Paul Brewbaker
Paul Brewbaker is the go-to economist for several Realtors’ organizations in Hawaii, and five years ago, he predicted that the median price of a home on Oahu would hit $1 million by 2017.
His prediction was based on the projection that homes prices would appreciate by 15 percent each year.
Instead, he said, home prices have appreciated by 5-10 percent year-over-year, so now, his current timetable for hitting the $1 million mark is between 2018 to 2022.
In June, the median price of a single-family home on Oahu hit a record $700,000.
“We’re not getting as strong a signal from home-price appreciation, and that is part of the reason why new home production is less robust than I anticipated a few years ago,” he said. “Still, I think that supply constraints are more of an issue than lack of housing demand.
“Either way there is less energy in the housing market today than I imagined would be characteristic of the housing market at the end of the recession five years ago,” he said.
Brewbaker made the comments in a Q&A with PBN in which he calls out the state of Hawaii for making bad business decisions, such as obstructing development. He also says the state’s energy policies have led to high electricity rates and calls the state of Hawaii an “idiot” for providing equity to film and television shows without getting residuals in return.
Read more about what Brewbaker has to say about the Hawaii economy here and in Friday’s print edition of Pacific Business News.
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