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Castle & Cooke’s 3,500-home Koa Ridge project to move ahead

May 20, 2016 By Mark G. Howard Leave a Comment

This rendering shows a view of the village at Castle & Cooke's Koa Ridge project

This rendering shows a view of the village at Castle & Cooke’s Koa Ridge project

Castle & Cooke Hawaii’s long-delayed 3,500-home Koa Ridge master-planned community in Central Oahu will move ahead after the Hawaii State Supreme Court ruled in favor of the developer on Wednesday, saying the Hawaii Land Use Commission properly reclassified the 768 acres of land from agricultural to urban for the project.

The dismissal of an administrative appeal by the Sierra Club, Hawaii Chapter, and former state Sen. Clayton Hee was the last major hurdle faced by Castle & Cooke, which first proposed the project for the land between Mililani and Waipio more than a decade ago.

“Castle & Cooke is committed to striking a balance between supporting agriculture in Hawaii and providing much needed homes and jobs for our island residents,” Harry Saunders, president of Castle & Cooke Hawaii, said in a statement. “The company was founded in agriculture in the 1800s, and we continue to support agriculture for Hawaii today.”

Honolulu attorney Eric Seitz, who represented both Hee and the Sierra Club in their appeal, said he’s disappointed with the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“If [we] keep paving over agricultural lands because developers want to make a quick buck, that will be a terrible disaster for the people of Hawaii,” he told PBN. “We have historically been shortsighted with these types of decisions.’

Wednesday’s ruling affirms the approval Castle & Cooke received from the LUC in 2012, giving Koa Ridge all the land use approvals the project needs to move ahead.

Koa Ridge’s single-family homes were priced at about $300,000 back then, but more than a decade later, the rise in construction costs today has pushed those average home prices to more than $700,000, Saunders previously told PBN. Sales are expected to start next year.

Construction on the project is scheduled to begin in 2017, with full build-out/completion taking about 10 to 12 years, according to Castle & Cooke.

Pre-sales for Koa Ridge will start about three to six months prior to the delivery of the first homes, which should be available in the fourth quarter of 2018.

It will include single- and multi-family homes, a mixed-use center, a medical center, a hotel, light industrial, parks, an elementary school, a recreation center, churches and open space.

Meanwhile, planning for the developer’s 1,500-home Waiawa project across the H-2 Freeway is expected to begin at a later date.

Click here to read the 23-page decision by the state Supreme Court on the Koa Ridge project.

Duane Shimogawa
Reporter
Pacific Business News

Filed Under: Blog, Castle & Cooke, Featured Blog Tagged With: Castle & Cooke, Koa Ridge master-planned community

Luxury home sales increased by 7 percent during 2015, according to a recent market report

April 4, 2016 By Mark G. Howard Leave a Comment

The East Oahu continues to be the most popular for luxury home sales

The East Oahu continues to be the most popular for luxury home sales

The East Oahu continues to be the most popular region for luxury home sales, with more than half of all transactions in 2015 occurring in Diamond Head, Kahala, Hawaii Loa Ridge, and Waialae Iki.

The four neighborhoods accounted for nearly half of all luxury home transactions in East Oahu, mostly in the $2-million-and-under range last year.

Why $2 million?

“$1 million can be very valid in most U.S. cities, but here on Oahu in some neighborhoods it could be considered [not luxury],” Locations Executive Vice President Scott Higashi told PBN, on why Locations chose $2 million as the benchmark defining a luxury home. The firm’s research also took a neighborhood-driven approach to identify the luxury market, examining neighborhoods that were developed as luxury housing from the outset, as opposed to more modest neighborhoods which have seen home prices pass the $1-million mark due to Hawaii’s housing shortage.

Median sale prices rose 9 percent in Diamond Head, 6 percent in Waialae Iki, and 4 percent in Kahala, compared to 2014 sale prices.

Active listings are also up in East Oahu, up 14 percent from 2014, with an average list price of $4,217,500.

Local residents made up 66 percent of luxury home sales in East Oahu last year. The remaining group of buyers hail from the U.S. Mainland and Asia. The majority of buyers are from Japan, representing 54 percent of transactions. China’s buyer market has grown consistently and now accounts for 27 percent of transactions, not including 10 percent of transactions coming from Hong Kong buyers. Singapore, Korea, and Malaysia make up the remainder of luxury buyers in East Oahu.

“Asia accounts for 12 percent of our business,” Higashi said. “It’s not as big as people think. It is largely Japanese buyers still — there are Chinese buyers but not on the scale as everyone hoped. We were hoping for a lot of sales [in 2015].”

Approximately 14 percent of Locations’ sales are launched online, Higashi added.

Properties sold in the $3 million to $4.9 million range took the longest to sell, however, sales in the mega-luxury price range rose the fastest in 2015, based on days on the market.

Eighty-four of the luxury homes sold last year were below the $2 million range, compared to 48 properties between $2 million to $2.9 million range, and 31 homes sold between the $3 million to $4.9 million range. Only nine $5 million-and-above luxury homes were sold last year.

Lorin Eleni Gill
Reporter
Pacific Business News

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Filed Under: Blog, Featured Blog, Luxury real estate, luxury real estate Oahu Tagged With: Celebrity home, Celebrity Homes, luxury, Luxury Estate, Luxury Experiences, Luxury Home, Luxury Homes, Luxury Living, Luxury Mansion, luxury real estate, Luxury Villa, LuxuryHomes, LuxuryHomes.com, Mansion, Million Dollar Estates, Million Dollar Home, Most expensive, Ocean View, Penthouse

Chinese developer to build two towers at Ko Olina Resort in West Oahu

April 2, 2016 By Mark G. Howard Leave a Comment

Chinese developer to build two towers at Ko Olina Resort in West Oahu

Chinese developer to build two towers at Ko Olina Resort in West Oahu

China Oceanwide Holdings Ltd. has purchased nearly 23 acres of land in Ko Olina in West Oahu to develop a luxury-branded hotel and a luxury-branded residential condominium for nearly $200 million, according to the sales deeds that were obtained by Pacific Business News and a company announcement.

The Resort Group, which is headed by Jeff Stone, the master developer of the 642-acre Ko Olina Resort, and a subsidiary of The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, sold the nearly 1 million square feet of land to the Chinese company, which has investments in various sectors, such as real estate, finance, energy and media.

The total development will include a 150-unit condo and a 150-room hotel, with the condo having access to the hotel amenities.

There also will be commercial tenants as part of the project.

China Oceanwide Holdings did not specify the luxury brands that it would use for either tower.

In addition to its current real estate development projects in Los Angeles and New York, the company said it is looking for other potential projects in the U.S. market.

Oahu’s first Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts-branded property is scheduled to open at the Ko Olina Resort master-planned community in the spring of 2016. PBN first reported on the project, which involved the closure and rebranding of a JW Marriott hotel.

The Four Seasons’ commitment to bring its brand to Ko Olina Resort for its first property on Hawaii’s most populated island has drawn a lot of interest from other luxury hospitality brands, including Hong Kong’s Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, as first reported by PBN.

That five-star luxury hotel brand currently has a presence in Asia-Pacific, North America, Middle East and Europe, but not Hawaii.

Duane Shimogawa
Reporter
Pacific Business News

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Blog, Ko Olina Tagged With: China Oceanwide Holdings Ltd, Four Seasons Hotel, Ko Olina Resort

Regulators close door on Hawaiian Electric’s rooftop solar program

March 31, 2016 By Mark G. Howard Leave a Comment

Regulators close door on Hawaiian Electric's rooftop solar program

Regulators close door on Hawaiian Electric’s rooftop solar program

A controversial program that has been one of the main drivers behind the record-breaking growth of rooftop solar in Hawaii is getting curtailed, according to a ruling this week by state regulators.

Net energy metering, or NEM, allows rooftop solar customers to shift the cost burden of operating the grid to full-service customers, while still benefiting from access to the grid’s physical infrastructure to import and export power. The program credits rooftop solar customers at the full retail value of electricity. In 2013, Hawaiian Electric Co. said that the cost to its full-service customers due to this program totaled $38.5 million, representing about 1.3 percent of the collected rates for the Honolulu-based utility and its subsidiaries Maui Electric Co. and Hawaii Electric Light Co.

But some, including Kevin Landers, who works for an electrical construction company that has an alternative energy division, noted that rooftop solar decreases the demand for centralized utility generation, saving the utility fuel and transmission costs, as well as providing free generation, which the utility gets to sell for full price to the neighbors without solar.

On Monday, the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission made a ruling to close the program to new participants and approved new options for customers to interconnect distributed energy resources to the utility’s grid.

These resources include rooftop solar systems, energy efficiency measures, demand response measures, electric vehicles and energy storage systems.

The PUC said that its ruling initiates the first step in an evolution of distributed energy resource policies in the state, which will significantly advance the integration of these types of resources through the state.

Nothing about the NEM program will change for existing NEM customers or customers who have already applied and are waiting for approval, according to the PUC, which noted that applications submitted after Monday will not be eligible for the NEM program.

Instead, new customers will be able to apply for fast-track approval to interconnect their systems under the “self-supply” option or standard review for the “grid-supply” option.

The self-supply option offers a non-export solution for customers that provides the benefit of using PV to meet their energy needs, and allows a limited amount of inadvertent export to the grid, with zero compensation for any export.

Customers choosing this option will have a minimum bill of $25 for residential customers and $50 for small commercial customers.

The grid-supply option is intended to provide customers with the option of exporting excess energy to the grid in exchange for energy credits against the customer’s bills, to the extent such energy export provides benefits to the electric system.

This option is similar to NEM, although instead of getting credited for the full retail rate for NEM, customers will be credited for a fixed rate between 15 cents and 28 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on the island the customer lives on.

The new grid supply and self supply programs are expected to be available to customers by Oct. 21.

“Hawaii is at a critical juncture in pursuit of achieving a 100 percent renewable portfolio standard in the electric power sector,” the PUC said. “Extraordinary high retail electricity prices, combined with dramatic cost declines in renewable energy and storage technologies, have combined to transform the competitive landscape facing the state’s electric utilities.”

The availability and economic attractiveness of the NEM program in particular has led to widespread adoption of rooftop solar among electricity customers statewide within the span of only a few years.

Despite the planning, operational, technical and regulatory challenges, no other utility in the country rivals Hawaii’s electric utilities in their accomplishments integrating rooftop solar into its grids.

“However, successes to date have not come easily or predictably to the utilities or their customers,” the PUC said. “Continuing frustration and confusion relating to the interconnection queue for thousands of customers waiting to install solar photovoltaic and other [resources] is just one example of the challenges that the commission is addressing in this proceeding.”

The challenge facing the state now is ensuring that distributed energy resources continues to scale in such a way that it benefits all customers as each utility advances towards 100 percent renewable energy, the PUC said.

Groups opposing the change in the NEM program have said that the utility will save money by using the customer’s exported power to serve the neighbors because the utility will avoid the costs of power that it would otherwise have had to generate at a more distant power plant and deliver to that local area over its transmission and distribution system.

In its ruling the commission instructs Hawaiian Electric to revise its interconnection rules and offer new tariffs to their customers that expand customer choice and provide new options for managing energy use, enable distributed energy resources to provide technical and economic benefits to each grid and establish a foundation for further policy adjustments that will be made as part of phase two of this proceeding.

“We see solar power as an important part of the diverse set of renewable energy solutions needed to help lower customer bills and meet Hawaii’s goal of a 100 percent renewable portfolio standard by 2045,” said Jim Alberts, senior vice president of customer service for Hawaiian Electric

Duane Shimogawa
Reporter
Pacific Business News

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Blog Tagged With: Hawaiian Electric Company, solar. solar in hawaii

Ousted Men’s Wearhouse Founder Is Downsizing in Hawaii — to Neil Young’s $20M Pad

March 29, 2016 By Mark G. Howard Leave a Comment

Ousted Men’s Wearhouse Founder Is Downsizing in Hawaii -- to Neil Young’s $20M Pad

Ousted Men’s Wearhouse Founder Is Downsizing in Hawaii — to Neil Young’s $20M Pad

Michelle Huffman
December 9, 2015
You’re gonna like the way you look here. We guarantee it.

Who wouldn’t look good in a 10,000-square-foot mansion right on the Hawaiian coast?

Former Men’s Wearhouse CEO George Zimmer—popularly known for promising in TV spots “You’re gonna like the way you look; I guarantee it”—has listed the property at $35 million, the Los Angeles Times reports. The 7.5 acres comprise 10 parcels on the northwestern edge of the Big Island.

The men’s clothing magnate is downsizing as only the wealthy can: He’s moving to the 2-plus-acre, 3,000-square-foot home that Neil Young just sold him for $20 million. It’s just seven miles up the beach.

Zimmer’s property, which neighbors the Mauna Lani Resort, is one of the largest privately owned oceanfront properties on the Kohala Coast, according to the listing.

The mansion was built in 1995 by Hawaiian architect Lucky Bennett, who basically established the “Kona Coast” style: open rooms connected to extensive lanais (the Hawaiian word for porches), maximizing ocean views, plus native woods integrated throughout. It’s sort of midcentury modern with a tropical flair.

The house has seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a media room, and a billiard room with wet bar. Outside there’s a pool and spa, plus 1,000 feet of ocean frontage.

Zimmer has been through a rough patch the past couple of years. The Men’s Wearhouse board unceremoniously dumped him as executive chairman in 2013 amid complaints that he “wouldn’t accept anything other than full control” of the company he’d founded in 1973 but taken public in the 1990s.

The ouster of Zimmer, who has amassed quite the fan base over the decades because of his catchphrase, set off a firestorm on social media.

He hasn’t stayed down long, though. He has a new venture called zTailors, a website and app to connect the frumpy with the fixers-of-frump – tailors who make house calls.

And Zimmer’s new home ain’t too shabby, even if it is downsized. It has four bedrooms and six bathrooms, and it sits on a craggy beach with just a little less ocean frontage – about 800 feet.

Maybe that’s just as well. It’s not like salt water is great for suits.

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Filed Under: Blog, Celebrity Properties, Celebrity real estate, Luxury real estate Tagged With: Celebrity home Honolulu, Celebrity Homes Honolulu, Luxury Estate Honolulu, Luxury Experiences Honolulu, Luxury Home Honolulu, Luxury Homes Honolulu, Luxury Honolulu, Luxury Living Honolulu, Luxury Mansion Honolulu, luxury real estate Honolulu, Luxury Villa Honolulu, LuxuryHomes Honolulu, LuxuryHomes.com Honolulu, Mansion Honolulu, Million Dollar Estates Honolulu, Million Dollar Home Honolulu, Most expensive Honolulu, Ocean View Honolulu, Penthouse Honolulu

Honolulu rental home rates rise nearly 15 percent, new report says

March 27, 2016 By Mark G. Howard Leave a Comment

The homes in the gated community of Hawaii Loa Ridge.

The homes in the gated community of Hawaii Loa Ridge.

The average monthly rent for a single-family home in Honolulu rose nearly 15 percent to $2,675 in the fourth quarter of 2015 — nearly doubled the national average — according to a new report.

The data used rents on three-bedroom single-family homes. Nationally, rents rose 3.1 percent to $1,353 per month from $1,312 per month when comparing year-over-year totals.

“Although there have been recent events that will have some impact on Hawaii’s overall rental market such as the decrease in the military’s housing allowance and the shut-down of HC&S on Maui, low unemployment, a limited housing supply, and an overall positive economic health forecast for the year will likely continue to push Honolulu rental prices upward,” said Kawika Burgess, president and CEO of Real Property Management Alliance, a Honolulu franchisee of the Real Property Management franchise system.

The vacancy rates for this market in Hawaii rose to 3.5 percent through the fourth quarter of 2015, an increase of 0.03 percent in the same quarter last year.

Nationally, this rate dipped to about 5 percent from about 5.6 percent when comparing the fourth quarters of 2015 and 2014.

The Real Property Management Alliance report also noted that, in Hawaii, about 34 percent of single-family homes are rented.

Duane Shimogawa
Reporter
Pacific Business News

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Blog, Oahu Island Tagged With: hawaii rental market, Real Property Management Alliance

CheapTickets.com founders buy oceanfront Kahala estate for $11M cash

March 9, 2016 By Mark G. Howard Leave a Comment

A Hawaii couple who founded CheapTickets.com have purchased a beachfront estate in Honolulu’s posh Kahala neighborhood for $11.5 million in cash, one of the highest recorded sales of a single-family home on Oahu so far this year, according to public records.

Designed by Hawaii architect John Hara in 2002, the 5,838-square-foot five-bedroom, six-bathroom home sits on a nearly 0.8-acre parcel at 4711 Kahala Ave.

It was previously owned by Karl Essig, a former Morgan Stanley executive, and Megumi Essig.

Michael and Sandra Hartley, who both founded CheapTickets.com in Honolulu in 1986, are the new owners of the property, which includes a chef’s kitchen and guest apartment.

The estate, which was on the market for just 79 days, has a total assessed value of about $9.7 million.

The Essigs purchased the property for $4.5 million in 1999.

CheapTickets.com is now owned by Orbitz Worldwide Inc. The travel discounter closed its Honolulu call center in 2003, leaving about 200 people without a job.

The Hartleys founded the company at a kiosk location in Honolulu and built it into one of the nation’s larger travel discounters, with five call centers across the country. More than 400 people worked for the company in Honolulu by 2000.

In 2001, Cendant Corp., a conglomerate that already had its own travel discount service, acquired Cheap Tickets Inc. for $280 million. Then in 2006, it was included in a sale to Orbitz.

Duane Shimogawa
Reporter
Pacific Business News

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Blog, Kahala, KAHALA AREA, Luxury Condos for sale, Luxury real estate, luxury real estate Oahu Tagged With: Celebrity home Honolulu, Celebrity Homes Honolulu, CheapTickets.com, Karl Essig, Luxury Estate Honolulu, Luxury Experiences Honolulu, Luxury Home Honolulu, Luxury Homes Honolulu, Luxury Honolulu, Luxury Living Honolulu, Luxury Mansion Honolulu, luxury real estate Honolulu, Luxury Villa Honolulu, LuxuryHomes Honolulu, LuxuryHomes.com Honolulu, Mansion Honolulu, Michael and Sandra Hartley, Million Dollar Estates Honolulu, Million Dollar Home Honolulu, Most expensive Honolulu, Ocean View Honolulu, Penthouse Honolulu

Castle & Cooke Hawaii plans new 40-home project in Central Oahu

March 7, 2016 By Mark G. Howard Leave a Comment

Castle & Cooke Homes Hawaii Inc. plans to develop a 40-home project in Waipahu in Central Oahu on a vacant lot formerly used by employees of the Waikele Shopping Center as an employee off-site parking area, according to public documents.

The development, which includes two-family dwelling units, is being designed by Honolulu-based Design Partners Inc.

Located between the H-1 Waikele exit and Koaki Street, the project includes 21 buildings, 19 of which will be two-family dwellings and two of which will be single-family homes.

All the homes will be two stories in height and will be sold for fee-simple ownership under a condominium property regime, according to the project’s cluster housing permit application that’s before the City and County of Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting.

The project will include 168 parking stalls.

PBN has reached out Castle & Cooke Homes Hawaii for comment.

Duane Shimogawa
Reporter
Pacific Business News

Filed Under: Blog, Castle & Cooke Homes Hawaii Inc. Tagged With: Castle & Cooke Homes Hawaii Inc.

Chinese developer plans mixed-use condo tower near Honolulu’s Ala Moana Center

March 5, 2016 By Mark G. Howard Leave a Comment

The “Hawaii City Plaza” project at 710 Sheridan St. near Walmart and Sam’s Club stores is expected to have ground floor commercial space, including retail and restaurants, as well as a parking podium that will be the foundation for a condo tower.

James Freeman, principal for Honolulu-based FSC Architects, who is the architect for the project, declined further comment on the development until it engages in the public process. He is scheduled to present plans for the Hawaii City Plaza project at Tuesday’s Ala Moana-Kakaako Neighborhood Board.

The condo is expected to include a mix of affordable and market-rate units.

The Hawaii City Plaza is being developed by Advantage America Hawaii Regional Center LLC as part of the EB-5 immigrant investor program, which has resulted in $8.7 billion worth of foreign investment in U.S. businesses over the past three years and has created more than 35,000 jobs in America, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

To be eligible for visas that can ultimately lead to green cards, foreign investors must invest $1 million in new businesses that create 10 jobs in the U.S. That threshold falls to $500,000 if the investment is made in a rural area or areas with higher-than-average unemployment.

The Hawaii City Plaza project has received approval from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism as a project that fits within the targeted employment area.

It will be located in the Ala Moana Neighborhood Transit-Oriented area, with the goal of trying to get greater density around the transit stations to create walkable and bikeable communities.

The Hawaii City Plaza developer, a group from Mainland China, already has two projects in the Los Angeles area, which are smaller, limited-service hotels. This would be their first project in Hawaii.

The 39,520 square feet — nearly an acre of land — at 710 Sheridan St. is zoned for a retail/condo development.

Duane Shimogawa
Reporter
Pacific Business News

Filed Under: Ala Moana Neighborhood Transit-Oriented, Blog, Featured Blog, General Real Estate, Honolulu, HONOLULU Tagged With: 710 Sheridan St, Ala Moana Neighborhood Transit-Oriented, Hawaii City Plaza

PBN confirms amount billionaire Larry Ellison paid for Hawaiian Island of Lanai

March 3, 2016 By Mark G. Howard Leave a Comment

Billionaire Larry Ellison paid $300M for the Hawaiian island of Lanai,

Billionaire Larry Ellison paid $300M for the Hawaiian island of Lanai,

One of the most widely-publicized real estate sales in recent memory in Hawaii, which involved Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison’s purchase of nearly the entire island of Lanai, hasn’t had a clear price attached to it — up until now.

It has been speculated by many that the price Ellison paid was somewhere in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars, even up to $500 million.

The third-richest person in the United States — Forbes puts his current net worth at $44.2 billion— has told Julian Guthrie, author of the 2013 book “The Billionaire and The Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing’s Greatest Race, the America’s Cup,” that he paid $300 million for 98 percent of Lanai in 2012.

PBN has now confirmed, through public documents, that Ellison did indeed pay $300 million for the 141-square-mile Pineapple Island.

The sale included the two resort hotels — the Four Seasons Resorts Lanai at Manele Bay and the Four Seasons Resorts Lanai, Lodge at Koele — two championship golf courses and club houses, the Manele Golf Course and the Koele Golf Course, and more than 88,000 acres of land.

The seller, Los Angeles billionaire businessman David Murdock, took control of Lanai, the sixth-largest island in Hawaii by acreage, in 1985 as a result of his purchase of Castle & Cooke. The state and others own 2 percent of the island.

Meanwhile, Ellison is selling his controlling interest in his Hawaii interisland airline, Island Air, to a couple of Honolulu investment funds.

His Four Seasons Resort Lanai at Manele Bay, which closed this past summer for extensive renovations, is scheduled to reopen as the Four Seasons Resort Lanai and will begin taking reservations and opening on Feb 1. Koele, which has been closed to the public to house construction workers, will open in late 2016.

Duane Shimogawa
Reporter
Pacific Business News

 

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Filed Under: Blog, Featured Blog, General Real Estate Tagged With: Celebrity home, Celebrity Homes, Larry Ellison, luxury, Luxury Estate, Luxury Experiences, Luxury Home, Luxury Homes, Luxury Living, Luxury Mansion, luxury real estate, Luxury Villa, LuxuryHomes, LuxuryHomes.com, Mansion, Million Dollar Estates, Million Dollar Home, Most expensive, Ocean View, Oracle Corp, Penthouse

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Oahu Luxury Estates

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Waikiki By Price

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© 2014 - Hawaii Americana Realty. All Rights Reserved. Hawaii Americana Realty fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act. Each office is independently owned and operated. Subject to change without notice. While the information on this site is deemed to be accurate, Hawaii Americana Realty. does not guarantee its accuracy, and provides this information without warranties of any kind, either expressed or implied. Hawaiian Americana Realty, Inc. 134 Kapahulu Ave., CUB, Honolulu, HI 96815 * by appointment only * RB20383 / RB20384