Miro Cernetig
Sun
Villa Madrona, on .8 hectares of prime waterfront near Victoria, is up for grabs. It could be yours for $18.5 million ABOUT B.C.
LAND’S END, B.C. — This new, eye-popping fact should end any doubts that the West Coast is Canada’s most sought-after real estate: The three most expensive houses in the country today are all in B.C., with price-tags only the planet’s super-rich need even contemplate.
Canada‘s top-priced home is, according to Michel Tremblay of Sotheby’s International Realty, a mansion on the slopes of Whistler: price $20 million. Number two is The Villa Madrona, near Victoria‘s waterfront enclave of Land’s End: $18.5 million. Placing third is another Whistler mega-chalet: $17.5 million, with an indoor wave pool.
Toronto, the centre of Canada‘s economic engine and old money, offers the fourth-priciest home, a faux “French chateau” in nearby North York: $16.8 million.
Whether any of the homes will actually sell at such prices is anyone’s guess. Many analysts are openly talking about a real-estate bubble, with the Wall Street Journal suggesting it may already be bursting in some once-red-hot U.S. cities.
But what’s significant here is the broader trend: The West Coast’s best properties are now being bought up by the world’s wealthiest, at prices edging into the league of London, Los Angeles and New York real estate.
“It’s never happened before, that we’ve had the three most expensive homes in Canada all in B.C.,” said Tremblay, Sotheby’s vice president of sales and marketing, which has the listing for the Villa Madrona.
“Our target market is going to be your Microsoft executives or your dot-commer. Maybe someone working at Google right now.”
For a sense of what one gets in this range, a tour of the .8-hectare (two-acre) estate was arranged for The Vancouver Sun by veteran realtor Peter Nash, who shares the listing. He’s also a friend of the estate’s owners, Ralph Bodine, the former CEO of the Sunkist juice empire, and his wife Linda, who gave the tour.
A decade or so ago, the Bodines were on a cruise aboard the QE2 when another couple told them about Canada’s West Coast, then still an undiscovered secret for many in their social circle.
“They said, ‘Come and take a look,'” said Linda. “We did and we fell in love with Victoria and decided to make a home here.”
What they built, however, seems more like something harking back to America‘s gilded age. Finding one waterfront lot in Land’s End too limited for their dream home, they bought up four lots, which gave them two acres on the waterfront.
They then built a low-slung, 11,500-square-foot main home offering 180-degree views of the Pacific. They also installed antique wooden corner niches from the original Vanderbilt estate in New York, reassembled an authentic British pub in their living room to serve as a bar and built an indoor pool with an intricate Venetian mosaic featuring gold-gilded tiles.
The estate, with an electrical bill exceeding $20,000 a year, also features an orchid house, a greenhouse, a tea house, a glassed-in menagerie for parrots, a boat house and 10 English rose gardens, all under a canopy of cedar, redwood and madrona trees. While it was all being built, the Bodines lived in an original cottage that was later turned into a 3,500-square-foot guest and staff house, also with sweeping ocean views.
