Maui's New Short-Term Rental Law, Explained: What Bill 9 Actually Changes

Maui just passed a law that ends vacation rentals for roughly 6,200 condos, and depending on who you ask it either kills the whole market or gets thrown out in court. I do not think either is quite right. What Bill 9 actually did was split the condo market into properties with a future and properties with a question mark, and most listings will not tell you which one you are looking at. Here is exactly which properties the law touches, which ones it does not, and the deadline clock that is already running.

Update, July 28, 2026: the first wave of exemptions moves forward

Since I first posted this, the rescue path took a real step. On July 28, 2026, the County Council voted 7 to 1 to advance two resolutions, 26-110 and 26-111, that would move roughly 2,056 apartment-district vacation rental units into the new H3 and H4 hotel categories under Bill 88, which would let them keep operating. The units are mostly in West and South Maui including Kihei, and named complexes include Kaanapali Royal, Luana Kai, Mahina Surf, Kauhale Makai, and Kuau Plaza.

This is the clearest sign yet that a path exists, and it is worth paying attention to. But read the fine print, because it changes less than the headlines suggest. These are not final approvals. The resolutions now go to the Maui Planning Commission for review, so the rezoning still has to work its way through the process property by property. And 2,056 units is well short of the roughly 4,500 the county had flagged as candidates, which means thousands of units are not on this first list at all. So the rest of this post still holds: momentum is real, but nothing is settled for any specific condo until it actually clears. Know exactly where a unit stands before you count on it.

What is Bill 9, and which properties does it actually affect?

Bill 9, now officially Ordinance 5909, was signed into law on December 15, 2025. It removes an old allowance that let apartment-zoned condos operate as short-term vacation rentals. The word you will hear over and over is Minatoya. Back in the late 1980s, the county recognized that a group of condos in apartment zoning had already been renting to visitors before the rules caught up. Those properties were grandfathered in onto what is called the Minatoya list, and for more than 40 years they have legally rented to vacationers. That grandfathered use is what Bill 9 targets.

What it does not touch is just as important. Hotel and resort zoned properties are not affected by this law at all. That whole tier keeps operating with zero change required, along with thousands of parcels plus hotel units and timeshares. So when someone asks me whether you can even vacation rent on Maui anymore, the answer is yes, but you have to be careful with the zoning. If a listing mentions the Minatoya list, or shows apartment zoning as the reason it can rent, it is affected by this law.

One tidbit a blog post will not tell you: there are edge cases. I know of two complexes, one in Kaanapali and one on the North Shore, that received formal letters from the county confirming they are exempt, not because of hotel zoning, but because they hold an old apartment-hotel variance from the 1960s that predates the whole Minatoya setup. It is a good example of why you check the parcel, not the label.

If I own an affected condo, do I have to stop renting now?

No. If you own one of those condos, nothing changed the day the law passed. Your guests can still check in and your bookings still run, because the phase-out is a countdown, not a switch. The law splits the island into two deadlines:

• West Maui (Kaanapali and Lahaina side): apartment-zoned units can keep vacation renting until January 1, 2029.
• The rest of the county, including South Maui, where most of the affected Kihei condos sit: until January 1, 2031.

That is several years of runway. It is worth knowing the original proposal moved much faster; the first version would have shut things down within a year, and the council process stretched the timelines into something owners can actually plan around. If you are a buyer who would use the place yourself most of the time, that window can change the math quite a bit.

What about the lawsuits and Bill 88? Will those undo it?

They might, but "the courts will fix it" is not much of a plan. There are two live moving pieces right now:

The lawsuits. Cases challenging Bill 9 are mounting. The core argument is that the county wiped out nearly 45 years of legal use without paying for it, which could be called a regulatory taking under the Hawaii Constitution, and one suit is seeking class-action status for all Minatoya properties. The thing is, no court has paused the law. It is in effect today and the clock is running. Fights this big move slowly, and a lot can happen before those deadlines in either direction.

Bill 88. A separate bill creates two new hotel zoning categories, H3 and H4, and gives some Minatoya condos a pathway to apply for rezoning and keep operating. It cleared committee in late May and passed its first reading before the full council in early June by a comfortable margin, which matters because it needs a supermajority of six of nine members. A second reading is expected within weeks, and the mayor has testified in support. But it has not passed yet, and even if it does, it does not rezone a single property on its own. It only creates the categories. Each property still has to apply, qualify, and get through a planning process. The county's own working group flagged around 4,500 units as likely candidates, which means a few thousand others face a much harder path.

What does this mean if I am buying a Maui condo?

Picture two condos on the same beach at a similar price. One can vacation rent for decades to come, and the other has an expiration date most buyers do not even know to look for. That is the market now. The two questions I get from nearly every buyer are "is it leasehold" and "can you vacation rent it," and Bill 9 made that second question a lot more layered. Knowing a condo has rented to visitors for 20 years tells you almost nothing about whether it can keep doing that. You need the zoning, the list status, which deadline applies, and whether it is a likely Bill 88 candidate.

It comes down to what kind of buyer you are:

• If you want or need vacation-rental flexibility, the hotel and resort zoned properties are the cleaner path right now, full stop.
• If you would use the place yourself most of the year and rent it once in a while during the open window, the phase-out date matters much less, because that income is a bonus rather than the plan. Prices on these units are down, sellers are negotiating, and Kihei is the most active and accessible condo submarket on the island, with units typically trading in the low $600,000s. There are deals here, but they come with an asterisk.
• If your whole plan depends on rental income running past those deadlines on an apartment-zoned unit, you are betting on court outcomes or a rezoning process that is not promised. Know which bucket you are in before you write an offer.

What are buyers getting wrong right now?

Two mistakes, in opposite directions, and I see them equally often.

The first is the most expensive sentence in Maui real estate right now: "the lawsuits will take care of it." Maybe they will. The cases are real and the constitutional arguments are serious. But no court has stepped in, the clock is still ticking, and even in the best case where Bill 88 is signed, rezoning still happens property by property through an application with rules to meet. If the deal only works when the exemption survives, it is not a very good deal.

The second mistake runs the other way: reading the headlines and writing off the whole Maui condo market, South Maui especially. The repricing over the past two years hit affected and untouched properties alike. The median condo is sitting somewhere in the high $600,000s, down double digits from a year ago, and much of that pressure came from Bill 9 fear dragging down the entire category, including zones the law does not even touch. Even the Wailea and Makena resort tier has come down. So the buyer who walks away from Maui entirely is leaving behind the kind of window that shows up maybe once every few decades.

Knowing apartment-zoned from resort-zoned is the whole ball game. That one piece of knowledge separates the people taking on risk they do not understand from the people getting properties they could not have touched a few years ago.

The bottom line

Bill 9 split the market into properties with a future and properties with a question mark, and most listings will not tell you which one you are looking at. The buyers who win the next few years are the ones who ask about zoning before they ask about the view.

If you are looking at a specific Maui condo and want to know exactly where it stands under this law, the zoning, Minatoya status, deadline, and Bill 88 outlook, reach out. I run this exact check for off-island buyers all the time, and I would rather you know what you are buying before you write the offer.