For two years, the operative question a Wailea condo seller had to answer was whether the unit sat on the Minatoya List. As of last week, that question is out of date. The line that now decides pricing, disclosure, and buyer behavior is a different one, drawn by a Maui County Council committee on July 6, 2026, and it runs directly through the middle of Wailea's five apartment-zoned condominium communities.
The vote that split the neighborhood
On December 15, 2025, Mayor Richard Bissen signed Bill 9 into law after the Maui County Council approved the measure in a 5-3 vote, targeting 6,208 apartment-zoned vacation rental units operating under the Minatoya List. For South Maui owners, the amortization clock runs to January 1, 2031.
Six months later the Council answered with a second law. On June 19, 2026, the Council approved Bill 88 on final reading in a 7-2 vote, creating two new hotel zoning categories, H-3 and H-4, that give certain apartment-zoned short-term rentals a pathway to keep operating as the county phases out nearly half of Maui's vacation rentals under Bill 9. Bill 88 took effect on June 22.
Bill 88 by itself does not rezone anything. It is a door, not a decision. The decision comes complex by complex, through Council resolutions referred to the Planning Commission. Which brings us to July 6.
Resolution 26-111 covers seven properties the county says already operate like hotels, including Wailea Ekahi I, II and III, Wailea Ekolu, the Palms at Wailea, Papakea and Maui Eldorado. Grand Champions, the fifth apartment-zoned complex in Wailea, is not in that resolution. Brian Banks, a small business owner who manages vacation rental units at three Minatoya properties in Wailea, said all four condominium complexes in that neighborhood — Ekahi, Ekolu, Grand Champions and the Palms — have operated primarily as short-term rentals since they were built, and asked the committee to add Grand Champions, which Resolution 26-111 currently excludes.
Two Wailea condos, comparable in almost every material respect, now sit on opposite sides of a legal line that a buyer's attorney can find in five minutes.
The three tiers a Wailea buyer now underwrites
| Tier | Wailea complexes | Short-term rental status |
|---|---|---|
| Hotel-zoned, never in question | Wailea Point, Wailea Beach Villas, Ho'olei at Grand Wailea, Andaz Residences, Polo Beach Club, Makena Surf, Wailea Elua | Continues indefinitely |
| Apartment-zoned, named in Resolution 26-111 | Wailea Ekahi I, II, III; Wailea Ekolu; Palms at Wailea | Application in motion for H-4 rezoning; Planning Commission review pending |
| Apartment-zoned, not yet named | Grand Champions | Subject to the January 1, 2031 phase-out unless a future resolution adds it |
That third row is the one that will move prices this quarter. A unit at Grand Champions is not a lost investment, but the story a seller tells about it in July 2026 is different from the story a seller could have told in May.
Why the exclusion is not an accident, and not final
The committee did not omit Grand Champions casually. Housing and Land Use Committee Chair Nohe U'u-Hodgins pulled back the curtain on the exact methodology used by the Temporary Investigative Group, systematically triaging and sequencing complexes into rolling waves using six explicit policy factors rather than reviewing all 104 eligible properties as a single group. U'u-Hodgins told the committee the new districts mirror the A-1 and A-2 Apartment District standards but permit continued transient vacation rental use.
The first wave went to complexes the county describes as functioning like hotels. A future wave may reach further. It also may not. That is the friction a Wailea seller has to price today.
A property's inclusion in a resolution is not a zoning approval. It is a referral to the Planning Commission, which can recommend, amend, or reject. The Council then votes again.
What changes in a Wailea listing this month
For a seller at Ekahi, Ekolu, or the Palms, the disclosure narrative has strengthened but not resolved. Buyers will ask three questions the seller must be ready to answer with documents rather than opinions:
- Confirmation that the specific unit is on the Department of Planning's Exhibit 1 list of 104 specific properties, totaling 7,167 apartment district vacation rental units, that may qualify for H-3/H-4 rezoning
- Current AOAO position on whether the association will support or oppose the rezoning at Planning Commission testimony
- Rental-history documentation sufficient to establish the "operates like a hotel" pattern the county's Resolution 26-111 findings rely on
For a seller at Grand Champions, the honest listing framing this summer is that the unit's short-term rental income has a defined amortization runway to January 1, 2031, with a possibility, not a promise, of later inclusion in a subsequent H-4 resolution. Pricing for the current cap rate assumes an outcome the record does not yet support. Pricing for the pivot, as a strong long-term residential or personal-use asset, gives the seller a floor a rational buyer will accept.
Hotel-zoned Wailea, the top row of that table, is trading on a different set of variables entirely. Even ban-safe, hotel-zoned condos are down 20-30% from their recent peak. That softening is not about Bill 9. It is about carrying costs, insurance, and a national buyer pool absorbing the same rate environment as every other resort market.
The buyer's due diligence file, mid-2026 edition
A serious offer on a Wailea condo now travels with paperwork it did not need in 2024. A minimum package looks like this:
- The unit's TMK checked against the county's published Exhibit 1
- The specific resolution number, if any, that names the complex, and the current committee status
- The AOAO's most recent board minutes referencing Bill 9 and Bill 88 posture
- The current insurance quote, not last renewal's premium
- The seller's rental history in a format the Planning Commission would accept as evidence of hotel-like operation
- If financing, a lender who has underwritten Minatoya-list product in the last ninety days
That last item is quietly the sharpest constraint in the market. Lenders are pricing rental-runway risk into their terms in ways that were not standard practice a year ago.
The variables that could still move the line
Two forces sit above all of this and will decide how much of the current framework survives.
The first is litigation. The Maui Planning Commission rejected a hotel rezoning proposal that would have exempted roughly 4,500 units, voting 8-1 against it in February 2026. Two lawsuits challenging Bill 9 as an unconstitutional taking of property rights have been filed. No injunctions have been granted. The Minatoya List covers approximately 7,000 units that have operated as transient vacation rentals for decades under a long-standing grandfathered zoning exemption. The class-action posture in Lynam v. County of Maui asks a court to decide whether that grandfathered status is a property right the county owes compensation for. A ruling either way reshapes what today's buyers are underwriting.
The second is the ballot. 2026 is an election year in Maui County: the mayor and all nine county council seats are on the ballot, and the future of short-term rentals will certainly be part of that conversation. The 7-2 majority that passed Bill 88 is not guaranteed to survive November.
Neither of these variables is a reason to wait. They are reasons to price the current record honestly and to structure the transaction so that the party better positioned to absorb regulatory risk is the one carrying it.
A short FAQ
Is a Wailea condo on Resolution 26-111 already rezoned? No. The July 6 action moves the first group of properties into formal Planning Commission review, but the final zoning decision still has several steps to go.
Does Bill 88 repeal Bill 9? No. Bill 88 does not repeal Bill 9 and does not automatically rezone any property. Bill 9 still phases out short-term rentals in apartment-zoned condos, with the rest of the county deadline set at January 1, 2031.
If Grand Champions is later added to a resolution, does that erase the current pricing gap? It would compress it. It would not erase it. The Ekahi, Ekolu, and Palms owners are further along a process with a track record of amendments and reversals, and time in the review process is itself a form of certainty a buyer will pay for.
Where can I read the primary documents? Bill 9 is Ordinance 5909 in the Maui County record. Bill 88 and Resolutions 26-110 and 26-111 are in the Council's Housing and Land Use Committee packets, and the passage announcements sit on the county's civic alerts page.
If you own in one of the five apartment-zoned Wailea complexes and you are trying to decide what your unit is worth this quarter, the answer depends on which side of the July 6 line it sits on and how the story you tell about that lines up with the paperwork a serious buyer will request. Kate and Wendy Peterson at Properties of Maui work through those files with sellers and buyers one complex at a time, in the Wailea market they have watched shift through every version of this rule since it was first written. Schedule a Showing when you are ready to see how the record reads on a specific unit.
