Beachfront house sells for $15M as Maui moves from to second-home market
The sale of an oceanfront estate in Kapalua Resort last month for $15.5 million was the highest price for a residential property on Maui so far this year and the third highest in Hawaii as wealthy Mainland buyers start to look at the Islands as more than a vacation destination.
The same seller sold a vacant parcel next door, one of only a few remaining oceanfront properties on Maui, in August for $8 million.
The sale of the home at 3 Kapalua Place closed on Sept. 15 to a Houston-based buyer under the entity Jeb & Jo LLC, while the Aug. 26 buyers of the vacant parcel at 1 Kapalua Place, according to public records, were Rene Lacerte and Joyce Chung of California — Lacerte is the founder and CEO of Bill.com — who likely plan to build a house on the 1.7-acre site.
Dean Otto of Keller Williams Realty Maui represented the Mainland-based seller of both properties, Maui Kauhale LLC.
The 6,631-square-foot house at 3 Kapalua Place was designed by architect Jeffrey Long of Longhouse Design + Build in Honolulu and built in 2010. It has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms and a three-car garage on a 28,000-square-foot lot. At one point, about five years ago, it was on the market for $20.88 million.
The parcel at 1 Kapalua Place is 1.7 acres of beachfront property and the last beachfront lot left in Kapalua Resort and one of few remaining on Maui, Otto said.
The price for 3 Kapalua Place set a new high for the small cul-de-sac in Kapalua Resort that has only eight parcels. The previous high sale was for the house next door at 5 Kapalua Place, which sold for $13.94 million in 2017. The last sale on the street was a 7,475-square-foot home at 9 Kapalua Place that sold for $12 million.
A few miles down the coast, a beachfront house on Lower Honoapiilani Road sold for $14.5 million on July 30 to a Microsoft executive.
Otto told Pacific Business News that Maui’s high-end real estate market has changed since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
Prior to the pandemic, Maui was a successful vacation-home market for high-net-worth buyers. But those same buyers are looking anew at Maui as a place to live — at least part time.
“Since the pandemic and since all the craziness that’s gone on on the Mainland, there’s been a fairly significant exodus from urban to suburban – people are getting out of the cities,” he said. “The shift is from the vacation destination to a second-home destination.”
Otto said many potential buyers are renting high-end homes while they consider buying. He said one client who had a beachfront home for sale got an offer from someone seeking to rent the home for three months — for $290,000 per month — but the home had already sold.
Others are still paying tens of thousands to stay on Maui for several months during the pandemic, choosing to take advantage of the island’s lifestyle while working remotely.
“It was always a fantasy that you can live anywhere and work from anywhere — now it’s been proven,” Otto said. “I think you’re going to find people spending a lot more time here and working here.”
