Real Estate Twist: Luxury Homes Sold Without Being Listed Publicly for Sale

A penthouse at the exclusive Park Lane Ala Moana condominium in Honolulu recently sold for $27.5 million, a record price for a condo on Oʻahu and one of the highest prices ever for a residential property on the island. But the four-bedroom, 4.5-bath unit with a private garage and private elevator is remarkable for something else: It wasn’t listed for sale.

Private sales, or off-market transactions, are now happening more in Hawaiʻi, where real estate inventory is tight in all categories, but more pronounced at the highest end of the market.

“We are now at a place where in some markets we have more off-market listings in the ultraluxury space than we do on-market,” says Hawaiʻi Life CEO Matt Beall. “There’s just not much inventory of ultraluxury homes to begin with.”

Statewide, only about 87 residential properties are publicly listed for sale at $10 million or more, according to Hawaiʻi Life’s website. For someone looking to spend $20 million or more, that number drops to 18 homes and four vacant lots.

Matt Beall is the CEO of Hawaiʻi Life.

Beall says the off-market listings are across all islands, but particularly on the Neighbor Islands, and especially on Kauaʻi, where 10 properties are listed for $10 million or more, and none for $20 million or more. But those are just the listings you can find in the multiple listing service.

There are more off-market ultra-luxury homes available on Kauaʻi than those listed on the MLS, says Beall, who adds that the number of off-market listings on Hawaiʻi Island and Maui are higher than usual, too.

Why Not List the Home?

There are several reasons why some homes don’t sell the conventional way, with publicly available online MLS listings and traditional marketing by real estate agents and firms.

Sometimes it’s driven by buyers who aren’t impressed by anything they see on the MLS. In the case of the Park Lane penthouse, Erik Hinshaw and Noel Pietsch Shaw of Hawaiʻi Life had taken their client to see several single-family homes and luxury condos listed on the MLS, as well as private offerings, but none appealed to the client. Finally, Hinshaw and Shaw used their connections to get their client in to see the Park Lane property and the client made an unsolicited offer via the seller’s agent, William Robillard of ChaneyBrooks Choice Advisors.

Some sellers decline to put their homes on the MLS, instead opting for a private listing. If the agents follow the National Association of Realtors’ policy governing such listings, they only market the property to existing clients and to other agents within their firm, Beall notes.

“That further restricts marketing something when it’s not in the MLS,” he says. “It’s not the most effective way to sell real property.”

Limiting the marketing often means the home will take a lot longer to sell, but not always. Beall notes that one prominent private listing in Kailua-Kona was expected to take more than a year to sell. It sold after only two months in 2021 for $43 million.

Some sellers, especially if they’re high-profile executives or celebrities, don’t list their properties for sale because of security or privacy concerns. Others may be testing the waters before listing a property in the MLS.

“Sometimes this person has an asset that they don’t really need to sell but they would if they got the right price for it,” says Beall. “They wouldn’t sell it for less.”