The planned 801 South St. condominium tower in Honolulu reserved for middle-class buyers is being called a sellout after a lottery last week.
Nearly 700 slips of paper corresponding to prospective purchasers were pulled from a barrel tumbler at the event Saturday to select buyers for units priced from $253,200 for studios to $501,300 for two-bedroom units with two bathrooms.
Those entries — 697 to be exact — combined with earlier purchases will be more than enough to sell all 635 units in the 46-story tower, according to Ryan Harada, a principal with the project’s developer Downtown Capital LLC.
"It was a really great response," he said. "We were very pleased with the results."
Marshall Hung, a veteran affordable-housing developer who heads Downtown Capital, wasn’t surprised by the demand based on his experience with similar projects on Oahu.
"This project addresses the critical shortage of housing that Hawaii’s residents can afford in Honolulu’s urban core," he said in a statement.
Units in 801 South St. feature granite kitchen countertops and frosted-glass lanai railings, but units are relatively small. Common-area amenities include a meeting room with a kitchen but no pool or gym.
Unit sizes range from 384 to 816 square feet.
Monthly maintenance fees are projected to range from $185 to $315.
Project plans were announced in August, and earlier this month about 4,000 people visited a sales office where interested buyers could enter the lottery provided that they met a provision that restricts units to buyers who earn no more than 140 percent of Honolulu’s median household annual income. All participants in the lottery also had to agree to live in the unit they buy.
The income limit equates to $84,574 for a single person or $120,820 for a family
of four.
Downtown Capital said all its units are affordable for buyers within the income limit, even though state rules permitting the project with extra density requires only 75 percent of units meet the criteria.
The developer was required to offer half the units in the project first to owner-occupants under state law. That requirement was exceeded with the lottery, since about 400 units were made available to lottery entrants. Another roughly 235 units were previously sold.
Harada said construction on the tower is expected to begin June 1 after the May 31 expiration of a lease allowing the producer of the "Hawaii Five-0" TV show to use parts of the property for offices, a soundstage, sets and other uses.
Downtown Capital bought the 3.7-acre property bordered by Kapiolani Boulevard and South and Kawaiahao streets last year from Gannett Co. for $22 million.
The site had long been home to the Honolulu Advertiser and Star-Bulletin newspapers. Downtown Capital has committed to preserving the historic News Building on the mauka-Ewa corner of the site for office use. A second tower with 400 units is slated to follow the initial tower, though the timing for that has not been set.
Participants in the lottery for the first tower will be able to select units in the order of the drawing results starting this weekend, and will be required to make a deposit of 10 percent of the unit purchase price if they select a unit and qualify for a mortgage loan.
Completion of sales won’t occur until the building is finished, which is expected in 2015.
