BUYERS with $38 million to spend and enough left over to fill 5,500 square feet of mansion might be interested in a recent house listing in West Vancouver.

A suburban waterfront palace at 3810 Marine Drive was recently put on the market with the asking price of $37.9 million.

The home is the second most expensive mansion ever to be listed in Canada, trailing only one other West Vancouver property – an estate on Camelot Road that was put on the market in 2010 with an asking price of $39.9 million.

The Marine Drive mansion was originally put on the market with an asking price of $30 million in 2011, but the potential to subdivide the lot has bumped up the price.

The house could easily be divided into three parcels, according to Laura McLaren, a real estate agent handling the home along with George Tsavdaris.

“Basically, the value is in the land. There’s no value in the house,” she said. “The house is very, very dated, very old. It has not been upgraded.”

The home, built in 1964, has an assessed value of $6.7 million. But the listing is based on what could be built on the estate,

said Tsavdaris, explaining the online photo illustrations featuring a dome, numerous gold accents, and minarets rising from the roof. The home’s most distinct feature is its view, he said.

Originally built for a shipping magnate, Tsavdaris said the 12-foot windows were strategically designed to make the most of the home’s 400 feet of ocean frontage.

“I think the shipping magnate actually built the house because he was probably monitoring the flow of ships coming through the Burrard Inlet,” he said.

Asked how the home has changed since 1964, Tsavdaris answered: “It hasn’t.”

The current owners, who have lived on the West Bay property since 1978, are looking for something smaller, according to McLaren. “They just want to pull the value out of the land. It’s the last piece of flat waterfront,” she said.

When asked who would be interested in buying the home, Tsavdaris started to answer and McLaren finished.

“Someone who fell in love with (the property) and (could see) the potential of living a long time with the sunshine coming down,” he said.

“And (who) had a lot of money,” McLaren said. The new owner will likely be Chinese or Iranian, according to McLaren.”Or somebody that just really wants to be king,” she said.

jshepherd@nsnews.com