Who Own’s Oʻahu?

When driving through downtown Honolulu it’s not uncommon for your blood pressure to rise (at least not for a Kauaʻi boy like me). The hustle and bustle of city buses, closely packed 40-story buildings, poorly signed one way streets, and some of the worst traffic in the US is enough to make anyone anxious. It’s during these anxiety filled moments in the state’s capitol that I think, It’s no wonder I’ll never afford a house in Hawaiʻi… there’s no more room to build. However, when driving out to the country, the craziness fades away, and I see huge plots of unoccupied land. So I, like most Hawaiians, wonder why can’t I just build myself a house out here? Who own’s that land? What are they using if for? and I hope Hawaiians own these lands.

To answer some of these questions, I’ve spent some time analyzing property tax data from the city and county of Honolulu website, with hopes of better understanding Oʻahu’s properties.

How do we use the land?

To answer this question we need to look at a zoning map of Oʻahu. The city and county of Honolulu divides its lands in to zones to specify land use as shown below.

Looking at these zones can give us an idea about how these lands are used.

Map Legend:

• Green = Agricultural/Preservation
• Orange = Apartments
• Red = Business
• Purple = Industrial
• Gray = Military/Federal
• Yellow = Residential
• light pink = Resort
• Pink/Magenta/Light Blue = Other

Map of Oahu showing of land use zoning. Map generated from https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=31b9607333e94c64ba581461892f32e8

We tend to think that most of Oʻahu is buildings, homes, and roads (especially outer island folk), but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We tend to think this because we spend 99% of our time in developed areas, but in fact most of Oʻahu is undeveloped. Which is good, that is what makes Hawaiʻi Hawaiʻi.

Anyway, let’s compare different land uses and see how much the city and county of Honolulu allocates to each zone. This is difficult with the above map because the zones are divided every which way. So let’s take a look at the tree map below to compare which land use zone are the biggest.

Treemap comparing land use acreage to each other. The larger the block the more acreage dedicated to that land use.

A few things stand out to to me about this plot.

1. I’m glad most of Oʻahu is preserved land. (Side Note: If you are in Hawaiʻi, please take this time to go outside and appreciate the preserved beauty.)
2. Military and Residential land use is about the same. That is surprising. I’d like to think we dedicate more land to residents than the military, but it seems otherwise.
3. We have so much land dedicated to agricultural but why do we import 90% of our food? But I digress.

Numbers break down of the above treemap

Who own’s most of Oʻahu’s land?

A few things of note.

1. The top three land owners own almost half of the land on Oʻahu. Granted #1 is the State of Hawaiʻi and most of it is preservation land, but still.
2. USA owns about 56,000 acres, but only 38,000 acres are zoned for military and federal land use. Most likely they own some preservation land as well.
3. It’s nice to see that Hawaiian Home Lands makes the top 10.

The above chart is good because we learn who owns the most land. However, it doesn’t consider the value of the land. On Oahu, land value varies from 75 cents/sq. ft. for agricultural to 600$/sq. ft. and higher for industrial and business zoned land.

It’s important to consider land value. Think about the State of Hawaii: it may own a lot of land but that does not equate to dollar value because most of it is preservation land and cannot be used for residential or business (In most cases, there are some exceptions; we’d need to dig into zoning laws to know what can be built on different zoned lands).

So let’s take a look at who own’s the most property value.

Things to note:

1. The previous plot showed the top 25 land owners owning 72% of all land on Oʻahu by acreage. This plot shows the top 25 land owners by value own less than 18% of all the land by value. That’s a significant drop.
2. USA owns $10 Billion worth of land. My guess is that Pearl Harbor and the Marine Corps base make up most of that.
3. Dole, owner of the #6 spot on the previous top 25 list, completely fell off this list. All their land is agricultural land and doesn’t hold a lot of value.
4. ABC store makes the top 20. I’m not sure why, but this is actually really funny to me. I guess using the “All Blocks Covered” strategy (all blocks covered is the unofficial acronym meaning for ABC store) gets you $650 Million is land value. It actually makes sense they own that much land value. ABC store is in some of the most prime locations along Waikiki.
5. Hawaiian Home Lands moves up to the # 4 spot. I guess this makes sense since residential land is worth quite a bit. And most, if not all their land is residential. This is significant to me because this is land value that could go to property investors, but instead Hawaiians can use this land to live in their homeland.

Where do Oʻahu land owners live?

I’ve often heard that there are a lot of vacant houses in Hawaii especially in nicer areas, e.g. Hawaiʻi Kai. I guess foreign and mainland investors use Hawaii properties as a place to leave their money because they know the value of Hawaii homes will always go up. This isn’t a bad investment strategy, but it’s frustrating for Hawaiians because it’s pushes them out of a very competitive housing market. This made me curious to see just how many foreign and mainland owners are actually in Hawaiʻi.

This chart it broken up in to multiple property value ranges. The colors represent the percentage of properties owned by people from each of the listed countries.

Things to note:

1. Across all properties foreign and mainland owners make up 10% of the property owners.
2. It is worth noting that Hawaiian ownership of land does drop significantly around the $4 million to $10 million range. About a 20% drop from the $500K-1M range, which is what a typical home in Hawaii is valued at. Therefore, it’s plausible that foreign and mainland investors are buying expensive homes to hold their money while they live out of state.

Conclusion

The purpose of this research was to raise awareness, and allow others to look at this data combined with their own knowledge to draw conclusions. I believe it is important to know who the major land owners in Hawaiʻi are, so we can identify the players that can enact change in Hawaiʻi. Hawaiʻi is facing many serious issues; the current housing crisis and dependance on over-seas food to name just two of them, and if Hawaiians can understand a little bit more about their home, it makes us that much better equipped to tackle these issues.

Mahalo Nui Loa.

If you’re interested in my code for this analysis click here.