A West Vancouver property owner is looking for takers on a massive $40-million Chartwell-area luxury home - the most expensive residential listing in Canada. The only catch: It doesn't exist yet.
The proposed 21,000square-foot rancher, dubbed Camelot Estates by marketers, is planned for a 5.4-acre view lot near the top of 21st Street. Prospective buyers can scoop up the parcel and see it built out for $39.9 million, while more frugal shoppers can buy the land alone - actually three adjacent legal lots - for a bargain-basement $25 million.
"If you're the buyer looking for that ultimate luxury estate, it caters to you," said listing agent Charles Bilash. "If you're a buyer as a developer looking to make an ultimate neighbourhood - meaning a subdivision - well, that's also in the process."
Right now, the acreage is home to a 5,000-square-foot house, a barn and another, smaller home. The proposed development would replace those with a sprawling sixbedroom main house complete with a movie theatre, wine cellar, gym, massage room, billiards/ bar room, outdoor kitchen and living room, cabanas, "massive" infinity edge pool, "enormous" hot tub, indoor and outdoor ponds, three waterfalls, outdoor tennis court and putting greens and - no joke - 15-car garage.
If the owner starts to run low on space, he or she will be able to put up friends in an additional 7,000-square-foot guest house featuring four en-suites with patios, a second infinity pool, media room and three-car garage. A 2,600-square-foot separate maids quarters and office will be thrown in to boot. It will have its own boardroom, waiting area and bar.
As a kind of backup plan, the owner has already applied to the municipality to subdivide the parcel into 12 smaller lots. Those who are looking to invest and who have fewer than 15 cars - or who already have somewhere to put them - can buy the land by itself to sell off later in smaller pieces. The move would have substantial potential for profit, according to Bilash.
The estate has been listed for about a year, he said, but only came to media attention recently after the publication of a story about the priciest homes in the country. Even before the property hit the headlines, however, it already had several serious offers, said Bilash. So far, most have been from mainland China, a source of a much interest recently in highend Lower Mainland homes. A couple of those offers are still pending, he added.
"Originally, I have to say we were focused more on the U.S. marketplace," said Bilash.
"You see a lot of these mega estates around California, Laguna Beach, the type of place that caters to very wealthy people. . . . (But) slowly we started seeing more and more the level of interest, the showings and the offers coming from the opposite side of the world."
If neither the proposed home nor the subdivision appeal, prospective buyers do have the option of drawing up plans of their own, he noted. If they want, they have room to be significantly more extravagant.
"What we're offering is probably about 35 per cent of the square footage you can actually build on the property," said Bilash. "The main home is only 21,000 square feet. You can build up to 70,000. "You could build a Gates home on there, really."
