A Kihei condo buyer recently found out that a building's flood history mattered more to the loan than the buyer's own credit score. According to written testimony submitted to the Maui County Council this month, a lender classified a unit at Kihei Bay Vista as non-warrantable for conventional Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA or VA financing, citing the property's sea-level exposure and the homeowner association's flood-related spending. The buyer needed a portfolio loan and a 25 percent down payment instead of a standard mortgage.
That detail tells you something the "Maui is banning vacation rentals" headlines do not: the thing actually moving prices and financing decisions in Kihei's condo market right now is not the 2031 phase-out date everyone keeps repeating. It is whether a specific building's name shows up on a specific county resolution. Buyers who understand that distinction are pricing risk correctly. Buyers who are still asking "is short-term rental banned here?" are asking the wrong question.
What Bill 9 actually changed, briefly
Mayor Richard Bissen signed Bill 9 into law on December 15, 2025. It phases out transient vacation rentals in apartment-zoned districts, the so-called Minatoya List properties that have operated as vacation rentals for decades under a legal interpretation rather than true hotel or resort zoning. West Maui properties lose that status January 1, 2029. Everywhere else, including Kihei, the deadline is January 1, 2031.
That is the headline everyone knows. It is also, on its own, an incomplete picture of what happens to any given building.
Bill 88 built a waiting room, not an exit
Six months after Bill 9 passed, the County Council approved a companion measure, Bill 88, on June 19, 2026, by a 7-2 vote. It became Ordinance 6008 on June 22. The bill creates two new hotel zoning categories, H-3 and H-4, designed to let qualifying apartment-zoned buildings keep operating as vacation rentals under a zoning classification that actually matches their use.
Here is the part worth sitting with: Bill 88 does not rezone a single property by itself. Housing and Land Use Committee Chair Nohelani Uʻu-Hodgins was direct about this when the bill passed committee: "This bill only establishes the district and it does not rezone any properties. Rezoning will have to happen separately."
Every complex still has to apply. Every application still goes through the Planning Commission. And there is an eligibility floor built into the bill: a property has to show vacation rental use existed before September 24, 2020, which keeps roughly 1,700 properties that were never on the Minatoya List from using the new zoning as a side door into the short-term rental business.
Not every Kihei condo is standing in the same line
The properties in Kihei fall into three groups right now, and the difference between them is the actual thing worth understanding before you write an offer.
| Status | What it means | Kihei examples named in county records and testimony |
|---|---|---|
| Already hotel or resort zoned | Unaffected by Bill 9 or Bill 88. These buildings can keep operating short-term rentals with no change. | Maui Banyan, Royal Mauian, Mana Kai |
| Named in the Council's adopted rezoning resolution (Resolution 26-110 CD1, passed late July 2026) | The Council itself is moving these toward H-3/H-4 zoning and referring them to the Planning Commission, so the HOA does not have to fund and file its own application. Still requires Planning Commission review before anything is final. | Maui Hill and Maui Sunset, plus Kauhale Makai at 938 S. Kihei Road, a 3.11-acre, 13-unit timeshare property added by Council Member Tom Cook's motion during the final vote |
| On the Minatoya List but not yet in a Council-initiated resolution | Can still apply individually for H-3/H-4 zoning, but without the county's implicit endorsement that inclusion in a resolution provides. Larger complexes named in the original Temporary Investigative Group recommendation, like Kamaole Sands and the three Maui Kamaole phases, fall here for now. | Varies by building; confirm status with your agent or the Planning Department directly |
Several smaller Kihei properties, including Villa Moana, Kapu Townhouse and Waiohuli Beach Duplex, appeared in an earlier draft of Resolution 26-110 before the Housing and Land Use Committee spent two full days in July amending the property lists. Whether they survived into the version the Council ultimately adopted is exactly the kind of detail a listing description will not tell you and a phone call to the Planning Department will.
The Council-initiated resolutions matter because they remove the single biggest practical obstacle: cost. Property owner TJ Victorine told the Council that land-use planners had quoted his 26-unit association $200,000 to $500,000 to prepare the studies an individual rezoning application requires, calling it "prohibitively expensive for most properties, including our own." A building named in a Council resolution skips that bill entirely.
The sales data tells a different story than the headlines do
If Bill 9 were simply "vacation rentals are being banned," you would expect Minatoya List condos to sit unsold while everyone waits out the uncertainty. That is not what happened.
Council Member Tom Cook, who represents South Maui and served on the Temporary Investigative Group, presented MLS data to the Housing and Land Use Committee in July showing 298 sales of Minatoya List properties between December 2, 2025, and June 1, 2026. Of those, 183 were cash sales, and roughly 90 percent of buyers were from off-island.
Read that against the calendar. This is the six months immediately following Bill 9's signing, the period you'd expect to be the coldest for exactly these properties. Instead, cash buyers with no local ties kept transacting at pace. The explanation is not that these buyers are ignoring the risk. It is that they have priced a different, narrower risk than the one the headlines describe: not "will short-term rentals end on Maui," but "is this specific address likely to land in a Council resolution or a favorable TIG recommendation." A building named in Resolution 26-110, or one of the larger complexes with the operating history and association resources to self-file, reads very differently to a cash buyer than a small, un-listed holdout with no path forward yet.
The newest wrinkle: flood exposure cuts both ways
The full Council formally adopted Resolution 26-110 and Resolution 26-111, in amended CD1 form, in late July, referring both to the Maui Planning Commission for the review stage that comes next. Then, earlier this month, the same Housing and Land Use Committee took up two more resolutions, 26-129 and 26-130, that would move additional apartment-zoned buildings toward hotel zoning. Combined with the July resolutions, the four measures now working through the Planning Commission process cover roughly 2,554 units, more than a third of the 7,000 units originally affected by Bill 9. The committee recessed after nearly three hours of testimony without a vote, with roughly half of the 31 people signed up to speak still waiting.
Resolution 26-129 covers eight properties the county identified inside a sea-level-rise exposure zone, using a 3.2-foot planning threshold for coastal erosion by 2100. Kihei Bay Vista was central to the testimony at that hearing. Owner Julie Graham submitted a detailed written record on behalf of the complex's "Bill 88 Committee" documenting the building's flood history, including the January 27, 2023 storm drain flooding that killed Maui County firefighter Tre' Evans-Dumaran, and the March 2026 storms that closed South Kihei Road entirely on March 13 and destroyed a 16-unit building two blocks away at Kihei Kai Oceanfront Condominiums. Early estimates from that event found 80 to 90 percent of Kihei homes sustained some flood damage.
Here is the twist that makes this more than a weather story. Two Kihei Bay Vista owners, Marla Cooper and Theresa O'Toole, wrote to the Council that they rent their unit exclusively to long-term tenants, not vacation renters, and have still lost two tenants in five years because gulch flooding and road closures made the location untenable for residents. Their conclusion: "We believe that Kihei Bay Vista is only useful as an H3/H4 at this time." A characteristic the county originally flagged as a reason a building might be unsuitable for long-term resident housing is now the evidence owners are using to argue for hotel zoning, and the same flood exposure is already showing up in mortgage underwriting.
For a buyer, that means the diligence question is no longer just "is this building on a list." It is "what does this building's flood and financing history say about the kind of loan I can actually get."
What this means if you are shopping a Kihei condo right now
A few steps are worth taking before you write an offer on any Minatoya List property in Kihei:
- Confirm the zoning designation directly, not from the listing description. Ask for the Tax Map Key and check it against the resolution or TIG documentation yourself.
- Ask whether the building is named in Resolution 26-110, 26-111, 26-129 or 26-130, or whether it would need to self-file. That answer changes both the cost and the timeline the association is facing.
- Ask your lender early whether the specific building has been flagged as non-warrantable. Sea-level exposure and HOA flood spending are showing up in underwriting decisions before they show up in the zoning outcome.
- Review the HOA's financial position, not just its reserve percentage. A rezoning application, if the building has to self-file, can run into six figures, and that cost eventually shows up somewhere.
- Treat "on the Minatoya List" as the start of the question, not the answer. The buildings named in a Council resolution and the ones left to fend for themselves are not carrying the same risk, even though both technically sit on the same list.
None of this is legal or financial advice, and the rezoning process is still moving. Confirm any property's specific status with Maui County Planning and your own counsel before you rely on it.
Work with someone who is tracking this building by building
The zoning conversation on Maui is not going to resolve itself in a single Council vote, and the properties worth watching are not always the ones making headlines. If you are considering a Kihei condo purchase, whether as a second home or an income property, the difference between a smart buy and an expensive surprise usually comes down to knowing which resolution a building sits in, not just which list.
Christian Slocum tracks these filings as they move through committee and can walk you through what a specific Kihei complex's status actually means for financing, timeline and resale. Request a free home valuation or schedule a consultation to talk through your options before you make an offer.
