[Carl Johnson]

Originally Posted by xpl0sive

At the end of the day, it's still a 20,000sq ft house on 20 ACRES of land.

To build something like that and to buy that much land, you're looking at at least

$3mil+ for the land + ($150-$200sq.ft x 20,000 sq.ft = Average $3.5mil) = $6.5mil.

I'm guessing the house will end up selling for around that price. I don't know what area of Abbotsford it's in, but it could be a decent investment for someone who wants to live in a 20,000sq ft house... If the zoning permits it, you could cut off 10 acres from the property, subdivide it into 10 1 acre lots and build 10 5-6000 sq ft houses on them.

Math is something like this:
Initial investment $6.5mil
Cost of develepment of 10 lots + building costs = 6,000 sq ft house x $200 / sq ft (taking into account actual land development costs, utilities, etc) = $12mil
Sale of 10 houses on 1 acre lots at an average price of even $1.8mil = $18mil

You end up with a 20,000sq ft house on 10 acres of land for $500k give or take. Maybe even free

It might be elementary to say this, but how much it cost to build a house have no correlation with how much it is going to sell. The market do not care about sunk costs. Some thing the developers of Vancouver probably don't want to hear. My main point is that people who buy these houses for the "wow factor" will greatly be disappointed later on because they grossly exaggerated the benefits and underestimated other costs with these big houses.