With recent announcements from United of grounding planes and cutting employees, will this affect vacation and investment hotspots that require air travel? According to the AP, United will retire 94 decades-old Boeing 737 jets -- and ground another 70 aircraft. Not to mention cutting 1,100 jobs.

Our market expert, Howard Dinits, for the big island, Hawaii, had already reported in May that "prices ... [had] been on a slight downward trend with condos coming in just under 100k dollars and homes starting at 200k." Experts from the area agree that prices are falling in this moderate buyers market.

Another source reports that "home sales on Oahu are starting off the year at the worst pace in over a decade: down 23% year-to-date. For April, home sales were off 9.2% from March, and off 25.1% from April 2007."

And finally, for the 1st quarter of 2008, the Honolulu Board of Realtors reported that sales are down from last year. Total volume dollar volume of sales is down 18 percent from last year.

Published: June 5, 2008

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