Bill 9, Bill 88, and the Minatoya List: Where Maui's Short-Term Rental Rules Stand

I get some version of this question every week, usually from someone looking at a condo listing on their phone from four time zones away: can I still vacation rent this one?

The answer changed in December 2025, changed again in June 2026, and has been moving almost monthly since. As I write this at the end of August 2026, four separate rezoning resolutions are working through Maui County at the same time, and each one carries its own list of named buildings. If your building is on one of those lists, your outlook is different from your neighbor's across the street. If it is on none of them, that is worth knowing too.

So this page is my attempt to put all of it in one place: what the law actually says, which buildings are named where, which ones are on no list at all, where the court cases sit, and what is still unsettled. I keep it current as things move.

Last updated: August 31, 2026.

Two things before the lists. I am a REALTOR, not an attorney, and none of this is legal advice. And more important: a building appearing in a resolution has not been rezoned. It has been referred. That distinction is the single most misread fact in this entire story, and I come back to it below.

The one document most people have never actually opened

Almost every conversation about this starts with the word Minatoya, and almost nobody has read the underlying list.

Here is what it is. A group of condos sitting in apartment zoning had been renting to visitors since before the county's zoning rules caught up with them in the late 1980s. In the early 2000s, a Maui deputy corporation counsel named Richard Minatoya wrote the legal opinion holding that those properties could continue as lawful nonconforming uses. The Hawaii Supreme Court later upheld it. That is where the name comes from, and that grandfathered use is exactly what Bill 9 targets.

The county publishes the actual roster as a PDF called the Short-Term Occupancy List. Open it and you will find something that catches a lot of people out: it contains two separate lists, and only the first one is the Minatoya list.

1. Apartment District Properties Allowed to be Used for Short-Term Occupancy. These are the A-1 and A-2 zoned buildings, roughly 7,000 units across about a hundred properties. This is the Minatoya list. These are the properties Bill 9 phases out.
2. Non-Apartment District Properties Allowed to be Used for Short-Term Occupancy. These are allowed to rent short term for a completely different reason, usually because they are already hotel or resort zoned, or hold a nonconforming use. Bill 9's apartment-district phase-out does not put these on a countdown.

I bring this up first because the mistake it produces is expensive in both directions. Two buildings can sit side by side, both built in the seventies, both full of vacation renters, and be in totally different legal positions. In Wailea, for example, Wailea Ekahi and Wailea Ekolu are apartment-zoned and on the Minatoya list. Wailea Elua, Wailea Point and Ho'olei are hotel-zoned and are not. Same neighborhood, same era, opposite exposure.

If you want to browse the buildings that sit outside the apartment-district phase-out entirely, I keep a running page of hotel-zoned condos on Maui with live listings.

Bill 9, now Ordinance 5909: what it actually did

Mayor Bissen signed Bill 9 into law on December 15, 2025. It is codified as Ordinance 5909, and that is the citation to use when precision matters, because "Bill 9" gets thrown at several different pieces of this story.

What it does is narrow and specific: it removes the grandfathered allowance that let apartment-zoned Minatoya properties operate as transient vacation rentals. Nothing else. Hotel and resort zoned property is untouched. Hotels and timeshare towers are untouched.

What it does not do is shut anything off today. It sets a countdown, and the countdown splits the island in two:

Worth knowing: the first draft would have closed things down inside of a year. The council process stretched it into a window owners can actually plan around. For a buyer who intends to use a place themselves most of the year, several seasons of legal rental income before the deadline changes the arithmetic quite a bit.

One more wrinkle that no summary article will mention. There are buildings holding old apartment-hotel variances from the 1960s that predate the whole Minatoya framework, and at least two have received formal letters from the county confirming they sit outside this. That is a good argument for checking the parcel rather than trusting the label.

Bill 88, now Ordinance 6008: the rescue lane, and its limits

Bill 88 is the counterweight. The council passed it 7 to 2 on June 19, 2026, and it took effect as Ordinance 6008 on June 22, 2026, a date the county now recites at the top of every rezoning bill in this family.

What it did: it created two brand new zoning districts, H-3 and H-4, purpose-built to fit condos that operate like visitor accommodations but were never going to qualify as conventional hotels. A property rezoned into H-3 or H-4 can keep renting short term outright, permanently, with no 2029 or 2031 deadline hanging over it. Roughly 4,500 of the ~7,000 Minatoya units were flagged by the county's own working group as plausible candidates.

Now the part that gets lost. Ordinance 6008 did not rezone a single property. It created empty categories. Every building that wants into H-3 or H-4 has to actually get there, and there are only two routes:

• By county resolution. The council names a batch of properties, refers them to the Maui Planning Commission, waits for findings, then votes the rezoning through. This is the path all four resolutions below are on.
• By individual application. A single building applies on its own. Slower, costlier, and as far as I can tell nobody has completed one yet, largely because most boards are waiting to see whether the county sweeps them into a resolution first.

It is also worth knowing that all three planning commissions (Maui, Lanai and Molokai) recommended denial of the original H-3/H-4 framework back in early 2026. That recommendation is why the council needed a supermajority of six of nine votes to pass Bill 88 at all, and it is a fair signal that the commission stage of the resolutions below is not a rubber stamp.

The four resolutions, and what "named" really means

This is the part people call "the exemption lists," and the phrase does more harm than good. None of these is an exemption. Each is a referral: the council formally asking the Maui Planning Commission to review a rezoning for a named set of parcels.

The cleanest way I have heard it put is this. Ordinance 6008 set the eligibility: which buildings could in principle become H-3 or H-4. The resolutions set the criteria: which of those eligible buildings the council is actually advancing, and on what grounds. A building has to satisfy both, and satisfying the first tells you nothing about the second.

Once referred, the Planning Commission has 120 days to return findings, so the outer limit on the first pair is around late November 2026. In practice it is moving faster than that: 26-110 and 26-111 are expected before the Maui Planning Commission in early September 2026. After the commission reports back, the bills return for committee work and two more council votes, then the mayor.

So the correct reading of any row below is: this building is in the queue and has a live path. Not: this building is safe.

With that said, being named is the difference between having a path and having none. Here is every property named so far, pulled from the resolution documents themselves.

Resolution 26-110: timeshare, leasehold, and other properties

Referred to the Planning Commission alongside 26-111 by a 7 to 1 council vote on July 28, 2026. Together the two cover roughly 2,056 units, close to 30 percent of everything Bill 9 was set to remove. This one gathers properties that are poor candidates for long-term housing conversion: mixed timeshare buildings, leasehold buildings that are hard to finance, and very small parcels.

Note on Maalaea Kai and Hale Ono Loa. Both appear in the resolution as introduced, and both were reported as dropped during committee once it came out that they no longer had the leasehold profile that put them in this category. Both then turn up in Resolution 26-129 below, on the sea level rise track. If you own or are buying in either, this is precisely the kind of thing to confirm against the current bill text rather than any summary, mine included.

Resolution 26-111: properties that already operate like hotels

The cleaner argument of the two. These are apartment-zoned buildings that function as visitor accommodations in every practical sense, with front desks, on-site staff and groundskeepers. The Planning Commission had itself flagged three of them (Maui Eldorado, Papakea and Wailea Ekahi III) while Bill 9 was still under consideration, recommending the council carve them out.

Resolution 26-129: sea level rise exposure and flood hazard

The newest and most active of the four, introduced July 24, 2026. The logic here is different and, to me, the most durable of the arguments: these parcels sit in the Sea Level Rise Exposure Area or a Special Flood Hazard Area, which makes converting them into long-term local housing a questionable idea in the first place. This one was still in the Housing and Land Use Committee as of its August 27, 2026 meeting, so it is the one to watch this fall.

The committee's own August 5 handout put unit counts on it: 317 units in the sea level rise group, 178 in the flood hazard group.

Resolution 26-130: two single-owner properties

Small and easy to miss. Introduced July 27, 2026, covering two entirely single-owner properties, which removes the "this could be housing for many families" argument almost entirely. It has been moving through the Housing and Land Use Committee alongside 26-129, and was still in front of that committee on August 27, 2026 together with further amendments from Councilmembers Cook and Lee.

Proposed additions still in play

Council members have moved amendments adding more buildings to three of the four resolutions. These are motions on the record, not settled inclusions, and some have been reported as failing. I list them because if your building is here, it means somebody on the council is actively arguing for it, which is meaningfully better than silence.

The Minatoya buildings on no list at all

This is the section I have not seen anywhere else, and it is the one I would read first if I owned a Maui condo.

Add up every property named across all four resolutions and every pending amendment, then subtract that from the county's apartment-district list. Roughly 37 Minatoya properties are left over. They are not in any resolution, no council member has moved an amendment for them, and their only remaining route is an individual rezoning application that, so far, nobody has finished.

These are the buildings carrying the most unresolved exposure right now:

South Maui and upcountry side (phase-out January 1, 2031)

Grand Champions (Wailea), Maui Kamaole I, II and III (Kihei), Hale Kamaole (Kihei), Maui Vista (Kihei), Maui Parkshore (Kihei), Kihei Resort (Kihei), Koa Resort (Kihei), Waipuilani (Kihei), Leinaala (Kihei), Haleakala Shores (Kihei), Keawakapu (Kihei), Kihei Cove (Kihei), Punahoa Beach Apartments (Kihei), Hale Kai O'Kihei (Kihei), Leilani Kai (Kihei), Kihei Garden Estates (Kihei), Waiohuli Beach Hale (Kihei), Kihei Villa (Kihei), The Kalama Terrace (Kihei), The Shores of Maui (Kihei), Kanoe Apartments (Kihei), Pacific Shores (Kihei), plus Lihikai Apartments, Hale Mahialani, Hale Iliili, Kenani Kai and Wavecrest.

West Maui (phase-out January 1, 2029, so a full two years earlier)

Kapalua Bay Villas, Kapalua Golf Villas, The Ridge (Kapalua), Mahinahina Beach, Polynesian Shores, Honokowai Palms, Lahaina Roads and The Spinnaker.

I want to be careful about what this does and does not mean. It is not a prediction that these buildings lose. Amendments are still being filed, more resolutions may follow, and the litigation is live. What it means is that as of today they have no live rezoning path in front of the Planning Commission, and West Maui owners on this list are working against the shorter clock.

Where the lawsuits actually stand

Two cases were filed within days of the ordinance, both in Second Circuit Court:

• Malter v. County of Maui (2CCV-25-0003778), filed December 19, 2025, brought by owners at Kaanapali Royal.
• Lynam v. County of Maui (2CCV-25-0003780), filed December 22, 2025, seeking class-action status covering all of the roughly 7,000 Minatoya properties.

The core argument in both is a regulatory taking: the county erased about 45 years of legal, relied-upon use without paying for it, which plaintiffs say runs against Article 1, Section 20 of the Hawaii Constitution and the federal takings clause. The damages portion of the Lynam class action was dismissed earlier in 2026, while the constitutional claim survived and continues.

Here is the part that matters for anyone making a decision this year: no court has enjoined anything. Ordinance 5909 is in force today, both deadlines are running, and neither case has produced a ruling that changes a single date. Cases of this size move slowly, and a great deal can happen before 2029 in either direction.

Which brings me to the sentence I hear most often, and the one I would gently push back on hardest: "the lawsuits will take care of it." Maybe they will. The constitutional arguments are serious and well funded. But if a purchase only pencils when the exemption survives, that is not an investment thesis, it is a wager on a court you cannot schedule.

So what do you actually do with this

It depends entirely on which of three positions you are in.

If you already own an affected unit. Nothing has changed operationally. Guests still check in, bookings still run. Your job between now and the deadline is to find out whether your building is named anywhere, and if it is not, to do something about it.

That last part is more concrete than most owners realize. The council is choosing buildings against stated criteria, and if your property meets one of those criteria but nobody put it forward, the fix is to say so, in writing, before the relevant committee meeting. Testimony that works stays narrow: your building is eligible under Ordinance 6008, it meets the specific criterion the resolution is built on, it has operated lawfully as a short-term rental for decades, and you want it included. Testimony that argues the merits of the whole phase-out does not help you, because that is not the question in front of the committee.

Boards that organized early are the ones that ended up in resolutions. Boards that assumed the county would sort it out are the ones sitting in that list of 37. The Maui Vacation Rental Association tracks every hearing date and agenda and is where most organized owners are getting their timing, so if you own in an affected building it is worth being on their list whatever you think of the politics.

If you are buying and you need rental income to work. Hotel and resort zoned buildings are the clean answer, full stop. No countdown, no commission review, no amendment to track. That is the whole reason I maintain a hotel-zoned condo page separately from the rest of the condo directory. If you would rather stay in an apartment-zoned building, a named spot in 26-111 is the strongest position available short of hotel zoning, because "already operates like a hotel" is the easiest case to make to a planning commission.

If you are buying to use the place yourself. This is the group I think is being handed the best window in twenty years, and most of them do not realize it. If you will be there most of the year and renting occasionally is a bonus rather than the plan, the 2031 date barely touches your math. Meanwhile the entire condo category repriced downward, including buildings the law never touched at all, because fear does not read zoning maps. Some of the sharpest pricing on this island right now is on parcels that were never at risk.

The through line in all three: knowing apartment-zoned from hotel-zoned, and named from unnamed, is most of the game. It separates the people quietly taking on risk they have not priced from the people picking up properties they could not have touched three years ago.

What I am watching next

• Maui Planning Commission hearings on 26-110 and 26-111, expected in early September 2026. This is the next real milestone, and the first outside test of whether the commission goes along with the council's approach.
• Resolutions 26-129 and 26-130 moving out of the Housing and Land Use Committee. Both were still there on August 27, 2026, and 26-129 carries the largest set of pending amendments.
• Whether a fifth resolution appears covering any of the 37 unnamed properties.
• The November 2026 election. Several people involved have pointed out that if this process runs long, the council's composition changes, and the arithmetic on a six-vote supermajority changes with it.
• Any ruling in Malter or Lynam, particularly anything touching injunctive relief.

Source documents

I would rather you check these yourself than take my word for it. Everything above comes from:

• Bill 9 (2025) overview, Maui County Council
• Mayor Bissen signs Bill 9 into law, December 15, 2025
• County of Maui Short-Term Occupancy List, the Minatoya list itself (PDF)
• Resolution 26-110, full text with both attached bills (PDF)
• Resolution 26-111, full text with both attached bills (PDF)
• Resolution 26-129, sea level rise exposure area (PDF)
• Resolution 26-130, single-owner properties (PDF)
• Committee handout: Resolution 26-129 properties by category, with unit counts (PDF)
• Maui County legislation portal, to check current status of any resolution
• Maui Vacation Rental Association, the owner-side advocacy group that tracks every hearing date and agenda. They are a stakeholder with a position, not a neutral source, but their meeting calendar is the most reliable one I have found.
• Maui Now, council advances hotel zoning for over 2,000 units, July 28, 2026
• Maui Now, committee advances rezoning bills, July 9, 2026
• Maui Now, Bill 9 challenged in court, January 2, 2026

The bottom line

Bill 9 split the Maui condo market into buildings with a future and buildings with a question mark. Bill 88 built a door out. Four resolutions are now deciding who gets to walk through it, and about 37 Minatoya properties have not been shown to a door at all.

None of that is visible in a listing. A building that has rented to visitors for thirty years and a building with a permanent H-4 path look identical on the MLS, at similar prices, sometimes on the same street.

If you are looking at a specific condo, I will run the whole check for you: the zoning, which of the two county lists it sits on, which deadline applies, whether it is named in any of the four resolutions or any pending amendment, and what its board has actually done about it. I do this for off-island buyers constantly, and I would much rather you know what you are buying before you write the offer than find out afterward.