New home sales
rose in February

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By Lyn Danninger
ldanninger@starbulletin.com

New home sales on Oahu grew 24 percent in February over a year earlier to 166 initial sales contracts.

New home buyers also paid more for their homes. The average price for a new home was $384,244 last month, compared with $341,002 paid by buyers in February 2002.

Real estate analyst Ricky Cassiday attributed the strong sales to favorable interest rates as well as continuing pent up demand.

The number of new home sales completed in February also grew, climbing to 138 closings, a 53 percent increase over 90 closings in February 2002.

Mary Flood, Schuler Homes vice president of sales and marketing, said the faster pace in the delivery of new homes is now likely to continue through the rest of the year.

"What happened was there was a period of time where it was backlogged in terms of things like getting permits and also having to complete some complicated site work. Once we got past some of those situations and started construction things moved quickly," she said.

Flood also said the huge surge of sales at the time interest rates dropped meant it was difficult for everything else to keep up.

Best selling new single-family home projects during February included Gentry's Las Brisas development in Ewa which sold 20 homes, followed by Castle & Cooke's Gallery in Royal Kunia with 18 sales.

The best selling condominium development was Schuler Homes Hawaii Kai project, Nanea Kai.

The highest priced single family homes were sold in Hawaii Kai's Peninsula development by Stanford Carr with an average paid of around $919,000.