Wailea's Condo Market Has Split in Two, and Most Listings Don't Say Which Side You're On

In a Maui Now report, Maui County Council Member Tom Cook called it "a tool, a point of reference" while discussing the ordinance he introduced this year to soften the island's short-term rental phase-out. He was talking about zoning language. He could have been describing the entire Wailea condo market right now.

Walk through two units in Wailea this fall, same era of construction, same distance from the sand, similar square footage, and you can find a price gap wide enough to make you question the comps. The gap rarely has anything to do with the lanai or the counters. It has to do with a zoning line that runs invisibly through the resort, one that determines whether a condo can keep renting nightly past the end of this decade or whether its clock is already running.

What $750,000 to $14.99 Million Actually Buys

As of June 5, 2026, Wailea had 88 active condo listings with a median list price of $2,442,000. The low end of that range was a one-bedroom at Grand Champions listed at $750,000. The high end was a special unit at Wailea Beach Villas near $14.99 million. That's not an unusual spread for a resort market with everything from golf-course studios to beachfront penthouses. What's less obvious is that the spread tracks zoning almost as closely as it tracks the ocean.

Wailea has somewhere between 17 and 18 distinct condo communities, and their zoning classifications vary. A buyer comparing two buildings with similar amenities, pools, tennis, and proximity to The Shops at Wailea can easily land on opposite sides of that line without realizing it; the view and amenities don't determine zoning classification.

The List That Actually Splits the Market

The mechanism behind this split has a name most Wailea shoppers eventually hear: the Minatoya List. A legal opinion issued by the county's corporation counsel in the early 2000s held that condos built before March 5, 1991, and already approved by their own associations for transient rental use, could keep operating as short-term rentals even though they sat in apartment-zoned districts rather than hotel-zoned ones. That workaround held for roughly two decades.

Bill 9, now Ordinance 5909, signed into law December 15, 2025, ends it. The ordinance phases out transient vacation rental use in those apartment-zoned buildings, with West Maui properties required to stop by January 1, 2029, and the rest of the county, including Wailea, required to stop by January 1, 2031.

Two condos can be built the same decade, sit a few hundred yards apart, and carry entirely different regulatory futures. One has a hard stop written into county law. The other doesn't.

Bill 88 Didn't Erase the Clock, It Opened an Appeal Window

Owners of the exposed buildings didn't take the 2031 deadline sitting down, and neither did the council. Bill 88, now Ordinance 6008, took effect June 22, 2026, after clearing its final council vote 7-2. It created two new hotel zoning classifications, H-3 and H-4, built specifically to match the historical use of grandfathered vacation rentals on the Minatoya List.

Here's the part that gets lost in the relief that followed the vote: Bill 88 doesn't rezone anything by itself. It only creates the categories a property could eventually move into. The county's master rezoning list, updated July 31, 2026, showed roughly 4,519 units across the Minatoya List as potentially eligible to apply, but eligibility and approval are two different things, and the process is running building by building through a sequence of numbered council resolutions rather than as one blanket reclassification.

In September 2026, that pipeline was genuinely mid-stream. At that point, Resolutions 26-110 and 26-111, the so-called Wave 1 properties, had cleared the council and had been scheduled for a Maui Planning Commission hearing on September 22, 2026. Resolutions 26-129 and 26-130 were then still working through the Housing and Land Use Committee, and deliberations had been scheduled to resume September 9, 2026. At that point, the honest answer to "is my Wailea condo protected" wasn't a yes or no about the Minatoya List. It was a question about where that specific building's resolution stood in the queue, and whether it was in Wave 1 or waiting further back.

Hotel Zoning Doesn't Guarantee a Rental Calendar

Even landing on the safe side of the zoning line doesn't settle the question: association rules may also matter.

Compare that to Wailea Ekahi, Wailea Ekolu, or Wailea Elua, where nightly rentals are active and priced accordingly. Zoning tells you what the county allows. It doesn't tell you what the building's own declaration, bylaws, and house rules permit, and those documents can be more restrictive than the underlying zoning in either direction.

What to Verify Before You Remove Contingencies

These details are worth building into due diligence rather than assuming them away. A few concrete steps matter more here than in most condo purchases:

Confirm whether the specific building appears on the county's short-term rental occupancy list or holds a valid permit number, rather than assuming a project's reputation or marketing language settles the question. Read the declaration, bylaws, house rules, and any amendments directly, since these can override what zoning alone would suggest. If financing is part of the plan, ask early whether the project will trigger a full lender review, since condo financing can involve project-level underwriting that affects timeline and terms separately from the property's zoning status. And if rental income is part of the purchase thesis, request the actual booking history and occupancy by month rather than relying on a general market average, since a six-month minimum stay changes the entire revenue model compared to a nightly calendar.

Property tax exposure follows the same use-based logic. Maui County applies different rates depending on whether a unit is classified as owner-occupied, a long-term rental, or a transient vacation rental, so the same building can carry different carrying costs for two owners depending on how each one intends to use it.

The Divergence Is the Real Story

Zoom out and the pattern holds at the market level too. As of mid-2026, apartment-zoned condo prices across the county were running close to 50 percent below their 2022 to 2023 peak, while hotel-zoned buildings had largely held their value. That's not a small correction. It's the market pricing in a regulatory deadline years before it arrives, treating a 2031 sunset date the way it would treat a structural defect.

For a Wailea buyer, that means the median price on any given day is really an average of two different assets wearing the same label. One carries a countdown. The other doesn't. The building's name, its age, and its beach frontage tell you almost nothing about which one you're looking at until you check the zoning and read the governing documents yourself.

Does this mean apartment-zoned Wailea condos are a bad investment?

Not automatically. Some owners plan to convert use, hold for long-term rental, or occupy the unit themselves, in which case the 2031 deadline matters far less. The zoning status changes what you can legally do with the property, not whether the property itself has value.

If a building is on the Minatoya List, does Bill 88 guarantee it keeps rental rights?

No. Bill 88 only created the H-3 and H-4 categories a building could apply to enter. Each property still has to move through the county's resolution process, and as of September 2026 different Wailea buildings are sitting at different stages of that pipeline.

Is hotel zoning the same as being approved for nightly rentals?

Not always. A building's association rules may also restrict rentals regardless of what the zoning would otherwise allow.

Zoning status, association rules, and the county's rezoning timeline all move independently of each other, which is exactly why the same-looking Wailea condo two doors down can carry a completely different answer. If you're comparing specific buildings and want a straight read on where each one actually stands, MacArthur Team Maui can walk through the zoning history, the resolution status reflected in the September snapshot, and the association rules building by building before you write an offer.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.