How do you follow up a $12 million quarter?
How about a $10 million week?
Such is the continued surging of the Kaua’i real estate market, as Hanalei North Shore Properties didn’t rest on its laurels for a moment after being notified by the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) that it was Kaua’i’s top agency in residential sales for the first calendar quarter of this year.
Roberta Haas, principal broker and president, said first-quarter sales around $12 million garnered the firm the honors and a congratulatory e-mail from MLS.
And from some of the just-closed sales during the current quarter, the firm is likely to lead the island again in the second quarter.
One of the larger sales sounded strangely like an organized crime boss making someone an offer he or she can’t refuse, she said. An obviously motivated buyer made the right moves to acquire a parcel not even for sale from a seller not really initially interested in selling, Haas explained.
Finally relenting to the motivated buyer, the owner of a vacant ‘Anini Beach lot who had purchased the property around three years ago for $1 million with the intent of building his dream home, sold the lot recently for $5 million, Haas explained.
She explained the process.
“Matt Beal brought a buyer from ERA Regency Pacific, and Neal Norman was the Realtor who originally sold it and handled the sale with Matt this month,” she said.
“The owner had no intention of selling, and was waiting to build his dream home there for his family. The buyer kept upping the ante ’til the owner couldn’t refuse,” she said.
“It was the gardener who alerted the owner, who then called Neal to see what was on their minds. Five million was on their minds,” she exclaimed.
“From that transaction, the owner flipped part of the proceeds into a $3 million home on Hanalei Bay that just so happened to belong to Neal’s partner. Then Neal’s partner was able to purchase a dream house on the beach in Ha’ena for $1.7 million,” she said.
“Everybody got something, everybody wins. This just goes to show that a little grassroots company which made a conscious decision not to join the big-wig mainland corporate avenue, can still hold their own,” she said.
“We closed somewhere around $12 million,” Haas said of the firm’s first-quarter results. “This week alone we are closing $10 million,” she said of one seven-day period near the end of last month.
Business Editor Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
