“This is a marketing technique that benefits everyone,” adds Lulek, who’s asked for donations a few times on high-end properties. “When you list a home of this calibre for sale, all the neighbours are curious. We’d have a lineup 24/7.”

The seven-bedroom, five-bathroom home dates back to 1906 and can only be renovated, rather than razed, because it has been designated a heritage property.

The biggest selling feature of this “private estate” is its cottage-in-the-city appeal: It’s one of just a dozen or so homes across all of Toronto where you can swim right from your front yard.

In this case, however, you can’t have a fear of heights or an aversion to exercise: There are a few dozen weather-beaten stairs to navigate before you hit the water.

The home’s front deck, built to maximize views of soaring trees and the sparkling lake, has yet to be finished. There are guest/nanny quarters in a converted two-storey brick garage out back of the main house, along with a greenhouse attached to some additions. The current owners bought the home in 1998 for $1.6 million.

What’s billed as a “pool house” — and looks more like a wood-covered baseball dugout — sits to one side of the front yard.

The taxes alone will set you back almost $25,000 a year.

This is clearly a place where privacy is paramount: The owner claimed she was pulling the place off the market when The Star requested a tour. There are no pictures of the interior on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), although some inadvertently were posted on an online home-tour site.

A few grace a glossy marketing brochure and show a main house that looks less grand than a lot like Grandma’s. The kitchen may lack a Wolf range or a Sub Zero Fridge, but it does boast two dishwashers.

The wow factor is in the spacious living and dining room with French doors and oversized windows looking out over the lake.

Lulek laughs when asked why there is so much secrecy about the house which is hard to miss: It marks the end of Queen St. E. and the beginning of the exclusive Fallingbrook area.

“Anybody is welcome. We’ve had a few showings and the calls are still coming in, so it’s not like we’re driving people away.

“The view is the best in Toronto — that I can tell you for sure.”

Worth the price of admission.

Gee, I dunno, folks.

I don’t want to be a downer here, but does anybody else think that this might turn potential buyers away?

The goal in selling any product or service – and keep in mind that the goal here is to sell the $5 Million house, not to make $50/head for viewings – is to make it easy and convenient for potential buyers to access the product or service.

It’s like they’re trying to push customers away.  Kind of like this:

Not everybody that purchases a home sets out to do so.  And by that I mean that sometimes, a buyer doesn’t even know that he or she is a buyer, and might just be walking along, and happen to walk into a house for sale that the person ends up buying.

I know that this house is $5 Million, and there probably aren’t any passer-byers that are going to cut a cheque on a whim, but the idea of turning off potential viewers by charging admission still rubs me the wrong way.

We’re in a day and age where you have to do everything possible to get people into the property.  Flashy MLS listings, open houses, wine & cheese, newspaper ads, online classifieds, ‘Just Listed’ cards, private viewings – anything an agent can do to get people into a house is worth doing, as you never know where the buyer is going to come from.

By charging $50 to see the house, even if it’s for charity, I fear that the seller of this home might be turning people away.

I’m sure that the buyer of a $5 Million home is well-versed in what is currently available, but what about that one person who happens by on a weekend open house, tells a friend, who tells his or her company president in London, who happens to be moving to Toronto?  Long shot?  Perhaps.  But a lot of real estate is found by word of mouth, and by turning away hundreds and hundreds of viewers for this home, the seller risks losing that word of mouth.

Or, maybe all this attention is a good thing.

This house was written about in the above article by Toronto Star real estate reporter, Susan Pigg, and it was also in Toronto Life as well.  It’s been all over Facebook, Twitter, and I heard about it on AM640 as well, so maybe the publicity makes up for the potential loss in viewers by charging $50?

$5 Million houses don’t sell overnight, so I don’t know that if and when this house sells, we’ll be able to conclude if this process helped, or hindered.

I’ll keep an eye on it and update the blog when that happens…