Kihei's Big Housing Numbers Aren't Homes You Can Buy Yet

Near the corner of East Waipuʻilani Road and Līloa Drive, a new road runs past streetlights, young plumeria trees and a sidewalk wide enough for bikes. Then it stops at a metal gate. Civil Beat described the spot in October as the site the county has long planned for a section of the North-South Collector Road. On the other side of the gate is a dusty, uneven trail.

South Maui keeps generating big numbers: 1,150 homes at Honuaʻula, 652 at Mākena Mauka, a 400-acre master plan at Līpoa. Sort those numbers by who can buy what, and when, and the list of new market-rate homes you could close on in Kihei this year comes up empty. For the next stretch, buying in Kihei means buying a resale home. That changes how you should read the market.

Sort the Pipeline by Who Can Buy

Every big South Maui project, as of fall 2026, split by whether it adds homes you can purchase and where it stands:

Of all those homes, the only ones that actually opened this year are rentals.

The One Finished Project Is a Rental Community

ʻIkenākea Development finished Hale O Piʻikea, a $141 million project, in three phases of 90, 97 and 36 homes, Maui Now reported in May. Phases I and III have one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments for families. Phase II has studios and one-bedrooms for kūpuna 55 and older. Three homes are set aside for people experiencing homelessness. According to the County's application notice, eligibility runs from 30% to 60% of area median income.

South Maui needed those 223 homes. They don't add a single listing to the for-sale market, though, and they don't pull any buyers out of it. The same goes for Kaiāulu O Haleleʻa, the 120-apartment rental complex off Līpoa Parkway that opened its applications in 2022 with a 60% AMI cap. When a news story says hundreds of homes have come online in Kihei in recent years, most of those homes are apartments with income limits, and you can't buy them.

Kūlani's Date Has Moved, and the Highway Shows It

The only new for-sale neighborhood Kihei can point to in the near term is Kūlani at Līpoa. It's 122 homes on the former Maui Research & Technology Park land, built by Pacific Rim Land. The developer's own updates show the timeline sliding:

1. In a November 2025 construction update, the developer said home construction would start in summer 2026, with the first homes finished by the end of 2026.
2. In August 2026, Maui Now reported that Pacific Rim Land was "preparing for groundbreakings" on the Kūlani homes and the 175 Līpoa Apartments "later this year."
3. The Kūlani page now reads "New Homes Coming 2027!" and lists no prices.

Pacific Rim Land says the Hoʻokena Street extension will add nearly a mile of road connecting to Piʻilani Highway, but that second entrance opens only after the homes are built. The developer has scheduled improvements to Līpoa's main Piʻilani intersection for 2027.

Anyone driving north on Piʻilani has seen the timeline stretch out firsthand. HDOT's January notice put work on a new intersection for the Research & Technology Park subdivision through April 30, 2026. HDOT's Maui lane-closure bulletin for Oct. 24 to 30 still listed a 24/7 northbound shoulder closure near East Waipuʻilani Road "until further notice."

Say you're weighing a Kihei resale home today against a new Kūlani home. You'd be comparing a house you can tour and inspect with a 2027 delivery that has no price and a start date that has already moved once.

The Big Numbers Are Still Waiting on Approvals

Honuaʻula, formerly called Wailea 670, is the project most people mean when they talk about South Maui growth. Under the 2025 county amendments it's a proposed 1,150-home development with at least 288 workforce homes. That could rise to 338 if the state finishes widening the highway by 2030. When the mayor signed those bills, Maui Now reported that the developer's attorney described a 10-year minimum affordability period and a permanent owner-occupant restriction for the project's workforce homes. Then in early August 2026, the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals sent part of the Planning Commission's decision back. The commission now has to reconsider whether substantial changes to the project call for a supplemental environmental impact statement, The Maui News reported.

Mākena Mauka has moved further but has more steps left. The Maui Planning Commission accepted its final EIS in August. AREG AC Mākena Propco LLC still needs approvals from the Land Use Commission, the County Council and the special management area process. Construction is planned in three 10-year phases starting in 2028.

All of this still happens under a plan written for a much smaller South Maui. The area's official long-range blueprint is still the 1998 Kihei-Makena Community Plan. Council review of the replacement draft slowed this fall. Council member Tamara Paltin, who chairs the committee reviewing it, said the plan was unlikely to be approved by the council then in office, and she planned to hold off on votes on controversial amendments. She explained why to Civil Beat:

"The review is much slower than I had anticipated. If we make controversial votes right now, I would anticipate that depending on how the election goes, it just becomes undone later on. That's not a good use of our time."

That election was this Tuesday, Nov. 3. Whoever sits on the new council picks up the line-by-line review. After that the draft goes back to the Planning Commission before the full council can take a final vote. None of those steps puts a for-sale home on the market in Kihei within a year.

What Resale Buyers Are Actually Working With

With new construction out of the picture for now, the resale numbers are the whole market. In September 2026, Title Guaranty's Maui report counted 12 single-family sales in Kihei at a $1.2 million median. Both the number of sales and the median were up from September 2025. Kihei condos had 24 sales at a $539,500 median. Condo sales were also up from a year earlier, but the median price was down. With only 12 house sales, a single month can swing the median, so treat it as a rough read.

Countywide figures for September 2026 from the REALTORS® Association of Maui, as covered by Maui Now, give a sense of how much leverage buyers have:

• Single-family homes: $1,150,000 median, down 11.0% from a year earlier. 7.8 months of supply, with homes taking an average of 134 days to go from listing to close.
• Condominiums: $660,000 median, up 1.1%. 72 closed sales, up 56.5%. 12.1 months of supply and an average of 199 days on market.

Put those figures next to the pipeline and they say something useful. Kihei house prices held up better in September than the island overall, which fits a market where no new for-sale homes are being built. Countywide, though, there was close to eight months of supply, and homes typically took more than four months to close. Sellers aren't getting their way quickly. That gives Kihei house buyers room to negotiate, even with no new subdivision competing for their attention.

Condos are their own market. The phase-out of vacation rentals in apartment-zoned districts under Bill 9 takes effect Dec. 31, 2030, outside West Maui, and Maui Now has reported condo prices falling steadily since the law passed. That's one factor among several behind the lower Kihei condo median. A given building's zoning tells you more than the neighborhood average does.

Quick Questions

Can I get on a list for Kūlani at Līpoa? The developer's site has an interest list and an updates sign-up. As of its latest update it shows no prices and says homes are "coming 2027."

Does Hale O Piʻikea affect resale prices nearby? It's an income-restricted rental community, so it doesn't add homes to the for-sale market. It also doesn't take buyers out of the for-sale market.

Would Honuaʻula's workforce homes be open to second-home buyers? Under the 2025 approval described in Maui Now's report, the workforce homes carry a permanent owner-occupant restriction. Read the county's final conditions for yourself, since the project is back under review.

This post is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Before you rely on income limits, deed restrictions or rental rules, check how they apply to you with an attorney, a lender or the relevant county office.

If you're trying to decide between a Kihei resale home and waiting for Kūlani or Honuaʻula, MacArthur Team Maui can pull current Kihei comps, track each project's approvals and help you work out how long waiting would really take. Call or Text the MacArthur Team to start your Maui home search.