Kihei's 2031 STR Ban: Minatoya Owners Face a Hard Deadline

If you own a vacation rental in a Kihei Minatoya-list building, your clock is running. Ordinance 5909, formerly Bill 9, ends vacation rental use in apartment-zoned Minatoya properties in South Maui on January 1, 2031. That deadline is not a rumor or a proposal. It is law, and the market is already pricing it in.

What the Ordinance Actually Does

Ordinance 5909 targets a specific category: apartment-zoned buildings on the Minatoya list in South Maui. Hotel-zoned buildings sit outside it entirely and keep their vacation rental rights. The distinction matters enormously on South Kihei Road, where hotel-zoned and Minatoya-list buildings sit side by side, look similar from the outside, and are trading at very different prices.

A parallel process is underway that could spare some Minatoya owners. Ordinance 6008, formerly Bill 88, created two new hotel districts, H-3 and H-4. Hearings are currently running on resolutions that would move specific categories of Minatoya properties into those districts, letting them keep vacation rental use past the 2031 deadline. The categories being considered include leasehold properties, properties with a timeshare component, properties already operating like a hotel with a front desk and full staffing, properties in a sea level rise or flood hazard area, and properties that meet affordability criteria. That last category has not had its criteria or timing set yet. Nothing in this process is guaranteed, and the lists are still being amended.

The Number That Should Alarm Minatoya Sellers

The market data from South Kihei Road tells a stark story. Among 2-bedroom condos across the road from the beach over the last 12 months, hotel-zoned buildings closed at a median of $1,011 per square foot. Minatoya-list buildings closed at a median of $719 per square foot. That is roughly a 41 percent gap per square foot, even though the hotel-zoned units were smaller on average.

Inventory tells the same story from a different angle. Minatoya-list 2-bedrooms are sitting at 15.5 months of supply, a deep buyer's market. Hotel-zoned 2-bedrooms are at 9.1 months. Buildings where vacation rentals are not allowed at all are moving fastest, at just 4.4 months of supply, with 37 percent of listings already in escrow. The Minatoya segment is the slowest-moving piece of the Kihei market right now.

The broader Kihei condo median has also dropped hard. It was $771,500 in 2024, fell to $655,000 in 2025, and sits at $600,000 through August 2026. That is roughly a 22 percent drop from the 2024 full-year figure to the first eight months of 2026. Many sellers were still pricing off the older number.

What Hosts Should Do Right Now

The rezoning process through the Planning Commission and the County Council is the only realistic path to keeping vacation rental rights in an apartment-zoned Minatoya building past 2031. But that process is still moving, nothing is guaranteed, and some buildings will not qualify under any of the categories being considered. Owners who wait for certainty before deciding may find they have less time and fewer options than they expected.

For hosts who are weighing a sale, the data suggests that buyers are already discounting for the 2031 risk. The gap between hotel-zoned and Minatoya-list pricing is visible in closed sales right now, not just in theory. Waiting for the rezoning process to resolve before listing is a bet that the outcome will be favorable and that the market will reward the wait. That is not a safe assumption.

For hosts who plan to hold, the practical question is whether your building falls into one of the categories being considered for H-3 or H-4 rezoning. Leasehold status, timeshare components, hotel-style operations, and flood or sea level rise exposure are the categories currently in play. If your building does not fit any of them, the 2031 phase-out is the working assumption you should be planning around.

The Bigger Picture in Kihei

Kihei is not one condo market. It is at least three, moving in different directions at the same time. Hotel-zoned buildings, Minatoya-list buildings, and buildings with no vacation rental rights at all are each responding to different buyer pools, different income assumptions, and different regulatory timelines. The 2031 deadline is the single largest variable separating those markets right now, and it is not going away.

Kihei condo sales are up 21 percent this year, with 198 closings through August against 164 a year earlier. Buyers are active. They are also negotiating hard, and they know which buildings carry unresolved risk.

For the complete Kihei compliance guide including tax calculator, checklist, and daily monitoring, see Kihei, HI STR Regulations.