Quality Homes plans
development on
Waianae coast
Quality Homes of Oahu said it plans to build up to 80 homes on a 13.5-acre parcel abutting the Makaha Valley Country Club Golf Course, hoping to tap into growing housing demand on the Waianae coast.
Scott Wilson, a partner in the company, said the project will feature a mixture of single-family homes and condominiums in the "midrange to upper end." He hopes to break ground in the first quarter of 2005.
"Waianae is a market that has been basically untapped, almost shunned in the past. But we're seeing a lot of mainland money coming in to buy property there and the market's real strong now," Wilson said.
Wilson said Quality Homes of Oahu is getting design plans together and working on selecting a builder, as well as raising money from private investors for the development's initial phases. About 95 percent of those funding needs have been met, he said.
The company also is assessing whether the property's existing infrastructure is sufficient. It already has significant basic infrastructure in place, built in the 1970s when the area was slated to be the site of the third phase of the Makaha Valley Plantations condominium development.
After the bulk of that project was completed in the mid-'70s, a weak market caused its developers to shelve the additional phases and the parcel changed hands a number of times before Quality Homes of Oahu bought it in 2002.
The company is a boutique developer that has built mainly small clusters of two- to four-unit single-family home projects on the Waianae coast.
Housing demand on the Waianae coast is growing significantly. According to data from the Honolulu Board of Realtors, the median resale listing prices of single-family homes and condos on the Waianae coast grew 32.9 percent and 59.4 percent year-on-year, respectively, in the first quarter of 2004. The numbers of units sold increased 57.9 and 86.4 percent.