Tuxedo house waiting for buyer with $7.45M

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/05/2010 (5649 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT might be the most expensive home ever listed locally, but industry insiders say the $7.45-million Tuxedo gem that hit the market late last week is nowhere near the priciest home in Winnipeg.

Glen Williams, one of the two listing agents for the swanky 13,200-square-foot house, said there’s at least one other home in the city that’s worth between $12 million and $14 million. And there are others worth around $10 million.

The Century 21 Bachman & Associates agent also said there are a lot more of these “world-class quality homes” in the city than most people realize.

He estimates there are at least a dozen homes that have been built or redeveloped in the last five years that are worth between $4 million and $14 million. WinnipegREALTORS president Claude Davis said that’s probably a conservative estimate.

Davis said there are buyers forking out between $400,000 and $670,000 just for a vacant lot on Wellington Crescent, then spending millions more to build a house on the property.

A perfect example is the late Izzy Asper’s former home on Wellington Crescent. A Winnipegger bought that property for $1.25 million, tore it down and replaced it with a new $12-million home, Davis said.

Then there are buyers who purchase older mansions and spend millions fixing them up rather than tearing them down.

“If we took a drive down Wellington (Crescent), I could show you at least a half a dozen homes where people put three or four million into them,” Davis said.

Manitoba Home Builders president Mike Moore said it’s difficult to know how many of these trophy homes are being built in Winnipeg because the owners usually don’t want people to know how much they’re spending.

“Winnipeg isn’t the type of town where you show off that kind of thing. That’s just the way we are. We don’t show off our money.”

And you wouldn’t necessarily know by looking at these homes, because some of them are $1.5-million houses on the outside and $6-million houses on the inside, he added.

A good example might be the two-year-old Tuxedo home that now has local tongues wagging. Its owners spared no expense when it came to tricking out the interior of their dream house.

Williams said the five-bedroom raised bungalow — it has a walkout basement facing on a manmade lake — took three years to build.

The grand staircase alone took five men seven months to fashion and is made from recycled white oak taken from a 200-year-old, Amish-built barn in the United States.

The wooden handrails on the staircase are covered in leather installed by the British Royal Family’s leather crafter, who was flown in for a month to work on the project.

“It’s like (luxury) homes you’d find in San Diego or Florida in terms of the world-class construction and finishings,” the Williams said.

Peter Squire, the WinnipegREALTORS residential market analyst, said the million-dollar question now is who will buy the property.

But Williams, who is co-listing it along with RE/MAX Professionals Claire Hoffer, said they’re confident they’ll find a buyer. And even though it’s being marketed across the country and on RE/MAX and Century 21’s international listing sites, Williams thinks the buyer will be someone from Winnipeg.

He said they sat down a few weeks ago and prepared a list of Winnipeggers they thought could afford a house like that, and even he was shocked at how many names they came up with.

He wouldn’t disclose how many, but said, “There are significantly more than most people realize.”

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca

Big price, big commission

HERE are a few more facts about the $7.45-million Tuxedo listing, the local luxury homes market and the impact this sale might have on that market:

— Real estate sales commissions are open to negotiation. But if the sellers get their asking price and agreed to pay a commission of between five and seven per cent, for example, they’d be forking over between $375.000 and $450,000.

— Previously, the most expensive resale home ever listed on the local Multiple Listing Service was a 9,000-square-foot mansion at 761 Wellington Cr. that hit the market more than a year ago at $3.3 million. It’s still for sale, but the asking price has been reduced to $2.8 million.

— If someone buys the house for $7.45 million, they can also look forward to shelling out $146,650 in provincial land-transfer taxes.

— Local real estate industry insiders say the house could establish a threshold for super-high-end sales. And it could give others added confidence to spend big bucks on a home in Winnipeg.