#Vacation Rentals

The Maui County Council voted 7-2 on Friday to raise fines for loud vehicle sound systems, advancing a measure that drops an earlier proposal to seize stereo equipment from repeat offenders.

The Maui County Council gave final approval Thursday to a $1.6 billion fiscal year 2027 budget, sending the spending plan to Mayor Richard Bissen’s desk, but not before adding $50,000 for Maui County campus security.

The Maui County Council’s Housing and Land Use Committee voted 6-1 Tuesday to advance new hotel zoning districts for thousands of short-term vacation rentals facing a county-mandated phase-out—overriding unanimous rejection from all three county planning commissions.

The eight-bedroom, 12.5-bathroom home, which for years spurred community criticism over its size and potential use as a vacation rental, is offering 25% shares for $3.55 million apiece.

Yuki Lei Sugimura, a five-term council member, said her decision was spurred by the recent passage of the bill to phase out thousands of vacation rentals, which she says will negatively impact the local economy.

The state water commission is trying to decide who should get permits to use water in West Maui, with 93 existing use permits and 48 new applications under review.

County attorneys have been careful not to reveal their legal strategies but say they believe the bill is legally sound.

Public debate intensified Wednesday during several hours of sometimes heated testimony over a proposed phase-out of vacation rentals before the Maui County Council’s Housing and Land Use Committee.

Overflow crowds turned out Monday to support or attack the hotly debated vacation rental phase-out bill, but the action started early, on the sidewalk outside the Kalana O Maui Building in Wailuku. Wearing red Lahaina Strong and yellow ILWU shirts, supporters of Bill 9 formed a circle and prayed. Their signs read “Maui People First,” […]

Citing Maui’s severe post-wildfire housing crisis, the Bissen administration presented its formal case to a County Council committee to phase out approximately 6,000 short-term vacation rentals mostly in West and South Maui. “We simply can’t build fast enough to meet the scale of demand we’re facing,” Mayor Richard Bissen told members of the Housing and […]

Lahaina Roads, which has only seven units owned by permanent residents, reopens at a pivotal time as the Maui County Council prepares to decide on a bill that would ban short-term rentals in certain apartment districts, including Lahaina Roads.

The median price for Maui condos has dropped almost 25%, from a whopping $962,500 in April 2024 before the proposed short-term rental ban to $727,000 in April of this year.

Some owners are selling, and related businesses like cleaning services are seeing a drop in jobs and income. “We’re just kind of in purgatory,” one property management company said.

A portion of a bill enacted to curb vacation rentals in residential areas will go into effect Jan. 1 and expand the scope of the transient accommodations tax law to include certain shelters and vehicles with sleeping accommodations.

Maui County continued to have the largest vacation rental supply in the state in September — 263,900 available unit nights, compared with 230,500 on Oʻahu, 214,600 on Hawaiʻi Island and 136,600 on Kauaʻi, according to a monthly vacation rental performance report by the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.

Hundreds of property owners have been notified recently that they owe back taxes. The county has struggled to collect the tax since it was imposed in 2021.

While Maui County’s resident population of roughly 164,000 represents about 11% of Hawaiʻi state residents overall, the Tri-Isle county had the highest supply of available vacation rental unit nights of any county in the state in August, according to a report by the Hawaiʻi Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.

With the largest supply of vacation rentals in the state, Maui County’s unit demand and occupancy rates are down in double-digits since last year and 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, according to a report for June by the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.

Round 2 in a battle over Mayor Richard Bissen’s proposed phase-out of approximately 7,000 transient vacation rentals in Maui County’s apartment-zoned districts will move tomorrow to a different venue and have a duration estimated at only one hour.

Maui County Council members heard testimony from about a half-dozen people Monday morning on proposed real property tax rates, mostly from transient vacation rental operators who said they’re being unfairly squeezed with higher tax rates at a time when their future bookings are dropping dramatically.