I’m all about ways to cut back on the stresses of shopping for a new home because, if we’re being honest here, house hunting can be a patience-testing, marriage-wrecking, blood-pressure-raising affair. So I was pretty jazzed to hear about Coldwell Banker Pacific Properties’ Waikiki is Open event on Sunday, Sept. 12 from 2 to 5 p.m.
You know when someone tells you, usually in a hushed, conspiratorial whisper, about some too-good-to-be-true deal and you think, ‘Yeah, sure, right. As if?’ That’s pretty much how it went when a friend recently tipped me off that the Niihau Apts. building on Beach Walk Ave. in Waikiki has fee simple condos listed for sale for less than $300,000. And pigs can fly and I own a unicorn, or at least that’s what was running through my mind as she told me. But, lo and behold, the Niihau does exist, and there are currently a couple active listings for units in the building, all for less than $300,000.
The Leiahua is one of those buildings along the Ala Wai Canal that you’ve probably passed by a million times and not given a second thought. Its stout, concrete construction (more bunker than apartment building) and fabulously funky, mid-century-modern, concrete-screen-block façade are telling of its age (the Leiahua was built in 1965), but, thanks to a recent interior renovation, it’s probably best not to judge this book by its cover.
