Condos For Sale

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When you say UpCountry to a Maui resident, they will automatically think wide open spaces, cattle and horse ranches, cowboy country. It’s where the horse culture is alive and well on Maui. Condominiums usually usually conjure up urban-scale density, multi-story buildings, with a shared ownership. Few of those urban-like structures exist UpCountry. Instead, given UpCountry’s low density, even condos tend to be in a residential scale. There are residential condominiums in Pukalani and even Kula, but they look like ordinary single-family homes instead of standard condos.

A feature of Maui’s residential development is that the island has a number of neighborhoods – especially UpCountry – where the minimum lot scale is two acres. This pattern grew out of the fact that the land is zoned for “agricultural” use, and existing law allowed developers to turn large farm lots into two-acre subdivisions. Here’s where condominiums come into the picture: ordinary agricultural zoning implies that the owner is allowed to live on the land he/she “farms.” It does not allow for the land to be further subdivided: you can’t cut your two acres in half and sell a half. But it does allow for an owner to “condominiumize” the lot into two or more condo units (pending on its size.) The zoning will not allow for any additional density, however, it does permit a main home and a 1,000 square foot “cottage or ohana.” So owners can condominiumize their land and sell the additional unit(s), and the right to build the cottage to live on it. Know that when researching UpCountry condos, you may see references to residential condos on one-acre lots. This is what those ads refer to.

As you can imagine, buying a condominiumized property takes additional steps and more legal awareness than the usual fee simple purchase. This is a case where the buyer must have expert advice and guidance to make sure that everything goes as planned. The Smith Team stands ready to provide that advice and making sure that you can get as good a deal as possible when buying UpCountry condominiunized property.