Deluxe housing to auction in Kailua

» Auction promoters snag a gig by Roberta Flack.

Auctions are all the rage, from grilled cheese sandwiches on eBay to high-end Hawaii real estate, such as the four homes up for auction a week from today in Kailua.

Two of the homes are on Castle Point and are brand new, built from the ground up by Kailua Construction Company Inc. The Balinese Estate at 57 Kailuana Place and the Plantation Estate at 57A Kailuana will likely draw the highest bids, predicted Steven Funke, president of Kailua Construction. The agent for both homes is Stevan Bailey, a Realtor associate with Mary Worrall Associates Inc.

"We literally could have put 20-plus houses on the property by city and county standards, but we wanted to maintain the specialness of the peninsula," Funke said.

The properties extend from Kawainui Canal, across from Aikahi Park Shopping Center, to the ocean, he said.

Funke hired "some architects and finish carpenters that are better than I am ... great landscape architects and interior designers. I have two architects full time on staff and they just worry about every single detail."

The Realtor for the other homes, completed in 1998 at 424 and 426 N. Kalaheo Ave., is Funke's wife, Alma.

"They're nice houses and they'll probably sell for something less than $10 million," said Funke.

Nice houses, he says.

One has seven bedrooms, six bathrooms and is more than 6,000 square feet, while the other is four-bedroom, four-bath with more than 4,000 square feet of living space. Both are on the beach and have swimming pools.

None of the four homes has an asking price. The highest bidder gets their choice of home. The bidding is to start just after 10 a.m. Tuesday.

The $10.4 million paid for the home at 604 N. Kalaheo Ave. set a record for real estate sales in Kailua earlier this year.

With the white-hot Hawaii real estate market, why not just set a price?

"I just kind of felt, with the specialness of the place, it would be hard to set a listing price," Funke said.

He checked out luxury homes on other islands "and when I saw what they were doing, and the kind of prices they were getting ... we don't have (comparable sales to base an asking price)," he said.

Steve and Alma Funke are joined by his twin brother, Stuart, in marketing the home auction and pre-auction fund-raising concert by Roberta Flack.

President of the Family Wealth Institute in Oregon, Stuart is producing the concert Nov. 14 to raise money for Northwest Medical Teams International and Spirit of Aloha, a nonprofit organization benefiting at-risk youth, established by Honolulu-based New Hope Christian Fellowship.

The Kailua real estate auction is not for the faint of individual net worth, either. A cashier's check for $100,000 is the price of admission to the auction.

Auction details are available by calling 1-800-257-4161 or online at www.castlepointestates.com.

Auction lands Roberta Flack

Finding the right talent for a fund-raising event is a talent in itself. The right mix of class, pop appeal, mystery and appropriateness has to fall into balance. There aren't that many opera singers selling cookies for barrio schools, for example, or hip-hop artists underwriting church square dances.

And so when Spirit Media of Portland, Ore., discovered that Roberta Flack was available for the Castle Point Benefit Gala, they knew they'd hit a home run. Spirit is the company hired to organize the event.

"We did a fair amount of research in the islands, trying to find out what artists were loved and respected there," said Spirit President Bill Dolan, "and Roberta Flack was on everyone's short list. She's a great fit."

How did they land Flack? They simply called and asked. As it turned out, Flack had a week or so between a private gig in Greece and a spotlight affair at the United Nations. "Very fortunate," Dolan said. "Very, very fortunate."

It's not just Flack. Her whole band and entourage will be there, a complete show that will run more than an hour, said Dolan, adding that Flack seems "very excited" about coming to the islands. Her last concert here was at the Waikiki Shell in 2000.

Flack has been performing since the mid-'60s. Her breakthrough moment came when Clint Eastwood discovered her song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and used it in a film. It went on to win several Grammy Awards.