Casa de la 500: Still for Sale, Pagodas and Dragons Included

One of Mérida’s most theatrical and rumored-about private homes is still looking for a buyer — and after three years, it’s asking a good deal less.

Casa China, better known as La Casa de la 500, is the pagoda-roofed landmark on a corner lot along Avenida Líbano in Colonia México, and has been on the market continuously since at least 2023, with its price now down to MX$30.4 million (about US$1.76 million), according to a Century 21 México posting. That’s well below the 40 million pesos the house was asking three years ago.

The corner lot covers 1,600 square meters of land, about 0.4 acres, with 876 square meters of construction, or roughly 9,430 square feet. The current listing describes four bedrooms, four full bathrooms and a half bath, a large kitchen, a living-dining area and a bar built for entertaining, plus two staff bedrooms with their own bathroom — six bedrooms in all, consistent with earlier reporting. A separate laundry area, an oversized closet and parking for two vehicles round out the floor plan.

What sets Casa China apart from Mérida’s usual inventory of colonial casonas isn’t the square footage — it’s the architecture. Pagoda-shaped rooflines, delicate latticework and dragon motifs at the entrance give the house an East Asian character that’s rare in a city better known for French mansard roofs and neoclassical columns along Paseo de Montejo. The interiors lean just as bold, with a decorating style Yucatán Magazine previously described as unapologetic 1980s glamour.

The house belonged to Miriam Echeverría y Boldo, a pioneering Mérida businesswoman who died in 2022. She opened El Guacamayo, a restaurant on Calle 60 in the Alcalá Martín neighborhood, at a time when few women in her social class went into business at all. Friends remembered her as elegant and statuesque, a lover of fine art and poetry, and a supporter of the Red Cross and of groups helping patients recover from drug and alcohol addiction. Her exact age was never widely known, but in her later years she was a familiar sight running errands around town with a gold-handled cane.

A separate account published by Posta México in 2025 adds color to that history, describing Echeverría y Boldo as one of the first Mexican travelers to take advantage of early international flights, with trips to Japan, China, Thailand and India that inspired the house’s design. That report also traced the nickname La Casa de la 500, to decades-old gossip claiming Echeverría y Boldo charged a fee for her company — rumors it characterized as prejudice against a wealthy, independent woman rather than anything grounded in fact.

Whether the lower asking price will finally move the property remains an open question. A buyer drawn mainly to the corner lot’s location could choose to tear the house down rather than preserve it. Mérida’s upper-tier housing market has kept climbing overall this year, with homes in premium northern neighborhoods routinely listing above MX$7 million. Against that backdrop, Casa China’s price cut hasn’t pushed it out of the city’s top tier — it’s just made three years without a buyer a little easier to explain.

La Casa de la 500: Fast Facts

• Property: Listed as Casa China, but better known locally as La Casa de la 500
• Location: Calle 19 No. 96, corner of Avenida Líbano, Colonia México, Mérida
• Land size: 1,600 m² (about 0.4 acres)
• Construction: 876 m² (about 9,430 sq. ft.)
• Bedrooms: 6 total (4 main, plus 2 staff bedrooms)
• Bathrooms: 4 full, 1 half, plus a staff bathroom
• On the market continuously since at least 2023, per Yucatán Magazine’s earlier coverage
• Current asking price: MX$30.4 million (about US$1.76 million)
• 2023 asking price: 40 million pesos (about US$2.2 million at the time)
• Original owner/builder: Miriam Echeverría y Boldo (died 2022), founder of restaurant El Guacamayo
• Listing agency: Grupo Oro + ME, Century 21 México

With reporting from Yucatán Magazine’s 2023 coverage of the property, Century 21 México’s current listing and Posta México, with supplemental pricing data from MercadoLibre real estate listings