HONOLULU (AP) — A San Francisco investment banker recently sold his Maui mansion to a retired hedge fund CEO and a Hollywood actress for $45 million.
The cash sale of the oceanfront house in Kihei reflects a hot Hawaii real estate market fueled by a pandemic that has made the islands a desirable place to isolate and work remotely. According to property records, it has eight bedrooms, eight full bathrooms and two half bathrooms and features a pool and jacuzzi.
The median price of a Maui home topped $1.1 million in June. The price of the home — purchased by Adam Weiss and Barret Swatek on July 30 — is the second-highest sale in Hawaii history, said their agent, Anne Hogan Perry of real estate company Compass. The most expensive single-family residence was for $46.1 million on Kauai in 2018.
Perry noted that home is on 15.3 acres, while the Maui property is less than an acre.
The pandemic wasn’t the main reason the Malibu, California, couple chose the home, Perry said. But a shift toward virtual meetings will allow them to spend more time in Hawaii.
“They were not set on a particular island,” she said. “They wanted to understand the culture and what made each island different.”
They ultimately decided on the 21,700-square-foot home designed by Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta because of an attribute that is rare to find in most Hawaii neighborhoods, Perry said: “They wanted to be able to walk.”
The location allows them to take long walks on the beach and along tree-lined sidewalks.
It was also move-in ready, Perry said.
Swatek’s television show roles include “Awkward,” “Yellowstone” and “American Housewife.” Her husband is co-founder of the hedge fund Scout Capital and founder of Stillwater Investment Management.
The sale capped a big couple of weeks for Hawaii real estate sales, Perry said, noting that just four days before the Maui deal closed, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s estate on the Big Island sold for $43 million and a home in Oahu’s beachfront neighborhood of Lanikai sold for more than $24 million about a week earlier.
“To have this many sales over $20 million is huge,” Perry said.
The Maui home was not offered on the normal real estate market, said Will McKinney, agent for the seller, Thomas Weisel.
“The owner wanted to keep it exclusive and didn’t want to put it on the open market like a typical listing is,” McKinney said. “We notified all of the brokers who may have a buyer of this caliber.”
Maui’s hot real estate market makes it difficult for longtime residents, including Native Hawaiians, to afford to buy or rent homes, forcing them to leave Hawaii, said Stan Franco, president of Stand Up Maui, which advocates for affordable housing.
“So I think it’s a real problem for people like myself who are older seeing this happening to our children and grandchildren,” he said. “And it’s causing a lot of real bad feelings from our local people to anybody from the outside.”
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
