Empty lot gets stolen and someone builds a house on it. UH OH

I still think the property owner should have waited until the house was complete before saying anything.

"Look ma, free house!"

Yeah, that would be a real dick move. But the owner managed to outdo even that with an even more dickish move: Demand that it be restored to the prior condition.

The more I think about it the more my sympathies lie with the developer rather than the owner. They could have accepted the developer's offer to make it right and bought a much nicer vacant lot somewhere else.
 
I think it will be the lawyer's errors and omissions insurance that pays. Amount to be negotiated.
 
This is sad for both the landowner and the builder. However, I can't help suspecting that the realtor and/or attorney were either in on the scam, or suspected a scam after that direction to wire money to South Africa. Presuming the latter, I suspect their greed overcame whatever impulse they had to voice their suspicions before the closing.
 
The more I think about it the more my sympathies lie with the developer rather than the owner. They could have accepted the developer's offer to make it right and bought a much nicer vacant lot somewhere else.

The lot was bought 70 years ago by the owner's father next to their family home. The owner held on to it since he loved the home & street & wanted to pass it to his children. I understand his not wanting to sell it for market value so he could buy another "nicer" lot "somewhere else"; THAT LAND belonged to his family, legally belongs to him & he wants to keep it.

The owner wants his land; the developer only wants his money back. If the developer acted in good faith & was harmed by the realtor & lawyers' negligence or fraud, that's where his legal recourse lies.
 
Yeah, that would be a real dick move. But the owner managed to outdo even that with an even more dickish move: Demand that it be restored to the prior condition.

The more I think about it the more my sympathies lie with the developer rather than the owner. They could have accepted the developer's offer to make it right and bought a much nicer vacant lot somewhere else.

Surprised some have this reaction. If I had vacant property next door to my home, and that was snapped up and a giant new house plonked on it, you bet I would be right there saying get this down and get off my lawn. It was a lovely tree-filled unoccupied space. Now it's a big new house that looks like it abuts the edge of the property line close to the original owner.

No neighbor is better than any neighbor.

The developer has no emotional or family attachment. It's just money.
 
I don’t see that the realtor is at fault. The lawyer presented an apparently-valid POA. End of story. Nobody else in the deal has any obligation to separately verify the POA.

Possibly the title insurance company could be in there somewhere. I don’t think a POA like that is normally recorded, though, and no court had passed on it. So it might well have been invisible to the title company's researcher.
 
It doesn't say if the owners family still lives/owns the house next to the vacant lot.
If they do, I can understand the desire for keeping the lot.

According to the article, the owner of the lot lives in Long Island, the article says he "returned to the street he grew up on" so it doesn't sound like any family still lives there.

He may have significant connection to the lot, his kids may not.

Sad case all around.
If it are me, I would take the money and invest it for my kids.
 
...According to the article, the owner of the lot lives in Long Island, the article says he "returned to the street he grew up on" so it doesn't sound like any family still lives there...

That's the way I read it. I thought I saw that the owner only swung by about once a year. I assumed it's an unmaintained, vacant lot with an absentee owner, with no family in the immediate vicinity who might have alerted them to the ongoing construction.

If it included the old family burial ground or something, my opinion would change. But my bet would be my gut feeling is right on this one.

I see these vacant and unmaintained lots, sometimes with decaying structures on them, all the time. There are two on my road. I know someone who owns one a few towns over. There's one within a mile of my house which had a shopping center and other commercial buildings built around it, but the little plot where the old family home used to sit (long since decayed into the ground and bulldozed over for safety) is still owned by the same family for "sentimental" reasons. I hope they're taxed at the commercial rate!
 


No neighbor is better than any neighbor.
...

my mom and ‘aunt’ were in the same boat. their property abutted a vacant lot. they didn’t want a neighbor on that side so they bought the lot and it remaned vacant.
 
I still think the property owner should have waited until the house was complete before saying anything.

"Look ma, free house!"


Except that IIRC you lose your claim if you do not speak up when you find out about it... so if you find out when they first start and wait till the end you are on the hook to pay for the new house... you had an obligation to stop them..


Some lawyer might want to chime in... because I am going on a law class over 40 years ago...
 
In the law, each bit of land is viewed as unique. That's why in disputes over land, you can ask for "specific performance". That is -- "I want that land, in the condition that it was before it was wrongfully taken, because I cannot be made whole by money or by some other land, given that each piece of land is unique." And he may get it.
 
I think we have a bad situation with the property across the street. Somewhere on here I have posted about my drug addict neighbors, so that is where it all goes wrong.
Family in the home mamma, son, and grandson.

Mama 84+ yrs old owns her home, she died Jan 2022, 55+ year old drug addict son sells house to builder/buyer in Mar 2022, he then dies in April 2022 (one guess of what), grandson gets a bundle of money, not sure how he got it. Mama's estate goes into probate in Jan of 2023. In Mar 2023 a document gets recorded that is dated July 2009 it is a quit claim from mama to the 55+ son. The son did not record the quit claim he's been dead almost a year. The builder/buyer paid $155k about 1/2 of market value if it was in reasonable shape, It wasn't. The builder/ buyer sold it to "Bill" for about what he paid except that he had spent some change rehabbing the house. The house is still gutted with no ceiling, cabinets, sinks, there is nothing but a furnace and air conditioning. Bill has it for not to very long and then he sells it to 'Don'. There are zero documents on any of this, it is all from my wife (who could be a spy) all from her talking (and asking questions) of the people in and out of the house.
Now to the quit-claim recorded Mar-2023, but dated July 2009, I think it is fraudulent. Mama's signature is missing some major characteristics. The mama owned several properties so there are lots of example of her signature, and while I'm at it the signature of notary she used. Mama's suspect signature has the wrong loop shape a the letter J, she has an X in her name that is very pronounced but entirely missing in the document. The notaries signature has an M with a long reverse at the end of the M. it's not there in here signature on the quit-claim where she signed as a witness, but it is there where she signed as a Notary, I think that part was copied from online documents and just inserted.

Her L's are curved like a school chair, in the document there are sharp corners at the turn. Her F if different, she didn't put a drivers license on this form, which she does on all the others I have seen. Her printed name also has a few inconsistencies. There are a few others, but you get the point. The county clerk, said, we don't get into this, if it looks OK, we process it. They don't care, it is in the lawyers hands. I also visited the probate area, they were more interested and saw what I see, but that was just human interest not clerical. Anyway the soap opera at the house across the street continues.
 
A recent case in AZ is similar to the OP case of an impersonator selling a lot he does not own.

In March 2023, William Gordon received a letter in the mail from his title company congratulating him on the $200,000 sale of his Tucson, Arizona, property. The catch: He hadn't listed it for sale.

Gordon noticed almost immediately that the congratulatory letter was off.

"I noticed the last four digits of the social security number were not mine and the address was wrong — the mail shouldn't have even gotten to me," Gordon told Insider.

Full article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/rea...n&cvid=3d29f070c4914024b330f115877cf44a&ei=24.
 
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