A buyer opens two tabs. One shows a Wailea/Makena condo median around $2.4M. The other shows a one-bedroom at Grand Champions asking $750,000 and a Wailea Beach Villas unit at $14.99M in the same complex list. Both numbers are real. Neither of them describes a market you can actually shop in.
The gap between those numbers is not noise. It is the market telling you that the word "Wailea" now covers two very different assets, priced by two very different assumptions about what Maui County will do next. Understanding which one a specific address belongs to matters more, in mid-2026, than any comparable sale from twelve months ago.
The Friction A Buyer Meets First
The friction shows up during due diligence. A buyer under contract on a Wailea Ekahi one-bedroom will find, inside the seller disclosures and the HOA packet, references to Bill 9, the Minatoya List, and a separate county exemption list often shortened to TIG. These are not decorative. They determine whether the unit can legally continue as a short-term rental past the phase-out horizon Maui County has been signaling since 2024.
The pricing follows the paperwork. According to the quarterly Wailea report published by a local brokerage, sold prices in apartment-zoned short-term-rental complexes — Wailea Ekahi, Wailea Ekolu, the Palms at Wailea, and Grand Champions — moved down as much as 30% during the height of Bill 9 uncertainty, with the seller frequently accepting the discount because they needed to close. Buyers were pricing in a risk the county had not yet resolved.
That is the mechanism. The Wailea condo median that shows up on portals blends two portfolios: complexes the county appears likely to upzone to hotel classification, and complexes that will almost certainly stay apartment-zoned and lose transient use. Averaging them produces a number no serious buyer should act on.
The Pivot Variable
The TIG exemption list is the single line item that decides whether a Wailea condo purchase in 2026 is a discount trade or a stabilized purchase at fair value.
Wailea Ekahi sits on that suggested exemption list, which would allow it to upzone to H-3 or H-4 hotel zoning and sidestep Bill 9's restrictions on apartment-zoned short-term rentals. The Ekahi 2025 median sale came in at roughly $1,280,000, down about 20% from $1,600,000 the prior year. If the exemption clears the Planning Commission and moves forward, the units that sold at that discount will look, in hindsight, like the entry point the exemption made possible. If it does not, today's price is the new normal for a use case that no longer includes nightly rentals.
The buyer's real question is not "what is Wailea worth." It is: which side of that decision is priced into this specific unit right now.
What The Current Asking Bands Actually Signal
As of early June 2026, there were 88 active Wailea condo listings, with the median list price at $2,442,000 and the range running from $750,000 at Grand Champions to $14.99M at Wailea Beach Villas. The per-complex asking bands tell you where the market has drawn its lines:
- Grand Champions: roughly $850K to $1.7M. Apartment-zoned, on the Bill 9 exposure side of the ledger. Cheapest entry point in the resort, and the pricing reflects it.
- Wailea Ekahi: roughly $1.116M to $2.8M. Beachfront, 294 units on 34 acres, on the TIG exemption list. The wide band inside a single complex is unusual and reflects both remodel condition and buyer disagreement about how the exemption resolves.
- Wailea Ekolu: roughly $1.5M to $2.4M. Golf-course fronting, short-term rentals currently allowed, similar exemption story to Ekahi.
- Palms at Wailea: roughly $1.55M to $2.595M. Also caught in the apartment-zoning discount.
- Wailea Fairway Villas: roughly $1.2M to $2.5M.
- Wailea Elua Village: roughly $2.7M to $4.9M. Older beachfront community, oceanfront amenity set, priced closer to a stabilized long-term-hold asset.
- Wailea Point: roughly $4.1M to nearly $18M. Oceanfront, priced entirely on lifestyle and view rather than rental math.
- Andaz Residences: roughly $4.3M to $11M. Hotel-zoned by design, the cleanest example of "no Bill 9 exposure priced in."
Read that list from top to bottom and the pattern is obvious. The lower half of the range is where the zoning question is live. The upper half is where it is not. A buyer choosing between Grand Champions and Andaz is not really choosing between two condos. They are choosing between two regulatory outcomes.
Why The Q1 Numbers Look Contradictory
Island-wide, the Maui condo Q1 2026 median came in at $699,000, down 12.1% year over year, according to figures reported from the REALTORS Association of Maui. Yet Wailea and Makena condo activity was up 16.7% year over year in the same quarter, with pending sales across the island up 17.1% and months of supply drifting down to 7.6 in March.
The two numbers describe the same behavior from opposite ends. The island-wide median dropped because apartment-zoned inventory carrying Bill 9 exposure repriced. Wailea and Makena transaction volume rose because buyers who had been waiting decided the discount was large enough to underwrite the regulatory risk. A market in which the median falls while volume climbs is not a market in retreat. It is a market clearing at new levels.
For a buyer today, that means the softest pricing in a decade sits inside a corridor that is also seeing the highest engagement in a year. The corollary is that the pricing power belongs to sellers who can wait and to buyers who understand which side of the TIG list they are transacting on.
Where La'i Loa And Makena Distort The Picture
Two other lines in the data will mislead a casual buyer. La'i Loa, the new construction across from Wailea Ekahi that delivered its first phase in 2024, has resold units faster and at higher prices than older complexes nearby. It sits inside "Wailea" for MLS purposes but behaves like new-development-adjacent pricing, closer to Kai Malu or Hoolei than to its beachfront neighbors.
Then there is Makena. The MLS statistical bucket combines Wailea with Makena, and Makena includes both Makena Golf and Beach Club, where residential condos have traded up to $22M, and oceanfront single-family homes that have sold as high as $38.5M at 47 Malukai Lane. Those trades pull every average upward. A buyer looking at "Wailea/Makena median" who thinks it describes anything they can actually purchase for that price is misreading the geography.
Makena's condo inventory itself is thin. Only two beachfront complexes exist there: Polo Beach Club and Makena Surf, the latter hotel-zoned and used heavily as a rental. Na Hale O Makena is apartment-zoned and non-STR. Three complexes cannot produce a meaningful median. When Makena shows up in a headline number, it is usually one trade doing the work.
What A Buyer Actually Does With This
The practical sequence, in this specific quarter, is narrow. Pick a use case first: personal residence, rental-income second home, or long-hold appreciation play. Then pick the zoning that matches. STR income requires either a currently hotel-zoned complex like Andaz, Hoolei, or Wailea Beach Villas, or an apartment-zoned complex on the TIG exemption list, understanding that the exemption is not yet final. A long-hold appreciation play at today's Ekahi or Ekolu pricing is a bet the exemption clears. A personal residence with no rental intent is the one buyer profile that can shop the discount without worrying about the outcome, because the use case does not depend on it.
The median tells none of that story. The line item on the county list does.
A Short FAQ
Is the TIG exemption list final? As of early 2026, the exemption list had moved through Council but was still working through the Planning Commission, with hotel-zoning classifications for eligible complexes not yet formalized. Timing has slipped more than once. Any purchase premised on the exemption should assume it may take longer than a standard closing window.
Are all Wailea condos affected equally? No. Hotel-zoned communities such as Andaz Residences and Hoolei were built with transient use as their zoning basis and carry no Bill 9 exposure. Non-STR apartment-zoned complexes such as Kai Malu were never rental-underwritten and behave more like standard second-home condos.
Does this apply to Wailea single-family homes? Only indirectly. The Wailea residential neighborhoods are gated, fee-simple, and were never short-term-rental inventory. Their pricing follows a different set of drivers, closer to luxury second-home demand than to the rental-yield math driving the condo market.
If you are trying to figure out which side of the TIG line a specific Wailea or Makena condo sits on before you write an offer, that is a conversation worth having with someone who works these buildings every week. The team at Kate and Wendy Peterson can walk you through the current exemption status, the HOA disclosures, and the pricing that follows from each. Schedule a Showing when you are ready to look in person.
