Built on Wrong Property 37

[TigerGuy]

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/hawaii-property-owner-left-stunned-095700264.html

This seemed more like a failure than a pub discussion. Developer and builder construct home on the wrong property and sue property owner to give up ownership.

Isn't this why we hire qualified surveyors and designers? To make sure things are done correctly, I would never dream of just thinking, "yep, this looks like the property."

 

[IRstuff]

She may be a nut case, but nut cases have rights too.

Why is "she" the nut case? She's the victim of corporate incompetence and belligerence. She neither asked for, nor wanted, an extraneous house on her land. She's being sued because the builder and their minions didn't do proper due diligence and they don't want to be on the hook for their screwup.

F' them and their high horse they're trying to ride in on; they get zero sympathy from me. All the fault is with the builder and they're trying to claim damages, so that's horseshite.

If it were me, at this point, I'd pay to demo the house and sue them for the cost of clearing my land of their dumped trash.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[1503-44]

Just playing devil's advocate myself. I hate it when pipelines go through burial grounds and parkland. Just don't be surprised, whatever the final ruling is. It could go either way.
When (if) honest mistakes are made that the judge thinks have a fair solution, it's entirely plausible that's the way it will go. Both sides must be seen to be looking for a fair deal and actual damages must be proven in their claim. Let's just try to keep track of what eventually happens.

--Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[TigerGuy]

If I had purchased property, and somebody else built a house on it, I'm not sure what I would do. I may follow these steps, not necessarily in order.

1. Call police
2. Call attorney
3. Invite the local TV crews to visit the site
4. Raise all kinds of commotion with the local building officials
5. Contact realtor board
6. Call all local surveying companies to discuss the situation
7. File lawsuits against builder, developer, realtor, title company, and anybody else I could think to sue
8. Contact the party from which I purchased the land to see what records they have
9. Contact the realtor that handled my purchase of the land

You want to buy me out of MY property that you illegally developed? It's going to cost you about 100 times what it's worth, just to make things get quiet again.

What would we say if somebody bought forested land, and a logging company came through and cleared it?

 

[EdStainless]

There was a case in MI not long ago where a company cut down trees on a neighbors property to improve their view.
They ended up paying to replace mature trees and some additional considerations.
As I recall something total just over $500k.

These building cases usually involve fraud where someone 'sells' land that they don't own.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[IRstuff]

These building cases usually involve fraud where someone 'sells' land that they don't own.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending...w-shes-being-sued/ZCTB3V2UDZEMVO5QSGJOB4SLIQ/

It's a pure screwup on the part of the developer and the contractor, on the face of it.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[1503-44]

Tiger guy, that illustrates my point. The landowner was so uninvolved with her property that she took none of those actions, until the cat was out the door. In some jurisdictions in the world that alone would be grounds for forfiture of title. The most productive use of the land wins.

--Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[LittleInch]

The thing I don't know here is what sort of official registration there is for land in Hawaii / US.

Here we have a land registry where all land which is bought or sold comes with registration and documentation and plans which defines what land you've bought (but not subsurface mineral rights or rights in the air above. Not all land is registered as some predates the register, but they are gradually getting there and any land bought or sold needs to be registered now. This register lays out any other agreements anyone else has to enter, cross or have things there ( like pipelines, power cables, water pipes etc) and lists the owner(s).

That is pretty much it. If someone else comes and builds something on land you own that is their problem not yours. There are ways where if the owner cannot be traced having given various investigations or notices then you can get it transferred, but only usually to local authorities or government departments building roads or similar infrastructure.

#this one from the video sounds like the kind of guessed which plot is was and didn't actually do a proper survey and only found out when trying to sell it that the plot coordinates or plans didn't match up. So just as well it wasn't sold as then the new owners would have bought a worthless house as they wouldn't have owned the land it sits on. It also says she ignored letters from the developer asking to buy her plot and ignored them. That's fair - I have a plot of land and get a letter very month or so from people wanting to buy it and Ignore them. If someone built a house on it I would not be happy... It would pretty much be cut and dried that I should not be out of pocket.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[1503-44]

Spain can get messed up quickly. There is a system that many don't observe. Some old properties never have been registered. Sales made by handshake 150yrs ago. I was going to buy a millhouse dated back to 1640 in Galicia, millsite occupied since Roman times, until we found that the land registry had some other person listed, who died, no clear line of inheritance, as the owner of the canal that brought the water up to the house. They kept that info secret. I refused to buy it, as they could not produce clear title. What is a millhouse without clear title to water access? Then I lost my case when I sued them to get my 25k€ deposit back, appealed that ruling, and then 5yrs later lost again. Theoretically all of that should have been entered into the national registry, but the law was totally ignored. Buy it, or lose your deposit. A lot of places is really simple, if you occupy it, you own it. Everybody understands that system. It's the unrule of law that can really mess things up. If I understood that, I'd own a millhouse and be generating 3 kW by now.

--Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[CWB1]

Stateside you cannot purchase or inherit property without the municipality processing the deed so the registered owner is almost always correct, even if small boundary issues seemingly never get corrected. Historically our country also took great pride in surveying, soil mapping, and other land issues to help farmers.

Stateside the actual usage of the land is irrelevant as we prioritize individual rights so land swaps are rarely accepted nor forced. We have tons of land that sits idle as part of various conservation and ag programs. Its also not uncommon for loggers, contractors, developers, and even municipalities to complete large projects on the wrong land, and be ordered to restore the land to its prior state or pay a huge settlement. In most cases the entity simply disappears into bankruptcy but occasionally somebody has to spend millions.

 

[cranky108]

The problem in the US is often there is no title review, just title insurance. So who is really on the hook? The title insurance company. So she is fighting the insurance company.
Only the lawyers win here.

 

[CWB1]

Title has nothing to do with it. Nobody's arguing that she owns the lot, nor that the developer owns the adjoining lot. The screwup is with whoever marked the ground and told the trades "build here."

 

[SnTMan]

And, somehow the previous owners of the property are at fault as well. How can that be, Ms Reynolds bought the lot at a tax auction?

Looks like plenty of screw-ups to go around



The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[Brian Malone]

The Lehto video in IRstuff's post cuts to the chase: the developer is off-base going after the lady who owns the land. They should move the house or tear it down, remediate the property and go after the team that did not identify the correct lot. Whether the lady is a little spacey or flighty is irrelevant to the failure and fault.

 

[phamENG]

As an attorney once described it me, they are obligated to sue everyone involved who might have shred of culpability or by whom there is a legal means of getting some sort of recompense. Because if they leave somebody off, their client can claim they were negligent and sue them for malpractice. So long as they don't cross the line into a truly frivolous lawsuit meant to harass or intimidate somebody, then they're just 'doing their job'. I don't like it, but as I understand it's not uncommon. Sort of like an HVAC problem on a new building and the entire design team gets named. The civil and structural engineers will likely get their names struck from the suit right away, but they were named because they were 'involved'. (And will still have to pay a few thousand dollars in attorneys' fees.)

 

[CWB1]

Attorneys are also ethically and legally bound to verify the validity of the client's claim/facts/circumstances before filing. Including extra defendants is a bit of an end-run, more bodies increases the likelihood of somebody being guilty.

 

[IRstuff]

The problem in the US is often there is no title review, just title insurance.

The title insurance comes after the title search; no title company is going to risk multiple payouts because they did a crappy job of title verification. I've bought 5 properties, and every one of them required a title company to verify the title and lack of encumbrances and liens against the properties.

When a development is new, the properties are often only identified by the developer's "lot number" such as the Lot #9 we purchased as a brand new house; the assessor's parcel number only shows up in the final documents, so something can fall through the cracks if someone isn't paying attention during the process.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[coloeng]

more bodies increases the likelihood of somebody being guilty.

More bodies makes it more likely that someone's insurance company will settle rather than be dragged into court.

 

[theCorkster]

phamEng is correct. The other facet that comes up is the cost of defending her position. I've been involved with the process of a suit that named everyone that touched the project because the attorney's know that most insurer's will cough up some money to walk away. Our legal system is about advocacy, not truth.

 

[TigerGuy]

I was once told, "We have a system of litigation, not a system of laws, in the USA."

 

[davefitz]

I have heard of worse cases, like an entire housing development built on a retired lady's land in Long Island NY. Inspectors and county clerks seem to need money on the side was the main issue.

Today, almost every city is redrawing its town maps /plats using Lidar lasers , and nearly every single property's boundary line needs to be corrected.
t
As an aside, the original NJ state constitution mandated that no home can be built on land that was previoulsy washed by the ocean. MOdern geologists insist that at least half of NJ homes ares thus built on land that was washed by the ocean thousands of years ago, so they amended the NJ constitution around 1985 to remove that issue. Some problems are solved by the stroke of a pen.

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick