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Land Tenure
Fee Simple property means you own the land and the price will go up.
Leasehold means you do not own the land, and the price will go down.
Use the Land Tenure search form option to remove Leasehold properties from your search results.
My Opinion on Leasehold
Leasehold means you don't own the land, so at the end of the lease the property value is 0 and you walk away with nothing. Because of this the value of Leasehold property goes down every year as it heads towards 0 at the end of the lease. With some Leasehold properties you can purchase the fee and make it Fee Simple, and then it can be a great purchase just like any other Fee Simple property. On OahuRE if you see $0 for the fee purchase price, this means it is not available for purchase.
In my opinion Leasehold without the opportunity to purchase the fee is worse then renting. With renting you know exactly how much money you will be spending per month to live. When you purchase a Leasehold property you don't know how much you are spending because you don't know by how fast the property is dropping in value. Remember, because it is Leasehold every year that you get closer to the end of the lease the property drops in value, unlike Fee Simple property which eventually goes up in value.
For example, with Leasehold you are paying your mortgage, the lease fee, the maintenance fee and you might feel that is all you are spending, but what happens if the property costs $250,000 and you decide to sell it after 2 years. You might find the new value is $150,000. So in addition to all you regular monthly expenses, you also lost $100,000 over the 2 year period, or an additional $4,166 per month. It is this unknown loss factor that makes purchasing Leasehold more risky then renting.