Maui Style ❘ LivingMaui

Hokulani Golf Villas.. Villas

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This new community in Kihei has some surprising built-ins: The answers to some of the tough questions around home buying.

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PHOTO: Ron Dahlquist

Joseph W. Bean

hoices and decisions, questions and options—from the minute you start thinking of buying a home, you’re deciding and answering. It can be overwhelming, but Hokulani Golf Villas makes a lot of the tough questions easier to handle. To begin with, if you want a home on a golf course in Kihei, the choice is very simple. The Hokulani development surrounded by the beautiful fairways of the Elleair Maui Golf Club, formerly the Silversword, are your only option. Maybe you were—operative word: were, past tense—thinking of West Maui, but the $2.9 million median price for Ka‘anapali is out of reach for most of us. Kihei is much more affordable. These single family homes being built mauka of the Pi‘ilani Highway and just makai of the Research & Technology Park at Lipoa Street are set to sell for $1.1 to $1.5 million—not at all bad as golf course estates go these days. Let’s take a look at the toughest question facing most people when they try to decide which home to buy on Maui. Condo or house? The pleasures of owning a house include space and privacy and the completely intangible thing called pride of ownership. In a way, owning a condo is still apartment living, and doesn’t “do it” for some buyers. Owning a house, “now that’s something.” On the other hand, owning a house means owning a yard. Do you really want to do yard work? It also means keeping your place clean and painted, seeing that hedges are trimmed and trees are pruned, and that the whole property is otherwise maintained. This is not just about keeping up with the Joneses next door and around the corner. It is also essential to maintain the value and longevity of your home. The answer to the condo or house conundrum is simple at Hokulani Golf Villas. You get the best of both. This luxurious community of 152 single-family homes is being built out at only about 60 percent of the legally allowed density, so you get a real house and substantial space. What’s more that space feels even more expansive than it is because every lot faces a fairway or a park or a reserved open space. You have all the benefits of owning a house, but here’s the thing: The home owners association handles the exterior maintenance. From the landscaping to the lawn mowing and everything else that can be seen from the street or from the Jones’s picture window, you have no worries. When you hear that, you might think, “Oh, no. My yard will look just like every other yard.” Not at all. The landscapers have chosen to landscape each lot separately, considering the views, house sizes and window placements. Now, that may have left you concerned that the developer, Signature Development of Hawai‘i, is depending on individual landscaping plans and differing views to make each home distinctive. Again, not at all. The landscaping is just one factor. While the homes are designed to fit together into a cohesive community, they are also designed to have the look and feel of a real community—not rows of identical homes. The curving roads and central parks help break things up, but even those things are just elements of a plan that is unique in itself and very effective for making your home uniquely your own. There are six different house plans, all of them tailored to Hawai‘i and with features you don’t often find on Maui. “We took six tried and proven floor plans from Signature’s operations on the Mainland and had them all real estate maui style 23

Maui Style ❘ LivingMaui Hawaiian-ized,” said Vincent Palmieri, the Broker-in-Charge at ‘Aina Maui Properties, the listing agents. “They gave them C. W. Dickey roof lines and larger windows. They enlarged the outdoor living areas with up to 500 square feet of covered lanai space.” It would be easy to think that having six different houses to choose among and 152 lots with such variables as their views, their proximity to the pool and recreation room, and their elevation… the choices would be getting harder again. But, no. Signature Development worked out a plan for the Hokulani Golf Villas that already includes which homes are on which lots. This doesn’t just reduce the mental anguish of choosing which Hokulani home you might prefer. It gives you the kind of “whole package” view of the home that you would normally only get when buying a resold house where everything is what it is and either suits you or doesn’t. That makes things easier but, at Hokulani you still get to be the first family to live in the home, and you still get to make some of the fun choices about the interior. Hokulani Golf Villas is condo-easy living with private-home comforts, and it’s all pulled together for you. You just choose one, then finalize the interior to suit yourself. What you get when you choose a Hokulani Golf Villa for yourself and your family is pretty impressive. Here are a few features that are sure to please. • The easy way to develop 152 homes around two parks in the middle of a golf course would result in 152 garage doors facing the curb, giving the streetscape the look of a forbidding wall of flat, square panels. At Hokulani, not one garage door faces the street. “We have chosen a ‘courtyard’ approach, instead,” said Bob Leistikow of Signature Development Hawai‘i. “You drive in off the street and into the garage.” It’s a curving driveway. “And we didn’t want the curbsides of the homes to look like garagesides either. So, we’ve put in a lot of extra windows in the garage walls.” The result is a feeling normally only possible if there is room for a service road behind the homes so garages can be tucked away in back, but 24 real estate maui style

that adds a lot to the land use and development costs. Cleverness trumps wastefulness in this case. • The layout of the community ensures that no two 2-story homes are side-by-side, increasing both your sense of privacy and your actual privacy, and giving the whole community a curb appeal that is almost “Old World.” • When you move into a Hokulani villa you can say, “Now, I’m cooking with gas,” and it won’t just be a figure of speech. Gas cook tops and gas water heating are provided in every home, along with the rare-on-Maui gas lines to deliver the fuel. What’s more, the built-in ovens are combos, microwave-conventional. Speaking of the kitchen—an area where each family’s taste can be very personal— you get a lot of choices and a lot of help with your choices. The standard kitchens are far from “standard” in any sense of the word. They have custom cabinetry with glass-accented uppers, granite slab countertops with ceramic tile backsplashes, stainless steel appliances and a stainless steel sink, recessed overall lighting and pendant light over the center island which has a snack bar overhang. And there’s a formal dining area as well. If that’s not to your taste, everything can be changed, and you can really see what you’re choosing or changing. Exclusively Yours on Alamaha Street in Kahului has built a full-size Hokulani Golf Villas kitchen in their store. When you go there, you can walk right into your kitchen, get a real-life feel of the space, and then decide what you want to change. Better yet, all the standard appointments are given definite dollar values, and those amounts are treated as discounts against the appointments and features you choose to buy. So, getting a different countertop, for instance, costs the price of that countertop minus the value of the one that would have been included. This is not standard operating procedure for developers, but it’s part of how Signature is trying to make it easy for you to both choose Hokulani and choose your specific place in the Hokulani community. Palmieri put it this way, “Between Signature’s cooperation and Exclusively Yours, the interiors can be completely

Some tours propel you to earlier, simpler times on Maui or, maybe, remind you of them.

The back nine of the Elleair golf course surround the 152 homes of Hokulani Golf Villas. real estate maui style 25

Maui Style ❘ LivingMaui

Even the community pool and club house at Hokulani Golf Villas are carefree and luxurious—with great views.

customized. Mix, match, use just some of the standards. You can go completely crazy.” • Every home in the development is being prepared for your high-tech preferences. Pre-wiring includes all the electricity and outlets every family needs for contemporary life. That’s probably to be expected. Signature goes above and beyond by also roughing in the wiring for a high-tech security system and surround sound system, too, and the high-tech wiring package includes plenty of jacks for cable and phone lines. So, no one will have to tear up your walls or spend hours weaving wires into the existing structure to accommodate your modern lifestyle.

• Price matters, and these homes sound like they’d sell for much more than $1.1 million to $1.5 million. You expect a much higher price tag on Maui these days if you’re getting tiled lanais accessible from both the great room and the master bedroom, an on-site infinitywaterfall swimming pool, clubhouse, Monier tile roof, keyless entry, ceramic tiles in the baths and laundry room, finished garage interior, gourmet kitchen, vaulted-coffered ceilings, walk-in closets, ceramic tile shower and luxurious soaking tub, high-efficiency air conditioning, and 200 amp electrical service. That’s all grand, of course, but then there are the “million-dollar views.” How can these homes be sold at these prices? An important part of the

answer is in the timing. The permitting for the development was completed back in the early 1990s when the fees and concessions required of developers were much less. “We were ahead of the affordable housing thing,” Leistikow said. That alone represents a major reduction in the cost of development. • On Maui, those views can really matter. The homes facing Elleair’s holes 10, 11 and 12—along the Piilani Highway—are at about 81 feet above sea level, a little higher than that area of the golf course, too. From there, the property rises steadily putting the homes at the top, around the 18th hole, at least 170 feet above sea level. What that translates into is views, views and more views. From some lots, the views include

BELOW: The community plan prevents any two 2-story homes from being built side-by-side, giving the streetscape a far-fromsubdivision appeal.

She's not lost, but maybe lost in thought, in the quiet seclusion of a forest splashed with colorful gingers. 26 real estate maui style

the West Maui mountains in the distance and fairways up close with blue water and sweeping coast between. Others look out on the slopes of Haleakala, but also have ocean views and manicured fairways nearby. • All this talk of living on a golf course has to lead some potential homebuyers to think of the game itself. There’s good news on that front, too. Your special residents-only deal with Elleair Golf Club can start as soon as you buy a Hokulani Golf Villa, no matter when your home will be ready for move-in. The residents’ package, according to Leistikow, is 100 rounds in a year for just $2,500—and 32 home buyers had already qualified for that deal by December 1. There are about 120 more chances. No hard choices to make there. Granted, no development is perfect for everyone. This one—the Hokulani Golf Villas—is a dead-on match for people who want to combine the liberties of condo living with the joys of separate home ownership. The rest of it—the luxurious appointments, the views, the cohesive community, the convenient Kihei location and the customizing options and choices, not to mention the golf course—is bonus upon bonus. You can’t go look at a Hokulani home yet. The first actual construction is expected to begin about now, some time around the beginning of February, and the build-out could take as much as two-and-a-half years. You can, however, get all the information you need to make your choices—including viewing an amazingly realistic video simulation of the finished development—by calling Realtors Palmieri and Wendy Peterson at ‘Aina Maui Properties. REMS

Passing by, drivers see no garage doors facing the street and, very intentionally, they see no real evidence of garages.

This is just an artist’s conception of the kitchen and dining area in a Hokulani villa. You can see a real kitchen at Exclusively Yours in Kahului.

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