Oahu condo sales
jump 20.8%

Isle project helps disabled

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Declining prices and interest rates boosted resales of existing Oahu condominium units last month, with 20.8 percent more units changing hands than in September 1997.

But the same advantageous prices and loan rates did not lift resales of single-family homes, which were down 1 percent from the year-earlier month.

Still, the Honolulu Board of Realtors' latest figures show year-to-date sales well ahead of 1997. Through the first nine months of 1998, single-family sales were up 21.8 percent over the first nine months of 1997 and condominium sales were up 19.3 percent.

Last month, 256 condominium units changed hands, compared with 212 in September 1997. The median price among condominiums sold was $125,000 last month, 21.5 percent below the $159,300 September 1997 median, the point at which half the units sold for less and half for more.

Sales of Oahu single-family homes total 201 last month, a small decline from 203 in the previous September. The single-family median price last month was $277,000, 10.6 percent below the September 1997 median of $310,000.

"With the reduction of mortgage rates to generational lows and home prices at their lowest level since mid-1989, residential properties on Oahu have become increasingly more affordable to more families," said Linda M. Marn, Board of Realtors chairwoman.

Different parts of the island performed in different ways, she said. Windward Oahu single-family sales this year have been higher than last year's, while prices for both single-family and condominium units in East Oahu have been higher.

For the nine months through September, Oahu sales of single-family homes totaled 1,781, compared with 1,462 in the 1997 period. Year-to-date condominium sales totaled 1,883 this year, compared with 1,579 in 1997, according to figures from the 4,000-member trade association's computerized Multiple Listing Service.

The figures do not include sales of new homes and condos.

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Isle housing project
aids disabled

Star-Bulletin staff

Window shades will respond to the sound of a voice, doors to a wave of a hand.

Everything from light switches to faucets will be automated or within easy access at the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Hale Kuhao, a 24-unit apartment project in Waipahu for people with physical disabilities.

Gov. Ben Cayetano today was scheduled to attend the ground-breaking for the $8 million Kauolu Place complex.

"This innovative project is the first of its kind in Hawaii and one of the first in the entire nation," he said in a statement. "We are giving people with significant disabilities the opportunity to live independently at affordable rental rates."

The project is aimed at quadriplegics and others with paralyzing injuries.

Halona Farden, a member of the Board of Directors for Independent Living, said design features will make life easier.

"Right now, quadriplegic people are limited to living at home with family in a housing unit that may not have accessible features, or in a care home where they are nursed nearly 24 hours a day, always relying on others," Farden said.

Monthly rents will range from $450 to $650 for one- and two-bedroom units. Income limits range from $22,600 to $32,000 for single tenants to $25,850 to $36,800 for couples.

Preference will be given to applicants with spinal injuries and other disabilities that limit motion.

The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; the state; the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific; the city; the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation; and the Queen Emma Foundation.