Since we’re talking about coastal Florida, I think it’s safe to assume no basement. But it would still have to have a foundation.
Responding more to Magiver than RickJay:
Presumably one could build an identical foundation on another lot, and move the house (minus foundation) to it. There are outfits that do that sort of house-moving, but it isn’t trivial, and it surely isn’t cheap.
Maybe cheaper than building a whole new house, but given that we’re presumably talking about moving the house from one lot in a string of identical lots to another lot in a string of identical lots, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to swap ownership of the lots (with some money possibly changing hands) than move the house.
If I’m obstinate, and demand that the builder restore my lot to its original condition, they will either have to move the house to the correct lot, building its new foundation and removing the foundation from my lot, or demolish and remove the house, and rebuild it on the correct lot, whichever is cheaper. I break even, and it costs the builder a lot of money. Let’s say $500,000, a nice round ballpark number.
If I just agree to switch comparable lots, I again break even, and it costs the builder close to nothing. So I’d save the builder $500,000 with no benefit to myself.
It would be reasonable to agree to split the difference, and expect a $250,000 payout in exchange for agreeing to switch to a comparable lot.
Eh, which is why I said I’d keep the house if I liked it well enough. Wouldn’t pay anything for it though. I never requested it to be built there so that’s not my problem.
In truth, if I ever actually owned a plot of land, it wouldn’t be one in a cookie-cutter McMansion development that could be swapped for an identical lot down the street. Yuck. So my answer is what I would do, given that the land I theoretically owned would have been carefully selected by me for a specific purpose. Most likely either as a home site or a burial ground, plans for either of which could get seriously screwed up if someone dug up my property. If they don’t want to demolish the house, they can move it, if that’s even possible, but I’d still expect them to restore my land the way it was. The cost / loss is still not my problem.
Actually my worst nightmare would be if they had torn down or demolished significant land features (trees, whatever) in the process of building the house. You can’t just put a 100 year old willow tree back. I would be livid if that happened. I don’t know what could make up for that.
OK, but that’s a tangent of your own. Can’t tell you not to go off on it, but the discussion so far has been about these actual lots on a particular street in a particular development in Florida.
I wouldn’t buy one of them either, but that’s neither here nor there AFAIAC.
Had a case here where the first house was build one lot up from the bottom, and all subsequent houses took their mark from that – until it got to the top, and there wasn’t a lot to put the last house on. A row of 5, and the unused lot was the one at the bottom that nobody wanted, that the first builder hadn’t realised was even a housing lot.
All settled eventually, but major drama for all involved.
Thats an odd case, where the remaining land is not suitable as a swap.
There are MANY precedents that are settled more simply… The idea is that land is swapped, including redrawing and rewriting land titles.
But this case is odd in that the lot boundaries can remain the same, its entirely the wrong lot !
Overriding principle: I have no right to profit from another person’s honest mistake. But I also have no obligation to indemnify another person for their mistake. So the solution would need to conform with both those principles, which would essential result in my breaking even.
I’m not sure why “honest” should be the sole determinant here.
If the owner drives along the street, counting as he drives along the lots, and points to the builder, “*this *one,” without taking any more care to (a) get it right himself, and (b) ascertain that the builder was clear on which one he was pointing to, the mistake is honest, but it’s also careless as all get out.
My sentiment is that if he makes an honest mistake after doing proper due diligence, I shouldn’t profit from it. I don’t see that here: the owner completely delegated his responsibility, without providing any supervision or double-checking whatsoever. “Honest but careless” doesn’t cut it, IMHO. You make those sorts of mistakes, and someone can make you pay, you lose AFAIAC.
In California, we have something called “Title Insurance” that is supposed to cover problems with the title that are discovered after the transfer. There would be an obvious problem with the title in this case.
So its the Title Insurance company that is going to have to come up with the cash to the house buyer. And will probably be annoyed at the hired title searcher for not catching this.
The title company is not necessarily on the hook here. Any title insurance agent worth his/her salt would have put a survey exception in the Schedule B list of exceptions of the owner’s policy if there was no survey furnished prior to settlement. Here is the survey exception we use in Virginia, DC and Maryland:
This would protect the title company from any defects or encroachments to the property that would have been disclosed by a survey. We also would add an exception stating that the acreage of the property is not insured as well.
And it looks like in this case the homeowners bought the property before the survey was done.
Yep…depends on the honesty of the mistake and the definition of “profit”. If it would cost them $20K to remove the house from my land it would seem reasonable to offer them $20k under the market price to leave it there.