“If it hasn’t come out of the ground, it’s probably on hold.”

The March 2009 edition of Hawaii Business Magazine reports on the state of development in Hawaii in Arrested Development, by Dennis Hollier.

The title of this blog is a quote from Stanford Carr, a Hawaii developer who summed up the state of the market. The article makes a few noteworthy points: Hawaii is dependent on outside financial markets, the development slow down trickles down to contractors and subcontractors, affordable housing projects have especially small margins, obtaining land use entitlements in Hawaii is expensive, and land use development is extremely risky.

Those interviewed in the article predict that projects are on hold until around 2011.