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Less than a year after a devastating, deadly wildfire, 10,000 Maui plaintiffs have reached a $4 billion settlement, Housing Wire reported on Monday.

On Aug. 8, 2023, Maui encountered the fifth-deadliest wildland fire in the history of the U.S. and the worst natural disaster in Hawaii. “The total scope of the recovery, which includes past insurance claims, county, federal and state support, will approach $12 billion,” Hawaii Governor Josh Green stated in a release on Friday. The historic city of Lahaina was destroyed, and over 100 people lost their lives.

The plaintiffs and seven defendants — the state of Hawai‘i, County of Maui, Hawaiian Electric, Kamehameha Schools, West Maui Land Co., Hawaiian Telcom and Spectrum/Charter Communication — settled after four months of mediation.

The $4.037 billion settlement, subject to final documentation and court approval, will be distributed to over 10,000 plaintiffs impacted by the fire, including homeowners and businesses, beginning mid-2025. The settlement will resolve nearly 450 lawsuits from individuals, businesses and insurance companies filed for fires in Lahaina and Maui.

“This Global Settlement of over $4 billion will help our people heal. My priority as Governor was to expedite the agreement and to avoid protracted and painful lawsuits so as many resources as possible would go to those affected by the wildfires as quickly as possible. Settling a matter like this within a year is unprecedented, and it will be good that our people don’t have to wait to rebuild their lives as long as others have in many places that have suffered similar tragedies,” Gov. Green said.

“This was an extraordinary and unprecedented effort by many people to address the tragic impacts of the wildfires in less than a year,” Green said. “Resolving this so quickly shows how Hawai‘i is different, how we come together in times of crisis to heal together as a community.”

According to the Office of the Governor, Hawaii will not only contribute to the settlement, but to the One ʻOhana Fund with a $65 million contribution. One ʻOhana Fund is a compensation program that assists those who suffered physical injury and families of those who died from the wildfires.

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A glut of inexperienced and part-time agents, paired with a string of negative headlines and confusion caused by antitrust litigation and settlements, has driven trust in the industry to new lows, Coldwell Banker CEO Kamini Lane said Thursday.

Lane spoke to a room of industry professionals at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on the final day of Inman Connect Las Vegas about what her team is doing to rebuild trust in agents and the industry at large.

“We are at an all-time low when it comes to trust and, frankly, confidence in our industry and, unfortunately, a questioning of the value that real estate agents provide their clients,” Lane said.

Lane said the influx of licensed and inexperienced agents came during and after the COVID real estate boom, as home prices spiked and low interest rates drove demand for homebuying across the country.

“To be sure, those people were responding to the market need,” Lane said, “but I don’t think it was the same level of experience that this industry had been known for in the past.”

Photos by AJ Canaria Creative Services

Lane focused on the inexperience and part-time mindset of many agents. To highlight her point, she brought up the gig economy nature in her hometown of Los Angeles, where it’s common for residents to be a writer-slash-barista or server-slash-actor.

She gave that type of worker a term — slashie — and said real estate “shouldn’t be an industry of slashies.”

“This should be an industry of professionals who take this very seriously, who operate with the highest level of integrity,” Lane said. 

Lane said Coldwell Banker hand-picks agents who work for the franchiser.

“It’s not a question of building an infantry,” Lane said. “There’s the phrase ‘recruiting wars.’ I don’t think of it that way. We’re not fighting a war; we’re not building an infantry. We really want to have a collection of the best professionals in the business who fit with our culture.”

The franchise is also focused on providing up-to-date training on the post-settlement rules and regulations and adapting to changes that will continue happening up until and after Aug. 17.

That training includes encouraging agents to have conversations with clients about value and compensation early on in the relationship and to be transparent about how the agent will be paid.

“We very much believe that it is in a seller’s best interest to offer compensation to a buyer’s agent,” Lane said.

She said Coldwell Banker was encouraging agents to move past the mindset of acting as gatekeepers of data and information, which was more traditionally a role for agents 20 years ago, she said.

“Having value that is seeded in any sort of gatekeeping of data is just not relevant anymore,” Lane said. “There has to be a long-term lens on building a relationship with an individual, with their family.”

Lane said agents need to shift into the role of financial advisor who guides clients through complicated transactions, looks for ways to make them simpler, and builds long-term relationships that can last multiple transactions.

“The role of the agent will continue to push into this path of providing this expertise and making that transaction simpler and being at the center of that incredibly complicated transaction versus doing tasks that can be done online or spending time on things that can be done by artificial intelligence, for example,” Lane said.

Email Taylor Anderson

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Moderator Jackie Soto started off a panel discussing listing lead generation by asking the crowd at Inman Connect Las Vegas on Tuesday how many people have been experiencing a tough market.

She then turned to a group of panelists including Gary Ashton, founder of The Ashton Real Estate Group of RE/MAX; Mahsheed Parsons, broker-owner of Mahsheed Real Estate; and Delinda Crampton, team leader of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, for insights and strategies.

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Each panelist said they’d endured their share of challenges in their role. Parsons specifically addressed the shift in speed within the market.

“I have a lot of listings, and a lot of them are not moving. Even though inventory is low, they’re not moving because we have so many sellers who want a price pretty high, because they see there is no inventory,” Parsons said.

“Everyone’s aiming pretty high. And then when you do that right now, at a time where you know interest rates are high, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the economy.”

Parsons has been operating her Las Vegas real estate brokerage for over 18 years and expanded to Southern California in 2020. Parson’s boutique brokerage consists of about six agents and serves a luxury clientele.

Crampton is also based out of Las Vegas and heads up a team of seven agents who sell everything “from condos to castles,” as she put it.

Expectations to sell are putting pressure on those in the market. Building relationships through feeder markets, building an online presence and developing a loyal clientele are traditional strategies Crampton leans on used to generate listings.

“You know, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, those are big feeder markets. And I go to lots of events like this, where I’m developing relationships with Realtors.” Crampton said.

“At one of the events, I became friends with the CEO of one of the two largest real estate companies in the Bay Area. And now when I go on listing appointments, I can talk about these relationships that I’ve got in California and the feeder markets, and how I can market directly to them and help sell their listings and have a source of buyers that some of the other agents don’t have, she said.”

Ashton has been leader of the No. one RE/MAX team in the world for approximately six years. His team is based out of Nashville, Tennessee, and includes more than 180 agents.

When Ashton became licensed back in 2021, SEO, pay-per-click and IDX helped him become one of the heavy hitters in the market, along with investing in himself.

“So it’s all investment in the business, in myself, and then continually reinvesting that back in the processes,” Ashton said. “And then, you know, it snowballs. After a while, you start to build that presence.”

Parsons invested early on in her career in geographic farming, and now regularly sends out postcards to over 3,000 homeowners, including luxury homeowners. She has used billboard advertising as well, but postcards are where she saw the most return on her marketing dollars.

Parsons said that she’s gotten some of her biggest listings from those postcard mailers, including an $8 million listing. “I mean, that’s not bad bank, but this is Vegas. Yeah, the return always pays off.”

Email Richelle Hammiel