A West Vancouver seaside mansion that sold for $17 million sets a record for real estate in B.C., but it has many equals and betters in the world market.

The 11,000-square-foot concrete-and-floor-to-ceiling glass stunner at 3330 Radcliffe Ave. fetched $17 million, just under the $18-million asking price, when owner Doug Forster sold it two weeks ago.

He and the realtor are sworn to secrecy, but that hasn’t stopped some neighbours from speculating their street may be home to someone famous. Canadian rocker Bryan Adams, who now lives in London, used to live nearby.

Whoever it is, he better count on a good salary.

Yearly property taxes alone are almost $80,000 a year or almost $7,000 a month.

The five-bedroom behemoth sits on one acre, with 200 feet of shoreline, and has a swimming pool, media room, wine cellar and boathouse with ramp. It’s barely four years old and affords a sweeping view of Lions Gate Bridge to Vancouver Island.

The sale beats the previous record for most expensive home sold in B.C., a Whistler estate home on five acres of lakefront property that sold for $9.3 million.

Sounds exceptional, but alongside other more stately homes listed around the world on the web, it’s merely ordinary.

For the U.S. equivalent of $12 million, a homebuyer could get a 12-room apartment at the base of the Eiffel Tower in Paris with four bedrooms and staff quarters that were built more than 100 years ago for an Italian princess.

Or a 365-acre award-winning vineyard in South Africa, with a main house with four bedrooms, three staff houses and nine guest cottages.

For just a million more than that, a buyer could land Villa la Katira in Mexico, with its 10,000-square-foot, four-bedroom home, 30-horse stables, volleyball and tennis courts on 300 acres.

And for a piece of the famed Hamptons on the eastern shore of the U.S., $20 million US would buy a seven-acre oceanfront compound with a 3,000-square-foot main house and pool and other amenities.

© The Vancouver Province 2004