Realtors.

Sales of single-family homes for the first six months of the year were 1,413, down 26 percent from the first half of 2007.

Condominium sales fell 35 percent last month, to 355 units sold, down from 547 in June 2007.

The figures count only existing homes, not new construction.

The total number of units sold so far this year was 2,158, a 27.5 percent drop from the first six months of 2007.

"While median prices have remained rather stable, the number of sales continued to drop in June and the annual sales rate has fallen below 8,000 units," said Harvey Shapiro, the board's research economist.

Shapiro noted that the peak of the Oahu market was in 2005, with an annual sales rate of 13,000. The low point occurred in the mid-1990s when sales fell below 4,000 units.

"The residential markets could see further slowing throughout the summer, but this reduction in demand may ease toward the end of this year," he said.

The median price of a single-family home a year ago was $685,000.

The median price of a condo was $327,500, down 2 percent from last year when it was $334,000.

"Sales demand in the Oahu housing market has been slowing, but median prices are remaining within the same range we've seen since 2005," said Dana Chandler, president of the Honolulu Board of Realtors. "The median price paid for a single-family home in June was 8.8 percent lower than a year ago, but remember that the price in June 2007, at $685,000, was the highest median ever achieved."

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