Vacant Land Sales Around Lahaina Have Jumped Since The Wildfires
As remediation efforts proceed, some local residents have bought property within minutes of the town.
Sales of land around Lahaina since the devastating Aug. 8 fire already have exceeded the total amount sold in all of 2023.
That’s been driven in part by Lahaina residents who lost their homes but have the means to resettle close by as the timeline for rebuilding in the town remains uncertain.
The uptick in sales of sites that are currently without significant structures was noticeable when reviewing property data for the last nine months, said Lynette Pendergast, president-elect of the Realtors Association of Maui.聽
Property sales overall around Lahaina had begun to slow prior to Aug. 8, Pendergast said, but there were a dozen land sales in and around Lahaina from Jan. 1 to April 30 this year compared to a single sale in the first four months of 2023.
鈥淭here鈥檚 definitely more land sales there,鈥 Pendergast said. But while there had been fears that the fire would facilitate a Lahaina land grab, she’s not seeing a huge increase in mainland buyers of either fire-damaged lots or other land available to build on.
That concern had been raised within days of the disaster, including at a press conference by Gov. Josh Green, who cautioned people who thought they could “steal land from our people and then build here.鈥 (Six complaints about predatory practices were received by the Attorney General’s Office.)
Instead, especially in Launiupoko just south of Lahaina, it’s been primarily local buyers who have bought up available land parcels, property records show.
Locals Move Onto Larger Lots
Lahaina real estate agent Tyler Coons said he initially found the level of local interest in vacant lots surprising. But it turns out there are some people with means who had lost their homes in the fire, some having received insurance money, who are saying, “let’s get something, we have the means to get set up.”
They might still reconsider rebuilding in town later, he said.
One of the earliest land sales Coons was involved in was in November, when a 3-acre lot was bought by a Lahaina family whose home was destroyed. The family did not respond to messages seeking comment, but Coons said they had horses and were able to purchase a parcel mauka of the home they lost.
“I have another sale, a local Filipino family that lost three homes in Lahaina,” he said, who have bought a 1-acre parcel with a cottage and are also also looking at a vacant 2-acre site they want to turn into a legacy property and use for farming.
“People who live here feel a great affinity to West Maui,” Coons said, “and while we have a resort area, the lifestyle and the community here is incredibly alluring and it still feels very family oriented compared to areas like Wailea.”
Four other recent sales are within the Makila Ranches subdivision that also will include a multiphase condominium project by Peter Martin’s West Maui Land Co. One of those properties is a 4.2-acre agricultural strip bought in February by restaurateur Peter Longhi for $500,000.
The scrubby parcel is bordered by Waimukole Street and the Honoapiilani Highway from Launiupoko Beach Park to Hokiokio Place in Lahaina.
Longhi said that he purchased the land because it’s contiguous with another 2-acre residential lot he bought from Martin at the same time, also for $500,000.
Longhi said he purchased the land to retain some local control over the acreage and would likely place cattle on it, but considered it an investment for the Lahaina community.
Under current zoning, he can only put a barn on the land and farm it, but if the laws changed he said he might consider adding another building. Longhi said he was hopeful that he might yet rebuild on land on Front Street held in a family trust.
Neither Martin nor management at West Maui Land Co. responded to requests for interviews.
Maui developer Lawrence Carnicelli bought a 1.5-acre parcel makai of the Lahaina Bypass through his Hokiokio Farms LLC. Reached by phone, Carnicelli declined to talk about the purchase on the record.
Some Sales Are To Mainlanders
North of Lahaina, Coons said that clients he is working with are looking to a future when Lahaina has been rebuilt, and that includes mainland buyers. Recent sales include a parcel in Kaanapali sold to an off-island client who was going to hold onto it for three or four years before moving to Maui and building.
Coons said developers were buying in other fire-affected areas like Kula.
Meanwhile, there have been a limited number of land sales in Lahaina town itself, including at least three that were vacant because their dwellings had been destroyed by fire, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers data.
All three of those lots went to buyers with Lahaina or Maui addresses.
The number of parcels that could potentially go on the market will be in the hundreds when the process of clearing more than 2,100 fire-affected properties is complete.
Coons said that it’s inevitable that some of that land will come up for sale through older residents, or families that may not want to go through the headache of rebuilding, but it’s “going to be put up at their discretion, instead of a land grab type of thing.”
Civil Beat鈥檚 coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.
