Kahului is the largest community on the island of Maui and lies on the north shore of the central region of the island.  Home to the island’s primary airport, Kahului International, a deep-draft harbor, light industrial areas, and commercial shopping centers, Kahului is one of a few neighborhoods where several apartment complexes are located.  Maui rentals are typically quite hard to come by given the severe lack of such properties on the island.  However, apartments in the heart of Kahului are often times the cheapest and most convenient places to live temporarily, especially for people on a budget or people living alone.

A nice, but oftentimes more expensive, alternative to an apartment is the use of a Maui vacation home.  Typically nestled on the slopes of Haleakala or along the shores of Lahaina, Hana, or Kihei, these vacation homes offer all of the amenities of a regular home as well as beautiful views and typically convenient access to the island’s spectacular beaches.  Most vacation homes are also near to big-box retailers, making shopping a breeze.  Maui has Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and several other national-brand stores.  A plethora of grocery and convenience stores line the streets of major residential areas.

Hawaii is in an interesting position in the housing market because of its unique attributes, many of which are unparalleled in the world. The Aloha State represents a phenomenal synergy of incomparable location, a relatively high cost of living, a vast array of architectural styles, and a wide variety of cultural influences. There are seven major islands that comprise the Hawaiian Island chain, in addition to a few offshore rocks and islets. However, only five of the islands are open to public habitation, because Kaho’olawe was used for naval shelling and is still home to a considerable amount of unexploded ordinance, and Ni’ihau is a privately owned preserve of Hawaiian culture.

Hawaii housing is undeniably influenced by the relative geographic isolation of the island chain. There are no major bodies of land for literally thousands of miles in either direction, with only a few small islets and coral reef archipelagos in between. This means that the vast majority of building materials, such as granite, corian, wood, bricks, and speciality goods must be shipped on a container ship or flown over on an airplane, adding a considerable surcharge for shipping and handling. This in turn drives up the overall cost of Hawaii housing, since very few homes or condos are built from local materials.

Another consequence of the location of the state of Hawaii is an overall high cost of living. The cost of shipping everything from food to gasoline means that literally everything not grown in the islands is substantially more expensive than their equivalents in the continental United States. Even a product grown or assembled on a neighboring island – Kauai, for example – rises in price as soon as they have to ship it to the main island of Oahu. This means that people in general have less money to spend on housing, meaning that their houses and apartments are less expensive.

The architectural styles of the islands are also a heavy influence upon the overall state of housing in Hawaii. This, along with the fact that land is at a premium in the Hawaiian Islands, explains the variation in costs between different parts of the Aloha State. For example, because there is much more land available on the Big Island, the cost for parcels in that particular region is substantially depressed when compared with the island of Oahu. Additionally, land on the Leeward side of the island of Oahu is considerably less expensive than property found in regions such as Kahala, Lanikai, or Hawaii Kai.

The cultural confluence of the Hawaiian islands also has a substantial role in determining the housing market of Hawaii. Traditional European homes tend to predominate in the newer housing developments and suburban communities, while Asian styles are the primary influence on plantation homes and some commercial regions. Generally speaking, Asian and Native Hawaiian dominated regions have lower housing prices because they have a higher density and lower cost per person, while the inverse is true for American and European-heavy regions. Hawaii’s housing market is much more exclusive and more interesting than the United States housing market at large.