Real story that recently happened. If you were the landowner what would you do? Cash in for a big juicy payoff? Trade them for another lot (they own 18 lots)? Or just say, pay me a fair price for the land?
Free house!
Idiots. Everyone knows you can’t put a house on the space until you own all three properties.
Seriously… given the chain of events that leads up to a fully constructed house, the number of people who ucked fup on a professional level is far too high.
I owned a house lot for 7 years. Dreamed of having a custom home built. But the finances just never worked out and I eventually sold it for a few hundred bucks profit.
If someone built on it then I’d ask to see the other lots they owned in the subdivision. Pick my favorite and swap. There’s a good chance they had a better lot anyway. The best lots in a subdivision sell first. Then the left overs sell. My lot was one of the less desirable leftovers.
No lawyers. No litigation. Just two reasonable people making a fair agreement. Meet at the Title Company and sign over the deeds to the land.
I wouldn’t be a jerk about it. If the lot is comparable to the one they did own, I’d swap with them. If the one they built on is better, they’d need to make up the difference in value. At least the house wasn’t built straddling the two lots. 
I voted for asking for the market value of the lot, but it would depend to a certain extent on why I owned that lot in the first place.
If I just wanted land for my vacation home I would just take the cash and find somewhere else. If it had been in the family for generations, I might insist that they pay to have it moved/torn down and the land restored.
This.
How wealthy are these people? Around here a cleared lot in a nice subdivision is about 20k to 30k (even more in the snooty rich parts of town). I bet a vacation lot in Florida is at least 50k or more. They own 19 of them? :eek: Thats a million bucks. Must be nice being that freaking rich.
The irony of owning 19 lots and they still built on one they didn’t own. Priceless. 
Well played, sir.
Regards,
That Little Top Hat
I wonder if one could lease the land to the house owners at a rate that would be a little more profitable than an outright sale.
Let the home owner get their $ or house out of the builder. But of course I would do all of that know I’m an ahole for not trading lots.
And it’s not free. Wouldn’t the lot owner have to pay taxes on it? What happens if they trade tax-wise. I can just she the family ending up with no house AND a multi-thousand dollar IRS bill.
I would make them buy the lot from me for cash. But I’d charge them a premium for sullying the lot with such an extraordinarily ugly house.
Force whoever made the survey mistake to pay for the movement of the house.
I wouldn’t automatically blame the homeowners or try to steal the house or anything like that. But I also wouldn’t just sell the lot to them if I wasn’t interested in selling. My response would matter a lot on how the homeowners behave, if they were genuinely sorry about the mistake and contrite, or if they were dicks who refuse to even consider moving their property
Hey, they owned 19 of them! And considering they didn’t own any railroads or utilities, that guaranteed them at least five entire color groups. 
I wouldn’t be a jerk either, but I’d make sure I profited on the transaction, e.g. I’d offer to sell the lot with no hassle for 20% above fair market value. Depending on the FMV of the lot ($20K-$50K, according to aceplace57’s estimates), that would mean a premium of maybe $4,000-$10,000. That’s a pretty modest penalty for putting a $680,000 house on the wrong lot. The legal fees associated with rejecting that offer and battling it out in court would soon far exceed that amount.
The person’s attitude makes a big difference. I’m pretty easy going and dislike confrontation. If these people came at me with an attitude like they deserved the house lot. It would cost them a lot more.
They’re just stapling houses together these days… can new houses even be moved?
If you follow the links back to the original article, the couple that paid to have the house built paid $160K, fairly recently, for the lot next door to where the house wound up being built. The owners of that lot bought back in 2003 for $355K.
If I were the couple who owned the lot that was built on, I’d be wanting my $355K back, plus a chunk of change, maybe another $100K, as their penalty for screwing up in my favor.
For one thing, these aren’t a couple who sank their retirement savings into their dream home where they planned on living out their golden years. They’re a couple who are into real estate in a big way, owning 19 lots in a gated community where lots go for the low 6 figures. And they built this house in order to make money renting it out to vacationers. When you make a mistake in business, you lose, but I’ll be reasonable about how much.
Fair market value, an agreement that any possible tax penalties, court\legal costs and filing fees are paid by their side, plus a little something for the bother.
I’d say thank you, and potentially offer to sell it to them as an improved lot (i.e. charge them for the house and the land), since that’s what I could sell it for on the open market to someone else. That is, if I didn’t want to just keep the house.
Otherwise, I’d sue them to pay for the demolition of said house so I could sell the unimproved lot.