Kawamoto to sell homes
By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer
Gensiro Kawamoto, the Japanese billionaire who used "pocket money" to buy nearly 200 Hawai'i homes in the late '80s, has listed roughly a third of the properties for sale.
The mass listing of about 65 homes should not negatively affect the market, real estate brokers said yesterday, but if the properties are sold it would represent the first significant paring of Kawamoto's massive investment in Hawai'i real estate.
Kawamoto's Honolulu attorney, Carol Asai-Sato, said she did not know why the real-estate tycoon decided to put the properties on the market, or whether he planned to sell his other 100 Hawai'i homes.
Only one property up for sale by Kawamoto, a home on 'Elepaio Street in Kahala listed for $850,000, would be considered high-end, according to Asai-Sato.
The rest are generally middle-market houses and condominiums.
Jim Wright, president and principal broker of Century 21 All Islands, said he expects the properties to be absorbed "pretty naturally" without influencing values of other homes.
"It'll have a negligible effect," he said, explaining that inventory is tight right now in a market selling about 600 homes a month.
Herb Conley, co-managing director for Coldwell Banker Pacific Properties, said there are more than 3,000 homes on the market here, and that the Kawamoto listings add about $19 million worth of property to $825 million of available inventory. "It's not enough to have any significant affect," he said.
Neither Wright nor Conley are involved in selling the Kawamoto properties.
The billionaire, who made his fortune in real estate in Japan, began acquiring houses and condominiums on O'ahu 15 years ago following a trip to Hawai'i in which he said he noticed there were many houses for sale but a shortage of rental properties.
So he bought homes mainly in Hawai'i Kai, Kailua, Waikiki and Kahala to rent out. In all, he spent at least $85 million on the purchases.
Kawamoto, who always paid cash, was known to buy houses after seeing them only from the curb, and he solicited homeowners whether their properties were on the market or not.
He paid top dollar for several high-end properties, including $42.5 million for the leasehold interest in the former estate of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, before scaling back to buy $200,000 to $300,000 homes at market prices.
Community members and politicians criticized Kawamoto as one of many land speculators from Japan who drove up property values. But Kawamoto said he was not a speculative buyer, and that he planned to keep the properties as 10- to 20-year investments.
In mid-1988, Kawamoto bent to public criticism and cut short his plan to buy as many as 1,000 homes here.
Since then, Kawamoto has sold few of his Island properties. In 1994, he abruptly turned the Kaiser estate over to landowner Bishop Estate, to which he had been paying lease rent of $1 million a year.
According to property records, Kawamoto has sold just three properties since 1990, for a total of $7.5 million.
Kawamoto, 69, continues to visit Hawai'i but no longer maintains a residence here, his attorney said.
Recently, Kawamoto has been caught in a dispute with neighbors over driveway access in Kahalu'u, where he owns a 130-acre property on which he wants to build a vacation home.
Reach Andrew Gomes at agomes@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8065.
