The Kailua real estate market, which is a primarily residential sector of the larger Oahu real estate market, continued to face uncertainty because of the recent foreclosure “robo-signing” scandal. Despite relatively encouraging figures regarding home sales and median price, foreclosures remain an amorphous variable. An October 8, 2010 report from KITV News found that “The legal notices about foreclosed properties published in the newspaper, seem to take up more and more space. Bank of America and Countrywide Home Loans are peppered across the pages…It may be too early to say what the bank decision will mean to families getting foreclosed on. It is possible it will buy them more time to work things out with the bank. Higashi does not believe the foreclosure sales already in the pipeline will be affected, But any processing delay could also mean there will be a delay in when the properties go back on the market. Higashi said that could be bad for areas where inventory is tight, but in areas where the foreclosure activity is concentrated like West Oahu and Mililani there is lots of inventory right now. Another area hard hit by foreclosures is the resort market on the neighbor islands where buyers picked up vacation homes. It is not clear how many of those were handled by Bank of America.”
An October 14, 2010 report from Pacific Business News suggests that the negative effect of foreclosures on Kailua homes for sale and Oahu at large has not been substantially mitigated by the Bank of America foreclosure freeze. According to the piece by Janis L. Magin, “A closer look at the RealtyTrac third-quarter statistics on foreclosures released Thursday shows the number of bank repossessions in Hawaii soared 72 percent compared to the third quarter of 2009. RealtyTrac’s CEO James Saccacio says bank repossessions hit a record high nationally, but he also said that he expects those numbers to dip as the big banks halt the foreclosure process because of the investigations into the so-called robo-signing scandal. But even if the numbers go down moving forward, Thursday’s figures still show a large increase in bank-owned properties are going to go back on the market, if they haven’t already, and Realtors say those properties often have a downward effect on market prices.”