Remember the fake mansion which gained notoriety as Canada's most expensive listing?

Time to do a little catch up today.

You all remember our February 27th post about Canada's most expensive listing and it's role as the latest chapter in Vancouver R/E media manipulation?

It was the West Vancouver property we dubbed the 'fake mansion' because the pictures were of a non-existent house.

As the photos went viral around the world, the reality came out about how the  media was duped.

After the hype died down, some semblance of reality set in. On September 3rd we told you how the asking price of the property was reduced by $25 million (or 66% ). That reduction brought the asking price down to $12,888,000 for a property assessed at $6,768,500.

Last month our infamous fake mansion finally sold, we are told, for $8 million.

Did Canada's most expensive listing suffer Canada's greatest price drop?  Or is it another property that sold for way over assessed value?

Like so much in real estate these days, it could be both a glass half empty and a glass half full.

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Wed Post #2: Huffington Post carries story of 'fake mansion' being marked down $25 million.

On Tuesday we told you  how West Van's infamous 'fake mansion', once Canada's most expensive listing at $38 million, had been marked down by $25 million.

We wondered if the Vancouver Sun or Province newspaper would pick up on the story with the same gusto shown back in February when they helped the fake pictures go viral around the world, but to date there's been no response (thus reinforcing their inevitable slide into irrelevance).

But that doesn't mean the mainstream press is ignoring the story.

The Huffington Post has picked up the ball and run with it: Canada's Most Expensive House Marked Down by $25 Million (hat tip: Many Franks):

One day you're Canada's most expensive house, the next you're just a teardown on a ritzy piece of land.

A seaside property located at 3810 Marine Drive in West Vancouver, which was the country's priciest listing last February, has been marked down from $38 million to $12,888,000. That's a hefty drop of $25 million and change.

Current listing agent Lionel Lorence, couldn't say why the original asking price was so high, but acknowledged there was little reality behind the colossal tag.

"The real estate values on the West Vancouver waterfront are rich prices, but this one when it came out, at $37.9 million, seemed to be exorbitant," he told The Huffington Post B.C.

The house itself is a teardown, but the value is in the land, The North Shore Outlook reported in February.

The rancher bungalow built by a shipping magnate in 1964 sits on a 34,000-square-foot lot with unobstructed views of the waterfront, with enough space to subdivide the property into three estates.

That's how West Vancouver realtors Laura McLaren and George Tsavdaris came up with the price at the time, figuring that any of three lots could be worth $10 million, while the house itself could go for $7.9 million, they told the newspaper.

The agents may have been a tad hopeful in pitching the prospect of a subdivision, said UBC real estate expert Tsur Somerville.

"It seems very, very optimistic on what they'd be able to get from the city in terms of a rezoning or a subdivision," he said.

Canada's most expensive home today is anything but a teardown. For $35 million, you can have a nine-bedroom Shaughnessy mansion with stained-glass windows, an art deco parkade and an oak-panelled elevator.

Tsur Somerville paints the realtor's responsible for that debacle - Laura McLaren and George Tsavdaris - as a 'tad optimistic.'

Personally we say Tsur is being a 'tad' polite.

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Once Canada's 'most expensive listing', asking price for West Van's 'fake mansion' slashed by $25 million (or 66%)

You all remember the infamous 'fake mansion' we told you about back in February 2013?

The notorious tear down property at 3810 Marine Drive in West Vancouver gained worldwide notoriety for it's ridiculous $38 million listing price, the most expensive Canadian real estate listing at the time (it's assessed at a lowly $6,768,500).

This highly promotable fact was embellished by listing agents who profiled the property with extensive interior and exterior pictures of a gaudy, ostentatious mansion.

Just one problem... no such mansion exists. Here is what is actually on the land for sale:

One could argue it was all a brilliant marketing ploy.  

An asking price which made it the most expensive home for sale in Canada along with accompanying pictures of an over the top palace... a sure-fire formula for worldwide media interest, right?

Said one of the listing real estate agents at the time:

“Who’s going to buy this house?” Tsavdaris asked rhetorically. “A king of China will buy this house, or a Bollywood movie star will buy this house.”

More likely, a developer will buy the house and subdivide the property into three separate estates. In fact, there has already been some movement on it.

“We’ve had offers on it but unfortunately they haven’t come up to the price that’s wanted by the seller,” Tsavdaris said. “All the offers we’ve had have been from developers to build three monster homes there. But we’re hoping to find that one candidate from Bollywood or from China that would want to keep it as one property.”

After it was pointed out to the media that the mansion pictures were fake, the listing agents insisted that there wasn't any deliberate attempt to mislead and that the fake photos were merely:

"a rendering of what could be built on this property."

A media frenzy erupted and the online editor of the Vancouver Province was moved to respond to our blog.

So how did that marketing strategy work out?  Did the house ever sell?

Observer, who moderates the excellent blog Vancouver Price Drop, tells us the property is not only still on the market - it has experienced yet another significant cut in it's asking price, the third since it made headlines in February.

• The February 2013 asking price was for $37.8 million.
• In March it was cut to $28,888,000.
• In April it was down to $19,888,000.
• And on Labour Day weekend the asking price was slashed to $12,888,000.

For those keeping track that's a drop of $25 million or 66%.

(And even at that it's asking price is still double the current assessed value)

$25 million taken off the asking price that made headlines around the world at the start of the year?

Surely this has to be Canada's most reduced property now as Canada's most expensive listing now harbour's Canada's biggest price drop. Do you think the Vancouver Sun or Province will hype this fact in one of their gallery features now?

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Is reality starting to creep into the Greater Vancouver real estate market? - Updated

As sales continue to lag and it becomes apparent that the removal of the HST is not going to trigger a house buying frenzy, is some semblance of reality finally creeping into the Lower Mainland real estate market?

Realtor Arnold Shuchat is out with his latest price drops for Vancouver and Richmond. Leading the Vancouver price cuts is #208-1001 Richards Street.

This 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom condo in downtown Vancouver is currently assessed at $331,000.  Up until this week the owners had been asking an insane $629,000.  They have now slashed their asking price to $366,900 - a 42% drop.

It's still priced too high but at least it's more realistic and a sign sellers are starting to accept the reality of the market.

Another such sign comes from our perennial favourite at 3390 The Crescent:

We first profiled this 6 bedroom, 8 bathroom 10,516 square foot mansion (which sits on over an acre of land in the heart of Vancouver's toniest neighbourhood) back on November 22, 2011.

The current owners bought this home in April 2004 for $6 million.

In 2010 the home was listed for sale for $17.9 million, but there were no takers at that 'bargain' price.

After looking at the high prices mansions were commanding in Shaughnessy (a house that sold in 2010 on Angus Drive for $5.7 million was assessed in 2011 at $9 million), the owners jacked their asking price from $17.9 million to $31.9 million.

That's right... the home failed to sell so they doubled the asking price.

(For reference the house is currently assessed at $16,076,000)

In September 2012 the asking price was slashed to $22,000,000. This week it was cut again, this time back down to $17,800,000.

Still over assessed value, but another insane asking price has been trimmed to just over assessed value.

(hat tip UBC in crisis mode)

Finally there is the infamous Fake Mansion in West Vancouver.

This was the West Vancouver waterfront tear down assessed at $6,768,500 whose chief selling feature was the fact the property could be subdivided into 3 lots.

The seller was asking $28 million but when there were no takers, the agent listing the property gained world wide attention when the house was portrayed as Canada's most expensive listing (asking price raised to $38 million).

To help drive attention, images of a mansion that doesn't even exist were posted with the the listing and the property went viral on the internet.

When the dust settled from the resultant brouhaha, the asking price was cut back to $28 million.

Now the seller has ditched the original realtor, listed with a new agent, and the asking price has been dropped to $19,888,000, that's 48% slashed from that ridiculous February asking price.

(hat tip Observer)

As Observer notes, this property might well now lay claim to the biggest price drop in Canadian history - $18 million and counting. Chop another $10 million from the price and it just might sell.

Observer is now out with his top 10 price drops of the week and the list provides more evidence that sellers are begrudgingly accepting reality. You don't even make this week's list of price drops unless you have chopped $4 million from your asking price! A statistic which, in and of itself, is just too bizarre for words.

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The Province's Online News Editor responds to the "fake mansion" story; offers intriguing glimpse into newspaper syndication

Meet Erik Rolfsen.

Erik is a news editor with The Province newspaper.  He oversees the digital team at TheProvince.com. From this Linkedin profile:

I was the first journalist at the Vancouver Province to be assigned digital-only duties. I’ve been immersed in online news ever since, leading the transformation of our print newsroom into a digital-first operation. I oversee the team that edits our web, mobile and social media content, which includes breaking news, enterprise features and special projects. I also collaborate with senior management and other corporate departments on new product development and strategic planning. Mostly, I think about what news coverage is going to look like three years from now and try to act like we’re already there.

Erik stopped by our little corner of the Internet yesterday to respond to our post about The Province perpetuating the fake mansion photo in an article on March 4th.

While here, Rolflsen offered an intriguing glimpse into how the digital news media of our nation's newspapers work.

He also engaged in a little Q and A with some faithful readers. In case you missed it, here's what Mr. Rolfsen had to say.

Regarding the March 4th article::

If you had been paying attention two weeks ago when every media outlet in town was scrambling to post a gallery of this phony house, you might have noticed that The Province was the one outlet that had it right. That's because I personally picked up the phone and questioned the agent representing this property about the suspicious images. He graciously explained that they were indeed artist's renderings. We included this information on the photo gallery we published on our site at the time (we were the only ones to do so), but we later suppressed it altogether because it seems pointless to show people photos of a house that doesn't exist.

The story you reference above is a wire story from Canadian Press that was packaged by CP on Monday and appeared on our site via an automated feed to which we subscribe. Clearly they searched the archives for a recent listing to accompany their story and grabbed one of the renderings. I see that somebody has since brought the error to their attention and the photo no longer accompanies their package.

Thanks for the attention, though.

Erik Rolfsen (Province News Editor)

Many Franks asked:

Erik, I'm genuinely happy to hear you folks are sniffing around this corner of the web. What about this gallery?  It also appears to have made the rounds in other papers, though there's no AP byline I can spot. It pretty clearly mistakes the virtual mansion for an actual one.

Erik Rolfsen:

That's not ours, it's a Calgary Herald copy of a gallery originally compiled by the Vancouver Sun. It's a long story, but try replacing "theprovince" with "montrealgazette" in that URL and see what happens. Did the Gazette just get fooled, too?

Many Franks:

Erik, I'm not qualified to tell you how your business runs, but are you saying The Province is not responsible for the news content that shows up under its own domain name? I understand that the content is compiled from a lot of sources, but it's tenuous to claim that the Province "had it right" while that gallery, which is clearly incorrect, is still active under your domain name and banner. I actually think the Vancouver Sun did fairly well in making up for their own journalistic lapse by being the only outlet that I've seen to actually publish a correction or retraction.

Erik Rolfsen:

The reasons that gallery is able to appear under our name are highly technical, far beyond our control and extremely frustrating to us, so yes, that is what I'm saying. I could not edit that gallery right now if I wanted to, because it is the Calgary Herald's and I do not have access to it.

I'd love to show you the gallery we compiled and posted on Feb. 18 with the correct information, but we made a decision to suppress it and it's going to stay that way.

When realtor Laura McLaren was quoted in the Feb. 28 post that the "media that we did speak to got the story right," she was referring to The Province, possibly among others.

Many Franks:

That does sound frustrating. As News Editor you've done your homework, but nonetheless the paper you represent is running content that is clearly incorrect. To the reader, the distinction between editorial and technical failure is invisible (if not immaterial); at least the "Vancouver Home Sales Plunge" story had a CP byline to indicate its source.

Ray:

Fascinating that theprovince, calgaryherald, montrealgazette, and who knows how many more are completely interchangeable. Just the headers change to make it look like it's your news. Probably all the more reason to make sure these types of country-wide articles are fact checked. I agree with Many Franks, this shouldn't exempt you from responsibility for posting it, however. Not to mention, you know the story is false, and you have no way to disconnect your feed of this article from the group. Laughable

(Rolfsen) doesn't seem to be bringing anything to this conversation except excuses. It's time to get the "highly technical" team together for this shared URL manipulation scheme they have going and add three more requirements:

1. Ability to edit the source's post in case of emergency

2. Ability to delete/suspend an article from Canada-wide circulation if it's found to be misrepresented.

3. Ability to disconnect a single article from the group, stopping local dissemination at the local Editor's choice.

Am I really the only person to think of these?

Erik Rolfsen:

No. 2 is certainly possibly under our existing system. I've just sent the request to Calgary.

Later in the evening, both the photo attached to the March 4th Province article and the gallery of 13 fake mansion pictures had been removed from The Province's online sites.

We salute Mr. Rolfsen for taking the time to explain the situation, answer some questions, and for taking action to delete the infamous pictures from The Province sites.

While there are still a number of lingering questions about the whole "fake mansion" story that bother us, we'll address them in a future post.

In the meantime, Mr. Rolfsen says: "The Province was the one outlet that had it right. That's because I personally picked up the phone and questioned the agent representing this property about the suspicious images. He graciously explained that they were indeed artist's renderings. We included this information on the photo gallery we published on our site at the time (we were the only ones to do so), but we later suppressed it altogether because it seems pointless to show people photos of a house that doesn't exist."

We're curious and hope Mr. Rolfsen will answer two more questions:

1. How did the news story originally come to the attention of The Province causing Mr. Rolfsen to personally pick up the phone and question the agent representing the property about the suspicious images?


2. The Province, after originally publishing the photos, later suppressed it altogether because it seemed pointless to show people photos of a house that doesn't exist.  What prompted The Province to even bother running the photos in the first place if they knew they were fake?

Finally... the $38 million dollar "fake mansion" listing has just had it's asking price slashed by $10 million dollars to $28,888,000.  It's no longer Canada's most expensive property listing and all the phoney pictures are now gone.

As Democrass joked on VCI, the downturn in housing prices spreads - it is now affecting both real and fake houses.

We do live in interesting times.

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Fake mansion photos appear again, this time in the Vancouver Province. Is it time for the RECBC to draft guidelines for the way a listing can market a property? - UPDATED

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UPDATE: See below for response fron Vancouver Province Editor Erik Rolfsen

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Yesterday we talked about the big news in real estate this week, the release of the R/E sales statistics for February, 2013.

The story was in all the media, but did you happen to notice the March 4th Vancouver Province Newspaper article titled "Vancouver home sales plunge 29% in February, prices fall"? (that's a screenshot of the story above).

 Did you notice the picture and caption accompanying the story?

The photo caption says: "The exterior of 3810 Marine Drive in West Vancouver.  The 5,500 square foot waterfront mansion is listed for $38 million."

Of course, if you follow this blog (and clearly the Province Newspaper does not), you know there is no such mansion. The house pictured isn't really there.

How is it that one of Vancouver's daily newspaper's continues to perpetuate this fallacy, particularly since the Province's sister newspaper - the Vancouver Sun - has already issued a statement about why it pulled the photos it published?

You will recall that Business in Vancouver explored the issue:

BIV noted that:

The story first appeared in the North Shore News on February 18 about a house listed for $38 million, accompanied by a photo of the real house, a sprawling rancher-style suburban home.

The fake photos went viral when the story was picked up by the Vancouver Sun, who added a photo gallery showing gilt-covered rooms in the style of Louis XVI and the opulent exterior of the house, taken from the realtor’s website.

The paper neglected to say that the images were photo illustrations. On February 25, the Sun published a correction, and the story has now been removed from its website.

But by then, the story had been picked up by the U.K.’s Daily Mail, who published the photos on its website under the headline: “The $38 million Vancouver mansion that is Canada's most expensive home and also one of its ugliest too.”

Realtor Laura McLaren said the blogger is wrong and that the photos on her site, which have now all been removed apart from the external shot (pictured above), were always identified as photo renderings of "what could be built on this property."

“The pictures are renderings and you can see that they’re renderings … Each picture had ‘these are renderings,’” said McLaren.

But as we noted in our original post, the main page of the real estate agent's website gave no indication that the photos were renderings.

When you clicked on the listing, the summary page showed 19 thumbnail photos.  This summary page also gave no indication that any of these photos were "renderings".  

The official explanation is that this was all clearly explained in small captions on the individual photos themselves.

The media frenzy supposedly erupted when the fourth estate horde (and misguided bloggers) failed to research the issue. If they had only read the fine print on individual photos from the agent's website, the media would have known better and not run with the errors in this story. 

Yes, there were 19 photos in the agent's webpage listing.  Yes, 13 of those 19 photos showed a 'fake' mansion... and yes, there were only two actual photos of the real house on the property in that listing (aerial ones at that and no interior pictures); but the fine print explains it all?

Is this really an acceptable way to present a property for sale in the eyes of the Real Estate Council of BC?

(One has to wonder that if it's a property being promoted for 'what can be done with the land', why is it there were no 'renderings' promoting how the lot could be subdivided into three - it's chief selling feature? Why no photos of what the property might look like with 3 smaller mansions on the site alongside those of the gaudy mansion showing what could be done if one house were built?)

So what we have here is a story the North Shore News originally published February 18th (a story, it must be noted, that only carried one photo - that of the real teardown bungalow), morphed into one that was picked up by papers like the Edmonton Journal on February 19th (which carried the North Shore News reporter's byline - but now sported the fake mansion photo prominently), and by Saturday February 23rd it exploded onto the pages of the Vancouver Sun complete with all 13 'fake' photos presented as the actual mansion for sale (and going viral world-wide after that). 

Over a week later - even after having been exposed as fake - the gaudy facade is still being propagated by the Vancouver Province as an actual home for sale.

How was this allowed to happen?

How did this story morph so badly from the one that appeared February 18th in the North Shore News as a teardown bungalow to the one that appeared February 19th in the Edmonton Journal as a gaudy, opulent mansion?

Don't the 'renderings' and the way they were presented play a key role here?

As one contributor to the comments section of this blog observed, if this is the new standard for real estate marketing in Greater Vancouver why not simply graft a picture of the Burj Khalifa overtop of the local crack shack property?

If the Real Estate Council of BC (RECBC) doesn't have guidelines to protect the public, why not fake things in a big, big way?

In the meantime, perhaps the RECBC can contact the Vancouver Province and set them straight on what's actually on the land at 3810 Marine Drive?

Someone should do something to sort out the ongoing media confusion.

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UPDATE: Response from Vancouver Province Editor Erik Rolfsen posted in comments section:

If you had been paying attention two weeks ago when every media outlet in town was scrambling to post a gallery of this phony house, you might have noticed that The Province was the one outlet that had it right. That's because I personally picked up the phone and questioned the agent representing this property about the suspicious images. He graciously explained that they were indeed artist's renderings. We included this information on the photo gallery we published on our site at the time (we were the only ones to do so), but we later suppressed it altogether because it seems pointless to show people photos of a house that doesn't exist.

The story you reference above is a wire story from Canadian Press that was packaged by CP on Monday and appeared on our site via an automated feed to which we subscribe. Clearly they searched the archives for a recent listing to accompany their story and grabbed one of the renderings. I see that somebody has since brought the error to their attention and the photo no longer accompanies their package.

Thanks for the attention, though.

Erik Rolfsen (Province News Editor)

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Fake condo line ups, fake press photo ops, fake buyers... and now fake houses?- Updated

We've spent a lot of time this month covering the shenanigans of the local real estate industry.

• We've told you about fake condo line ups (wherein ads appeared on craigslist for people to stand in line for condo pre-sales).
• We've told you about fake press photo opportunities.
• We've covered incidents where realtors have been caught posing as fake buyers.

But has it stooped so low that realtors are now faking the very existence of the house that is for sale?

For the past couple of days the blogosphere has been talking about what appears to be the latest example of deception in the media (hat tip Many Franks).

Over the weekend, the Vancouver Sun carried a story about the most expensive home currently listed in Canada. It is located at 3810 Marine Drive in West Vancouver.

Google the story and you will find the two google links in the image above.

If you clicked on them on the weekend, they would have lead you to this story (this version was in the North Shore News):

Attached to the story was this picture gallery showing you this gaudy home, presumably for sale on this property:

Go through the gallery and you will see these images.  Each picture has a description of what you are looking at and the website of the listing realtor:

There's just one problem, there's no such house on this property.

Don't misunderstand, the property at 3810 Marine Drive exists - and it is for sale.  But the house in these pictures does not exist.  All of these pictures are fake in that they do not represent anything at this property.  

Here is what is really there:

It's a 50 year old tear-down rancher/bungalow.

How on earth do you justify showing pictures of a Versailles-style mansion in place of a 50 year old tear-down house?

When the Vancouver Sun was alerted to the fact the pictures were of a house that didn't actually exist on that property, the Sun promptly removed their article and issued this statement:

The Vancouver Sun last week published a story and photo gallery online about a West Vancouver waterfront home at 3810 Marine Drive listed for $38 million. The Sun has since learned that the photos on the listing realtor’s website are artist’s renderings and not photos of the actual home on the property. The home on the property is a rancher/bungalow built in 1964. Realtor Laura McLaren says the images on her website depicting a mansion “are renderings of what could be built on this property.”

So how is it that the Vancouver Sun came to publish this article and these pictures? Clearly when they learned the mansion did not exist, they removed the article and the photos.

Were they duped? And if so, by who?

If you go to the realtor's site, the Vancouver Sun is correct...  the house is a featured listing on the realtor's website, complete with these photos:

And nowhere in the description that we could find does it say the house isn't really there; that the photos are "renderings of what could be built on this property."

(note: the ariel photo of the rancher/bungalow is included with the photos of the Versailles-style mansion in the listing on the realtor's site)

But as Many Franks said, "Of the 19 images on the realtor’s website, two thirds are total fiction. There are only two photographs of the actual house you’d get with your $38 million. None of the interior fantasies include any indication that they don’t really exist."

Even if the press came across the listing on their own and published their story without any prodding from someone in R/E, what the hell is going on in the real estate industry?

Is it not a deception to list this property with these pictures without clearly indicating that the fictitious house isn't really there? Doesn't transparency demand at least a prominent notation that the house pictured in the majority of the listing photos does not exist?

Certainly the lack of transparency fooled the Vancouver Sun into running this story!

Was the whole purpose of the fake pictures a means to garner free advertising as the media runs this as a "news story"? Would any media outlet have run this story without those pictures?  We think the fact the Vancouver Sun promptly removed their story when they learned the house didn't exist speaks volumes.

How is it that the Real Estate Council of BC stands by and seemingly allows the public/press to be continuously mislead?

There are supposedly over 11,000 realtors in the Lower Mainland alone.  But the reputation of the majority is being significantly tarred by a few.

Allegations of media manipulation like the ones we have covered this month should be throughly investigated and serious wrongdoing should result in expulsion from the profession, plus hefty fines.  And the results of those investigations should be widely publicized.

The integrity of the industry is at stake here.

Is anyone looking out for the public in all of this?

I would love to hear the personal thoughts of some of the realtors out there in the comments section of this posting.

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UPDATE: The listing on the homepage of the realtor has now been modified and all the "fake" house pictures have been removed with the exception of the one exterior pic.  That single exterior pic used to be the lead pic for the listing, now it is not (it's number 7 in the thumbnails below).  Still unclear why that one pic is even there to begin with.

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UPDATE 2: The "fake" house image on the listing on the homepage of the realtor has now been modified to indicate it is an image of what 'could' be constructed on the property.


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