FSR REAL ESTATE NEWS

VANCOUVER - If you’re in the market for an eight-bedroom, eight-bathroom Spanish Revival heritage mansion overlooking the Fraser River, Vancouver’s iconic Casa Mia is for sale once again.

The Southwest Marine Drive home was listed for sale in 2008 for $10.5 million and 2007 for $12 million, and realtor Manyee Lui has the $10.5-million listing again.

The 20,782-square-foot home was built in 1932 for George Reifel, a liquor magnate and rum runner during Prohibition who opened the Commodore Ballroom around the same time.

In 2007, Vancouver Sun reporter John Mackie had a tour of the house, and the following description comes from a profile article he wrote.

The house has an entrance hall with a dramatic vaulted ceiling that curves from one end of the house to the other, and in the middle is a grand staircase, that swoops around a two-storey high rotunda. At the top is a coffered Elizabethan ceiling, which includes small portraits of people. The rotunda is lit by an amazing five-foot-tall chandelier that blends the art deco and arts and crafts styles.

Casa Mia has its own ballroom in the basement, complete with a sprung dance floor, men’s and women’s washrooms and a stage. The Casa Mia ballroom was done in the art deco style, and is virtually unchanged. The walls are golden, and there are subtle deco bas relief sculptures on the walls. The bathrooms are simply dazzling — the walls in the men’s washroom are painted black, and are decorated with a golden Indian chief shooting a golden arrow at a golden stag.

Many of the rooms have wood panelled walls, are a very large. There are several fireplaces in the home, including one that is intricately carved and bears the name MacLean, after a doctor who owned the house in the late 1960s.

The real showpiece is up in the third floor tower. Originally a storage space, when Jane Reifel was born in 1938 her dad brought some artists up from Walt Disney’s studios in California to remake it into “Dopey’s Room,” a playroom featuring murals of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

George Reifel died in 1958, and his wife sold the house, at 1920 SW Marine Dr., in the late 1960s to Ross MacLean. Nelson Skalbania owned it for a while in the 1980s, and the house has been extensively renovated and updated twice. In 1998, it was put on the market for $20 million, but the house went into foreclosure and sold for $4.2 million in 2000. A year later it was sold again for $5 million.

According to BC Assessment, the 2011 assessment is for $3,339,000 and the land is worth $8,384,000, for a total assessed value of $11,723,000. These are up from the $9,830,000 assessed value for 2010. The owner is listed as Maria D. De Lando.

Lui responded to a call on Sunday, saying the owners were not seeking publicity at this time.

With files from John Mackie