Howard Schultz has been one of Hawaii’s rich and famous neighbors for years, and if that comes as a surprise, you’re probably not alone. When people think about famous Hawaii homeowners, names like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison and Jeff Bezos tend to come up first, while Schultz rarely enters any conversation even though the former Starbucks CEO bought a home at Hualalai Resort on Hawaii Island back in 2015.
Now that chapter’s over. Schultz sold the property via FaceTime for $36 million, a residential record for Hualalai, closing out a long stretch of Hawaii ownership that many Beat of Hawaii readers probably never connected with him to begin with.
Howard Schultz’s Hawaii chapter ends.
Schultz paid $25 million for the Hualalai estate in 2015, when Forbes reported the purchase and described the eight-bedroom home on 1.8 acres inside the resort development. This wasn’t a secret acquisition that somehow escaped notice. It was reported at the time, but Schultz never became one of those names that seemed permanently attached to Hawaii in the public imagination.
How this ownership ended is hard to forget. The estate was never formally listed on the MLS, and the buyer already owned a smaller home in the same community. After seeing Schultz’s property over FaceTime, the buyer agreed to the asking price, and the estate went under contract within a week without an in-person tour.
It sold for $36 million, $11 million more than Schultz paid in 2015, and surpassed Hualalai’s previous residential sales record of $30.2 million. The estate includes eight buildings totaling about 15,400 square feet with eight bedrooms, all spread across 1.8 acres.
It’s the kind of Hawaii property that never became a familiar part of Hawaii’s rich-and-famous conversation.
Howard Schultz wasn’t part of the Hawaii celebrity conversation.
Several years ago, we put together our look at 37 Rich And Famous Who Call Hawaii Home, and the fun wasn’t just seeing who owned what. It was realizing how often famous people turn up in completely ordinary Hawaii places, sometimes right next to people who recognize them and sometimes next to people who don’t even know who they are.
We’ve had our own share of those moments. Beat of Hawaii editors ran into George Clooney at Hanalei Bay, Charo while shopping at Longs Drugs in Lihue, Pierce Brosnan at Macy’s and Bruce Willis at Starbucks. Those encounters had nothing to do with mansions. They were about the odd collision between celebrity and ordinary island life here, when someone known around the world is suddenly buying toothpaste, getting coffee or walking through a department store just like everyone else does.
That’s the energy Schultz never seemed to generate. His name didn’t become common in Hawaii the same way, and when we assembled that earlier list, he wasn’t on it at all.
Hawaii readers own rich and famous sightings.
The comments on that earlier article became a second story of their own. Readers told us about famous people they had crossed paths with around the islands, and some of those stories came from the Kona side of Hawaii Island.
One reader told us she had met Go-Go’s singer Jane Wiedlin after Wiedlin bought furniture from her and said she lived on the Kona side. The same reader said her husband had encountered Neil Young at Hapuna Beach. Another reader remembered seeing Kevin Costner at the Marriott Waikoloa and said Costner and Dennis Hopper had spent time at the restaurant and bar there.
Another reader told us he’d heard that Ed O’Neill had bought a place on the Kona coast. That kind of reader-to-reader island conversation is exactly what made the original rich-and-famous article so much fun. Some stories were about confirmed homeowners, some were chance encounters, and some were simply the kind of local word-of-mouth that starts with, “You know who I just saw?”
The point was never to turn those sightings into some property registry. It was how recognizable people can become part of ordinary Hawaii life without any announcements.
Howard Schultz had famous company at Hualalai.
Hualalai itself has long attracted owners who don’t necessarily become part of everyday celebrity coverage. Public reporting over the years has identified homeowners there including Citadel founder Ken Griffin, Columbia Sportswear chairman Tim Boyle and Charles Schwab.
Those names help explain why Schultz could own such an extraordinary property for so long without becoming a name most readers associated with Hawaii. In a place where enormous wealth is hardly unusual, simply owning a home doesn’t guarantee that anyone beyond the immediate community will talk about you.
That is very different from Mark Zuckerberg’s growing Kauai footprint, Larry Ellison’s ownership of Lanai or Jeff Bezos’ Maui estate, where the name and the island connection became part of the public story. Schultz’s Hualalai ownership never seemed to make that jump.
Some Hawaii names stick, and others don’t.
That difference is what makes the old 37 Rich and Famous article interesting here. Some famous names become almost inseparable from the islands where they spend time, while others remain very easy to miss. The readers who commented on that article weren’t especially interested in celebrity net worth or someone’s square footage. They remembered where they saw people. They remembered who was at Longs, who was getting coffee, and who turned up somewhere completely ordinary here in Hawaii.
Schultz never really entered that category for us. Despite owning one of Hualalai’s most valuable homes since 2015, he remained more connected in the public mind with Starbucks and Seattle than with Hawaii.
Howard Schultz leaves Hawaii for Florida.
Schultz and his wife Sheri have relocated to South Florida. The move put them closer to their family on the East Coast, and they reportedly purchased a roughly $44 million residence at the Four Seasons Surf Club in Surfside.
That gives the Hualalai sale an obvious explanation, but the Hawaii part remains the interesting part to us. One of America’s most recognizable business figures had been part of the islands’ rich-and-famous landscape for years without ever really becoming part of the conversation.
Then his Hualalai home changed hands in an unusual way that almost sounds made for this story. The buyer saw it over FaceTime, never toured it in person, agreed to pay $36 million, and had it under contract in about a week.
We somehow never had Howard Schultz on our earlier radar for Hawaii’s rich and famous. Now, just as some of us are finally talking about his connection to the islands, he’s no longer one of them.
Have you ever unexpectedly run into someone famous while visiting or living in Hawaii? We’d love to hear your story.
By Rob and Jeff, Beat of Hawaii.
Some of the most meaningful parts of Hawaii are the ones visitors walk right past without knowing they are there. We’ve spent nearly 20 years finding them firsthand for BOH as full-time Hawaii residents reporting on travel, culture, and island life, and telling you what they mean for your trip. Join us →
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