Tony Simao owns a simple, four-bedroom home in Kaimuki with an unusable kitchen and two broken bathrooms.

So he was understandably stunned when he opened his mail last month and learned his land and 26-year-old house are now assessed at $1,095,400.

Thanks to rapidly rising land prices, Simao has joined the nearly 15,000 O'ahu homeowners, or more than 6 percent, who now find themselves with homes and condos worth more than a million dollars.

"Does this look like a million-dollar house to you?" Simao, 65, asked last week as he stood in his torn-up kitchen on Seventh Avenue.

"The house is falling apart."

In all, 7,389 homeowners crossed the threshold to the $1 million level this year. Many are working-class families living in unassuming homes, including some in unlikely places like 'Ewa, Kalihi and Waimanalo.

Many of them have no intentions of cashing in. To them, there's little benefit in owning a million-dollar home. Certainly none that offsets the sudden increase in their property taxes.

The real value for them comes from their histories, the anniversaries, birthday parties and other events celebrated in their houses — and from the memories of raising families who are now returning with their own children.

They're the flip side of million-dollar investors who have helped drive up Hawai'i's real estate prices in the past few years by buying homes, renovating them and then "flipping" them for quick profit.

"It's not for sale," said Hilda Silva, 84.

Her husband, Edward, 83, built their three-bedroom, three-bath house in Kaimuki more than a half-century ago. In 1964, Edward added a fourth bedroom to accommodate their growing family.

"We had three boys and then we had a girl afterwards, plus the mother-in-law," Hilda Silva said. "So we had to add on."

As is the case with many other homeowners, the Silvas' 10,000-square-foot lot on Ninth Avenue is worth far more than the 2,834-square-foot home: $971,300 for the land and $117,400 for the building, for a total value of $1,088,700, according to city property records.

It's a home that has welcomed too many family celebrations to count, like the Silvas' 60th wedding anniversary last year that drew their children, grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren from as far away as California.

"We certainly don't have a million dollars," Hilda said. "It's just a livable house. Just a normal house. Nothing fancy. We're just happy to be here."

A year ago, only 7,606 single-family homes and condos were assessed at $1 million or more. This year, the number shot up to 14,995, according to data from the city's Real Property Tax Division, for a 97 percent increase.

Just four years ago, O'ahu had only 1,749 million-dollar homes and condos.

With the rise in million-dollar properties, city officials said, 6.1 percent of all developed and undeveloped parcels of land classified for residences and apartments are now worth $1 million or more. Last year, only 3.1 percent of all parcels were worth $1 million or more.

Condos are passing the million-dollar mark at an even faster pace than single-family homes. The number of million-dollar condos on O'ahu has more than doubled to 1,564 from 637 a year ago.

Plenty of O'ahu's new million-dollar homeowners like Larry McElheny have no intention of making a quick profit on their properties.

"I've lived in Pupukea for 35 years and I hope to live here another 35 years," McElheny said.

His latest North Shore home, a four-year-old cottage in Pupukea Heights, is in good shape. But he still doesn't understand why it's worth more than $1 million.

"It's just one room, a bathroom and no kitchen to speak of, really," McElheny said. "It's just a weekend getaway cottage. But I'm not going to sell it because I can't think of any better place to live."

From a tiny place on the North Shore to a 14-bedroom multigeneration home in Kalihi, many million-dollar home owners haven't even thought of selling.

Carmen Almaida's Kalihi complex of three attached units already houses 17 people — many who are related. Last week, 14 other relatives from the Mainland and Neighbor Islands began arriving for a nephew's wedding.

They, too, planned to cram themselves into the 5,858-square-foot compound of 14 bedrooms and eight bathrooms in three separate dwellings, said Felizardo Plata, Almaida's son-in-law.

"Everybody's staying here," Plata said. "They don't really care. We're all family."

Almaida, 91, and her late husband, Victor, bought the two homes on Farr Lane more than 50 years ago and started renovating them in 1977 and later in 1992 as they raised five daughters.

"This place will never be sold," Plata said. "It's in the will of my father-in-law that nobody can sell it unless everybody in the family says yes."

William Bye, 49, also hopes to keep his mother's three-bedroom, 2 1/2 bathroom home in the family.

His mother, Helen Bye, bought the 2,058-square-foot home on the makai slope of Diamond Head for $55,000 in 1971.

This year, the land was assessed at $1.27 million while the house is worth only $125,500, according to city property records. That's a total assessed value of $1.39 million.

Helen Bye died on Dec. 4, leaving the property to her sons, William and Roger, who are seeking appraisals to figure out the home's market value.

William finds himself in an odd situation because he hopes the appraisals are low enough to allow him to buy out his brother and move in. If he can't swing the purchase, then William hopes for a high assessment that they can use to sell the house at a good price.

Either way, William still can't understand why the house suddenly shot above the $1 million mark.

William said that when he grew up in the home while attending Punahou School in the 1970s, he had rich classmates who lived in true million-dollar houses.

"They were really something amazingly special," he said.

"A million-dollar house was something really, really nice — not like this house."

His mother's home sits just three blocks from the beach but rests 2 feet below street level and has no ocean view.

"The location is great, but the house is kind of on the small side and it's kind of shabby," William said. "It's had termites in the past and I'll have to tent it again in the next few months for drywood termites. The house is not in really bad shape, but most people would say it needs some fix-it stuff. ... It's been a real shock to see the value double in just the last few years."

Like many others, Lillian H. Fong, 83, struggles to understand why her three-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Pauoa Valley and her brother-in-law's adjacent three-bedroom home cumulatively rose this year past $1 million, even as the buildings continue to age.

"My house is termite-eaten already," Fong said. "At one time the roof leaked whenever we had a strong rain."

Fong and her late husband, Edward, raised seven children in the house, who in turn produced 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, who often visit her.

To Lillian Fong, the worth of her house cannot be measured in dollars.

"It's still the same old house," she said. "I don't think of it as being a million-dollar house. I'm just glad to have a roof over my head. I'm just glad to have a home."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.