New home sales West and Central Oahu are leading a boom in sales of new homes as Oahu residents take advantage of low interest rates to move up, maybe from an older, smaller house into a new one or from an apartment to a single-family home.
surge 37 percent
The low interest rate
encourages Hawaii residents
to look for better lodgingsBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com
The result is a surge in sales of new homes and condominiums, up more than one-third from a year earlier and similar to the big growth in home resales.
Kapolei and nearby Ko Olina led the pack in September sales, according to a survey by Ricky Cassiday, research chief at the real estate firm Prudential Locations.
Kapolei Kai, a cluster of new single-family homes developed by Makai Village Partnership on fee-simple land in the Village of Kapolei, recorded 39 sales contracts in September. That was followed by Castle & Cooke Inc.'s Heritage development in Mililani with 27 and a new Haseko Corp. single-family neighborhood at its Ocean Pointe development in Ewa Beach, signing deals to sell 20 units.
In multifamily projects, Brookfield Homes' Coconut Plantation at Ko Olina sold 10 units.
A newer kind of development in recent years, the condominium property regime single-family homes, is going well too, according to Cassiday's figures. These are projects in which the ownership of a group of single-family homes is divided up among the buyers with in-between common areas and responsibility for maintenance and services handled by an owners' association.
Castle & Cooke's Destiny project in Mililani topped that list with 23 sales in September, followed by Gentry Homes' Terrazza in Ewa -- now carrying a "sold out" sign on Gentry's Web site -- with eight sales.
Castle & Cooke's Royal Kunia Expressions project had seven sales in September.
Total September sales of new homes on Oahu were up 37 percent compared to the previous September, according to figures the developers supplied to Cassiday.
He said 233 sales contracts for new single-family homes and condominium units were signed in September, up from 170 in September of last year.
Completed sales, when the properties actually changed hands, were up 13 percent year-over-year at 133 in September from 118 in the year-earlier month. Completions usually follow sales agreements by several months.
The September average listed price among the houses and apartments included in the sales agreements was $351,024, up 19 percent from a year-earlier $294,994.
