On Friday afternoon, Meda and I drove over to the other end of Kahala to inspect the contents of one of those walled and gated Kahala Avenue homes. The home recently changed hands, and the new owenrs are getting rid of its contents in an online auction by McClain Auctions Hawaii. The auction bidding started on Thursday, and the final round of bidding starts at noon Sunday, where the items come up for last minute bids, a minute or so at a time.
Photos of the 350 items are available online. Just go to the McClain Auctions website, then click the link “View Auction” link.
This property is loaded with marble statues, inside and out. Clearly, our lack of life size, or larger than life size statues is terribly out of sync with the taste of those who designed this property.
We came away from our initial look at the items with the sense that we perhaps suffer from a little known malady, “Statuary Deficit Disorder.”
Note: This is not one of those former Kawamoto properties.
Real estate records show the property was purchased in 1986 by William Weinberg, who owned what was then known as the Kahala Hilton Hotel. It was purchased by a Japanese businessman in 1996 and immediately transferred to a Bahamanian corporation. It next sold in 2004 to a San Francisco-area real estate investor, who paid $4 million more than the previous sale.
And then in 2006, it sold to another Japanese company for $29 million (no, that’s not a typo), which then reportedly invested additional millions into the home.
It sold quietly last month for $15 million, based on the reported Hawaii conveyance tax of $187,500, to a California entity. That was $14 million less than the previous purchase price, and doesn’t include any additional investments between the sales in 2006 and 2023.
The new owner is reportedly eager to get rid of all the contents, renovate, redecorate, and flip!
The property consists of 1.5 oceanfront acres with a 9,896 sf home with a vast 4,500 sf lanai. The lanai alone is nearly three times the size of our house!
The auction listing describes the decor as Baroque/Rococo style. I don’t know if that’s an accurate assessment.
Whatever the label, it’s a breathtaking example of crazy excess, conspicuous consumption gone wild.
Imagine what it costs to light, air condition, and clean this monster! Add in the cost of landscaping and landscape irrigation, insurance, maintenance, and other normal expenses, not the mention the opportunity costs of tying up so much capital, that the monthly expenses must be truly staggering.
Here are a few photos I took as we walked through the property.
The large engine in one photo is the backup generator for the home’s air conditioning system.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It looks like a Russian Oligarch lived there. Show showy that it is tasteless!
This reminds me of the YouTuber, Enes Yilmazer, who does tours of very expensive homes. Interesting, but I agree — “crazy excess, conspicuous consumption gone wild.”
Nothing exceeds like excess….
From time to time over the years some oceanfront home owners in Kahala and elsewhere found ways to block required public access to the beach. Do you know if that is still a problem?
A generator big enough to light a whole city block? Heaven forbid that one’s monster home should go un-air conditioned if our Third World-level electric grid should go on the fritz. Another argument for a wealth tax.
Not to defend the obscenely rich but maybe we should focus more on why so much of our infrastructure on Oahu is so “Third World” with no end to the status quo apparent with Hizzoner Ricky B now piling on and touting the imminent operation of the doomed RailFail??
There is so much money in the USA. All in one corner. Obscenely sad.
“ Whatever the label, it’s a breathtaking example of crazy excess, conspicuous consumption gone wild.”
“No charm” immediately comes to mind.
Looks like a place corporations would rent out for a week of “team building” exercises and Powerpoint viewing.
Cover it all in gold leaf and maybe that guy in Mar-a-lago might buy it…
Coincidentally, I just got back from a short trip in Japan and discovered Yokohama has a “Kahala Hotel & Resort”. thekahala.jp
I was in it a few years ago when it was on the market. Like so many of the homes built in that area after the Japanese boom began in the late 80s, they are just big concrete boxes that require 24/7 A/C because few windows even open to the trade winds. I’ll take a C.W. Dickey design anyday.
I agree with Walker; Obscenely sad…. and really ugly too! I too suffer from the little known malady, “Statuary Deficit Disorder.” The whole things reminds me of the days of old Ronald Rewald…
The owner couldn’t decide between attempts at classical statuary and late modern sculpture. The furniture is also puzzling, let’s just say an attempt at modern eclectic in an effort to stay in sync with the architecture. Money can buy many things but not good taste.
Gruesome. Our family lived in four places along Kahala Ave at different times in my life. Every house was pretty simple, no AC for sure! In 2015 when I visited I was appalled at the “Miami Beach” feeling.