You see, you want a house built but you need a house torn down. 
30k and done. You want to salvage some materials? Add a bit to that. Nothing even close to the absurd post above.
My favorite part was the 100k for permitting and engineering consult. Comedy gold.
If they can find a comparable lot, I’d be fine swapping it, as long as they pay all associated fees.
This isn’t some barn foundation on a random forty acres. This is a gargantuan McMansion on a deed restricted, residential lot, in coastal Florida.
Not to mention the lot will need to be restored to its highest and best use, which means no taking the top half of the foundation out and burying the rest. Every piece of concrete and rebar down to the bottom of every bell hole needs to be removed.
I think the comedy gold is your underestimation of how complex the task would be.
Assuming this was somehow my problem, I’d probably just swap.
You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You bring an excavator in there to tear out what is surely a slab over piers. It would take about 12-16 hours. Quit talking about stuff you know comically little about.
We try to fight ignorance here, not smear it around.
I’d thank people for improving my lot and sell the lot with the house on it. Ugly house, don’t need it, don’t want it, and don’t want vacation renters as neighbors. Probably have to pay some taxes on the economic gain of my free house.
(I’d wait until the lawyers got done first, but my starting position would be “you built a house on my property, its now my house, you don’t have permission to trespass to remove the house…or what I’m sure is beautiful appliances and salvagable materials.”)
IANAL but I guess that lot owner could force the house owner to remove the house. The house, while located on somebody else’s property, is still the property of the guy who paid for its construction. You don’t surrender ownership of your property just because it’s on somebody else’s land. Say, for example, you had a balloon and you were flying it one day and it landed in the middle of somebody’s cornfield. The cornfield owner can’t claim ownership of your balloon just because it’s in his field.
However, the land owner can tell you to get your property off his land and can hold you responsible for any damage your property did to his land. In this case, removing the property - a fully constructed house - would cost a lot of money and cause a lot of damage to the house. And restoring the lot back to its original state would be a further expense. The house owner might find that removing the house would cost him more than the house will be worth afterwards and might reach a deal to sell the house at a discount to the lot owner as settlement for the claims against him.
Went with other.
I wouldn’t be a total asshole about it, shit happens. If I’d bought it as an investment I’d sell. But I would ask for more than market value, after all it’s their mistake and I’m the injured party and all that.
If I’d bought it to build my own retirement dream home I might buy their house if I liked it. Again there would have to be a real concession on the price.
But on the other hand if they were assholes I’d fuck’m until their eyeballs bled.
We live close to Lake Tahoe. It isn’t terribly uncommon for older, small and not at all attractive, lakefront property to go for way north of a million and have the house torn down to put up a new one.
The house owner? I don’t think you realize what happened here.
The house owner gave the deed information to a home builder and paid to have a house built there. The building company contracted with a survey company to mark the perimeter of the lot. The surveying company made a mistake. But since the surveying company was working for the builder, it is ultimately the builder’s responsibility. The builder can try to sue the survey company to recoup some of its losses, but that is between the builder and the surveyor. The issue of the house is between the buyer and the builder, and it is clearly the builder’s responsibility.
If you pay someone to do something, they are responsible for doing it. If they pay other people to do certain subtasks like surveying, or plumbing or whatever, it is still their obligation to make sure the job gets done. If I paid someone 100 to fix my car, and he pays another person 50 to do it, I don’t want to hear that original person blame the second person. The first person still needs to fix my car because that is what I paid him to do. The fact that someone he paid to help him do it failed miserably is not my problem.
Even the builder admits this in the article. "The buck stops with the builder. We know that. We are in the process of trying to schedule a conference call and find a fair resolution without the lawyers,” Richmond said. “I have built about 600 homes in Flagler County and this has never happened to me before. It does happen, but it’s rare.”
Geez, it’s even in Florida. That’s too close for comfort.
There’s nothing so strange about it. Believe it or not, this is an incredibly easy mistake to make.
In a new area with ,say, 100 lots to be built on, and only 5 or 10 of them currently under construction, you have a very large, ugly, empty area of open dirt. It’s large enough for 90 new houses, but when you go visit your lot, you find yourself standing in the middle of a lot of dust and dirt. You have no immediate clues to where the property lines are. The streets are clearly visible, and a few fire hydrants and sewer manholes. Along a straight section of the street, there may be 5 or 10 lots, all identical in shape—a simple rectangle.
Your lot is number 53 on the survey plat, the 4th one down from the corner.
The architect gives you, the builder ,and his surveyor a site plan showing where the house will be located on lot number 53. Which is identical to lot number 51, 52,54,55,56,57, etc…
Looking at it on paper, there is no easy way to tell which lot you are holding in your hands, other than the title label on the architect’s plans.
The surveyor gets a phone call to go stake out lot number 53. His job is to bang four stakes into the ground, marking the 4 corners of the property, and then another 4 stakes marking the corners or the concrete slab foundation of the house.
He checks his computer files from a few years ago when the empty lots were registered with the local government, and he prints out a list of mathematical coordinates for the four corners. Then he spends maybe 2 hours in the field banging stakes into the ground according to those coordinates…which, mistakenly, are for lot number 54, not number 53.
The builder sends his crew to the job site, they find 4 stakes in the ground, and go to work. Nobody has any reason to check whether they are working on lot number 53 or 54. The builder’s foreman probably doesn’t even know what lot number he’s working on…he just knows he’s working on the house that belongs to Mr. Smith.
Lots of people come to visit during the construction–but since the house is the only one on that street right now, nobody has any trouble finding it. Nobody starts at the corner, and looks for the 4th house on the right…since there are no other houses.
Mr. Smith comes to visit and see how his dream house is progressing, but he talks to the builder about kitchen cabinets, not about the lot number.
The city housing inspector also drops by to make sure that the builder is building according to code, but he talks to the builder about electrical wiring, not about the lot number.
So the mistake goes unnoticed for 6 months…till the neighbor shows up.
MONEY-MONEY-MONEY!
I just got me a free house!
WHEE!
It was a viaduct that led to the confusion.
Why a Duck?
So you won’t shoot them in your pajamas. (no need to pay me now, I’ll put it on your bill)
I’d let my lawyer handle it. He knows the law and would do whatever is in my best interest, including hiring outside counsel with a real estate specialty. Unless necessary, I don’t think I’d be talking with any of the other parties.
Okay, fair enough. The way you’ve explained it the builder does have liability.
I agree. I’ve been In GIS for 25 years, and before that mapping and surveying.
I’m surprised it does not happen more often.
“I got the north pins set, the property is on the south of that”. IF, it is even surveyed before construction.