Maui Vacation Rental Ban Update: INSIDE MAUI'S BILL 9 & 88 AND THE LONG ROAD STILL AHEAD
WAILUKU, Maui. The vote itself took only a moment. Seven hands in favor, two opposed. But the question hanging over the Maui County Council chamber last Friday is one that money, lawsuits, and more than two years of bitter argument have not been able to put to rest. What becomes of the thousands of vacation rentals that helped build a good part of this island's economy? And what becomes of the local families who say those same rentals helped price them out of a home?
On June 19, 2026, the council passed Bill 88 on second and final reading by a vote of seven to two. It now travels to the desk of Mayor Richard Bissen, who is widely expected to sign it. When he does, two new zoning categories will exist on Maui that did not exist before. And yet, despite all the attention, despite the standing room testimony and the years of buildup, the truth is quieter than the headlines suggest. Because Bill 88 does not move a single property anywhere. Not yet. Maybe not for a long tim
To understand why that matters, you have to understand how we got here.
Back in December of 2025, Mayor Bissen signed Bill 9 into law. It was his measure, introduced the year before, and it set out to do something no Hawaii county had done at this scale. It would phase out short-term vacation rentals in apartment-zoned condominium complexes across the island. The targets are the properties on what is known as the Minatoya List, roughly 4,500 grandfathered rental units across 104 properties. In West Maui, the rentals must end by January 1, 2029. In South Maui and the other affected districts, the deadline is January 1, 2031.
The name on that list belongs to a man most people on Maui have never met. Richard Minatoya was a deputy corporation counsel who, back in 2001, issued a legal opinion that allowed these apartment-zoned buildings to keep operating as vacation rentals. Many of them had been built for exactly that purpose. For more than two decades, that opinion held. Bill 9 ended it.
The effect on the market was not gradual. It was immediate. Prices softened. Inventory climbed. Buyers stepped to the sidelines and stayed there, unwilling to commit hundreds of thousands of dollars to a rental that might be illegal to rent by the time the deadline arrived. Uncertainty, it turns out, is its own kind of tax. And the condominium market paid it.
That is the backdrop against which Bill 88 arrives. So let us be precise about what it does.
The bill creates two new hotel zoning districts, H3 and H4. They are modeled almost exactly on the existing apartment districts, A1 and A2, with one decisive difference written into the code. They permit short-term vacation rentals. The key word, and the one most easily lost in the noise, is create. The council built the categories. It did not assign anyone to them.
Nohelani Uu-Hodgins, who chairs the Housing and Land Use Committee and introduced the motion for passage, said as much in language no one could misread. The bill, she told her colleagues, only establishes the district. Rezoning, she said, will have to happen separately. In other words, Bill 88 builds a door. It does not hand anyone the key. Every complex that wants the new zoning must apply on its own and stand on its own merits.
There is a guardrail, too. To qualify, a property must prove that vacation rental use was already underway before September 24, 2020. That date was chosen deliberately, to keep the roughly 1,700 properties not on the Minatoya List from slipping through and becoming new short-term rentals.
Now, here is where a reporter learns to slow down and listen, because the most revealing testimony of the day did not come from a politician. It came from a property owner named TJ Victorine. His 26-unit association supports the bill unanimously. And yet he stood before the council to deliver a warning. Land-use planners, he said, had quoted him somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 dollars per property just to prepare the studies a rezoning application currently demands. That cost, in his words, is prohibitively expensive for most properties, his own included, and it threatens to nullify the very intent of the bill.
Consider what that means. The council has built a door. But the price of walking through it may be half a million dollars. And so the question that decides everything is not whether the categories exist. It is how many associations can actually afford to use them.
That question grows heavier when you look at the county's own capacity. Maui processes only a limited number of rezoning applications in any given year. There are now 104 eligible properties. Even modest interest from a fraction of them could create a backlog that stretches the timeline well past anything the legislation implies. How quickly, and how fairly, the county manages that volume may shape this next chapter as much as the law itself.
The opposition has not gone quiet. The two no votes came from Council Members Keani Rawlins-Fernandez and Gabe Johnson, who represent Lanai and Molokai, islands that are part of Maui County but worlds apart from the condo corridors of Kaanapali and Kihei. Both are running unopposed this election cycle.
Rawlins-Fernandez has been a consistent no from the start. On final reading, she pointed to testimony from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, delivered that day by McKenna Woodward, urging the council to defer. Woodward argued that the county was creating these hotel districts before doing the parcel-specific work on housing suitability, on sea level rise, on whether the infrastructure could even bear it. She cited a University of Hawaii study finding that 85 percent of the affected owners list out-of-state mailing addresses, with the direct impact on Maui residents estimated at roughly 450 people. And she reminded the council that all three planning commissions, Maui, Molokai, and Lanai, had recommended denial.
Even some who voted yes did so with reservations. Council Member Tamara Paltin said her thinking on the shoreline has changed since Bill 9 passed. She described recent ocean swells and king tides that pushed debris onto Honoapiilani Highway and forced officials to evacuate a stage during a canoe regatta at Hanakaoo Beach Park. The shoreline, she said, is changing in real time, right before our eyes. She intends to revisit whether properties sitting at the water's edge should be eligible for these new zones at all. For the owners of beachfront complexes, that is a sentence worth remembering.
And all of it unfolds in an election year. In 2026, Maui County will choose a mayor and fill all nine council seats. It is the first real chance residents have had to register a verdict on Bill 9, on housing, on the kind of island they want to live on. The people casting these votes today may not be the ones casting them a year from now.
So what does this mean for the people who actually own these properties, or hope to?
For owners of a Minatoya List condo, the passage of Bill 88 is a genuine milestone. But it is the opening of a new chapter, not the closing of the book. If an association has not yet begun an honest conversation about the cost, the feasibility, and the timing of a rezoning application, that conversation is now overdue. The hard question is whether your complex is the kind that can move quickly, or the kind that will need long deliberation before anyone commits the money.
For buyers, the story carries an irony. Even the condos already in hotel zoning, the ones never touched by any of this, have lost value, with some of the more affordable units selling for 20 to 30 percent below their recent peaks. That is fear, priced into the listings. And fear, for a patient buyer, is leverage. Right now there is more room to negotiate on Maui than there has been in years.
For sellers, a seven to two vote removes one layer of legislative uncertainty that has weighed on these properties since Bill 9 became law. Whether that translates into real movement in price will depend on how the rezoning process actually unfolds, on how individual associations navigate the cost, and on how the county handles the coming wave of applications.
There is a temptation, on a day like Friday, to call the matter settled. It is not. Bill 9 is still the law. The deadlines have not moved. The lawsuits are still pending, with more reportedly on the way. And the rezoning process that everyone is counting on has not yet begun.
What passed last week was not an ending. It was permission to start. A door, standing open, with a long and expensive hallway behind it. Whether the people of Maui walk through, and at what cost, is a story still being written. We will be watching it, step by step, and we will tell you what we find.
TALK TO ERIC AND LISA WEST BEFORE YOU MAKE YOUR NEXT MOVE
Legislation like Bill 88 is exactly the kind of moment where the right guidance is worth everything. Whether you own a Minatoya List condo and need to understand your options, you are a buyer looking to capitalize on a softer market, or you are a seller trying to read where prices are headed, this is not the time to navigate it alone.
Call Eric and Lisa West directly at 808-298-2030. They will give you a straight answer about your specific property and your specific situation, no pressure and no runaround.
WHO WE ARE
Eric and Lisa West lead Team West Maui, a husband and wife team that has been serving the West Maui market since 2006. They specialize in residential and condominium properties across Kaanapali, Kapalua, Lahaina, Napili, and Launiupoko, and they work both sides of the deal with equal focus, guiding buyers to the right opportunity and helping sellers position their homes to win in any market.
Team West Maui consistently ranks among the top 3 percent of agents on the island. That standing is not an accident. It comes from years of local knowledge, honest counsel, and a relentless commitment to getting clients the best possible outcome, whether the market is climbing or correcting.
THE YOUTUBE CHANNEL THAT KEEPS MAUI INFORMED
You may already know Eric from HawaiiRealEstate.ORG, the YouTube channel that has grown to roughly 225,000 subscribers by doing one thing well, telling Maui the truth. From market analysis and timely legislative updates like this one, to lifestyle content and deeper investigative coverage of the issues shaping the island, the channel has become a trusted source for anyone who cares about what is really happening on Maui. If you have not subscribed yet, do it now, because the next chapter of the Bill 88 story is still being written and we will be covering every step.
START THE CONVERSATION
Visit teamwestmaui.com or HawaiiRealEstate.ORG to explore current listings, request a free home valuation, or learn more about the team. When you are ready, reach out. Tell us a little about what you are trying to accomplish, and we will get you pointed in the right direction.
Eric and Lisa West
Real Broker LLC
808-298-2030
TeamWestMaui.com
HawaiiRealEstate.ORG
License RB-20968
Leave A Comment