Waikiki is located in Hawaii’s tourist mecca, easily its most popular resort district. The neighborhood lies along a 1.5 mile stretch of world class beach on the sunny southern shore of Oahu with some of the best and most consistent weather on the planet.
The neighborhood is bordered by Kapiolani Park and Diamond Head to the south-east and Ala Moana to the west, making for the ideal central location. It is mostly surrounded by water, with the ocean to the south and the man-made Ala Wai Canal to the north.
Waikiki is a dense high-rise neighborhood - a mini Manhattan - with many hotels, about 130 residential condos and just a few old single-family homes, all located within 0.5 miles to the beach, with just 1 condo located directly on the beach; Waikiki Shore - all other beachfront properties are almost exclusively hotels.
Waikiki condos for sale - fee simple - range in price from about $200,000 for a small studio at Waikiki Marina Condominium to more than $10,000,000 for the most stunning penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton Waikiki.
Very little land remains that can still be developed. This condition, together with tight zoning and development restrictions, may create good potential for long-term appreciation.
Fee Simple vs Leasehold About 15% of Waikiki's condos are leasehold and no other neighborhood on Oahu has this high a percentage of leasehold properties. Looking at all Honolulu properties - excluding Waikiki - about 4% of properties are leasehold and on Oahu, excluding Honolulu city, just about 3% of properties are leasehold.
Fee Simple means you own the property outright; the most common form of ownership.
Leasehold means you have the right to use - and even sell - the property, but you do not own the underlying land and upon expiration of the lease the property typically reverts back to the landowner.
Short-term Vacation Rentals Some owners want the flexibility to stay in their unit while vacationing in Hawaii and otherwise rent out to vacationers, just like a hotel, maximizing potential rental income.
Waikiki is the place to search for short-term rentals, as the neighborhood has about 30 buildings that allow short-term vacation renting and outside Waikiki, anywhere on Oahu, there are very limited short-term vacation rental condo options, given Honolulu's strict rules for short-term renting.
Neighborhood Waikiki is the biggest revenue source for the State of Hawaii. Nicely maintained by the City, State and the private tourism and retail sectors, hotels and shops spend millions in renovating and upgrading their properties, keeping a large portion of Waikiki real estate looking up-to-date and modern.
Beach replenishment and neighborhood beautification projects have created a stunning metropolitan tropical paradise. An eclectic and diverse mix of residents and tourists with a multitude of backgrounds and cultures come gather here from all over the world.
Three main traffic arteries, Kalakaua Ave, Kuhio Ave and Ala Wai Blvd run parallel through Waikiki.
Kalakaua Ave, a one-way street closest to the beach, with it’s Rodeo Drive feel, is home to high-end fashion stores as well as a number of world class luxury oceanfront hotels and restaurants.
Kuhio Ave is a busy two-way street running along the center of Waikiki with a mix of secondary hotels, condos and restaurants.
Ala Wai Blvd is a one way street that runs the whole length along the Ala Wai Canal with a number of high rise condos, most of them with great canal, golf course and mountain views.
Among the condos you'll find a few sparse older homes that perpetuate the original Hawaiian charm, but Waikiki real estate is, today, almost exclusively a high rise condo style neighborhood.
Waikiki might be Hawaii’s most densely populated neighborhood, but with beautiful green parks, colorful tropical flowers and the surrounding crystal clear blue ocean, the spirit of Aloha prevails and the condos remain a commodity in high demand. With fun and balmy weather all year long, life in Waikiki is like one never-ending vacation.
History of Waikiki Waikiki was originally wetlands fed by freshwater springs. In the 15th century, Chief Kalamakua developed irrigation systems that supported taro fields and fishponds. In 1794, Kamehameha I’s forces landed here during the conquest of Oahu, and Waikiki later became a royal retreat for Hawaii’s monarchs.
As tourism grew in the early 1900s, the remaining wetlands were drained by constructing the Ala Wai Canal in 1928, creating buildable land. Development accelerated until World War II, when Waikiki was transformed into a military zone, with barbed wire along the beaches and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel used as soldiers’ quarters.
Through the early 1950s, some beachfront homes remained, but most were replaced as tourism expanded. Foster Tower, built in 1961, became Waikiki’s first high-rise condominium.
By the late 1960s, deteriorated housing between Kuhio Avenue and the Ala Wai was known as “The Jungle,” leading to clearance of older wooden structures and construction of today’s condo buildings.
More than two centuries after Kamehameha’s landing, Waikiki has evolved into one of Honolulu’s most sought-after condominium markets.
Over the past 3 years, an average of 798 fee simple condos sold per year in Waikiki. This large sample size makes the graph a highly reliable indicator of market trends.
The Waikiki graphs use median data points instead of averages, as the median is less affected by extreme outliers and better reflects typical trends.
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We exclude Leasehold data from this market analysis because Leasehold properties do not compare with regular Fee Simple properties.
We use median instead of the average because it depicts more accurately a central tendency to the sample size. Example: Take 5 numbers - 3, 5, 7, 9, 21. The median is 7 (the middle number) and the average is 9 (sum of all divided by 5).
We count days on market from listing date through closing date.
