Whistler’s most expensive home sale to date — worth $17.5 million — is in the works, providing further evidence of the confidence high-end home buyers have in the resort community and all it has to offer, two of the real-estate professionals involved in the deal said last week.

If the pending transaction for the home at 6715 Crabapple Drive in Whistler Cay is completed, it would eclipse the previous high of $13.3 million paid for a home in Sunridge a year ago. Before that the largest single transaction for a Whistler home was the $11.2 million paid for a large home on Falcon Crescent in Blueberry in May 2005.

Pat Kelly, president of Whistler Real Estate Co. (WREC), which is representing the buyer in the Crabapple Drive transaction, said the prospective purchaser is “an international businessperson who spends some time in Vancouver and spends some time offshore… it’s not somebody of celebrity, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s a businessperson.”

The deal for the 5,000-square-foot, wood-and-stone home with an in-law suite on five acres is still in the works, but Kelly said he’s fairly confident it will be completed.

“There’s no reason to believe it won’t happen as we believe it’s going to happen, but we don’t want to do anything to jeopardize anything at this point, either,” he said, adding that he anticipates the sale will be completed in a matter of weeks or months.

The selling agent, Maggi Thornhill of Thornhill Real Estate Group, said the deal is considered “firm,” meaning that all the subjects have been removed. All that’s required now is for the transaction to close, she said.

Thornhill confirmed the sale price of $17.5 million. The property had been listed for sale last July at $22 million.

Thornhill said Whistler-based Vision Pacific, which also built the Falcon Crescent home, initiated construction of the Crabapple Drive home and had just put the roof on when it was sold it to rock star Seal, who sold it to the current owner. She said the home was “just a shell” when Seal purchased it, but that the current owner had hired highly skilled tradespeople to complete the project.

The sale of the Crabapple Drive home would be the fourth purchase of $10 million or more in Whistler during the past 13 months. WREC represented the buyer in all three of the other transactions as well. John Ryan is the selling agent in the Crabapple transaction and in two of the three aforementioned $10-million-plus deals, Kelly said.

Taken as a whole, the four most recent high-end deals demonstrate the confidence that high-end buyers have in the resort, Kelly said.

“Remember, a buyer of this nature can probably purchase just about anywhere he wants, so what does that say about the community and what it has to offer? It’s a landmark sale and a real indication of how the rest of the world views Whistler,” Kelly said.

“It’s (the prospective sale) a validation of the vision that people have had here for past 20 or 30 years.”

“I think (the pending transaction) says that people acknowledge that Whistler is one of the finest places to invest,” Thornhill said. “People are not afraid to put a large investment into this town because it truly is one of the world’s best places. We have some of the finest skiing in the world — there’s really no comparison — and then to get the bonus summer stuff is kind of the icing on the cake.”

The sale also reflects strength in the overall luxury home market North America-wide, in spite of the general downturn in the home sale and construction markets in the United States, Kelly said.

“It’s not specific to Whistler,” he said. “I think what is defined as the luxury market has continued to be strong throughout the last 12- or 13-month period. In contrast to the media and some things happening in the States, the luxury market continues to be strong and is actually growing. We are following the pattern of other resort luxury markets.”

However, Kelly said he doesn’t expect Whistler to go the way of Aspen or Vail, Colo., with rather ordinary homes selling for $4 or $5 million. He said that’s because the dynamics of Whistler’s market are different from the dynamics of those U.S. resorts.

The largest single-family home transaction in B.C. history is the $28.2 million paid last month for a luxury home in West Vancouver, according to Landcor Data Corp.