If I were the homeowners I would move my fences, or other items abd stop mowing the property. Then call the city and complain about the property not being maintained. Then not let him cross your property to maintain it, tell him he has to buy an easement. Eventually he would get sick of fines from the city and proably sell for cost.
@WebCity Films Agree, but you can "allow" them to maintain it and start forcing them to pay some costs. As they add up it becomes less profitable. Not sure if that could backfire though.
@WebCity Films Perhaps not. One thing is for sure, if they all ban together and stop maintaining the property, the "owner" will have to maintain it himself. You can wait it out, watch the property and file complaints every time the grass is an inch higher than it should be and see how long he keeps wanting to deal with it.
I can almost guarantee the owner is one of their neighbors. #1 how will they know when someone "trespasses" and #2 that would explain why they want to keep their identity secret.
Possibly, or a foreign investor. If it is one of the neighbors, they could figure it out fairly quickly by how the person accesses it to maintain it once they stop maintaining the land.
I was a mortgage loan officer for 12yrs. There are 2 other professionals that could be liable. The appraiser should have looked at the survey because of potential flood zones and the total Sq footage of land in the appraisal. Also the seller and realtor offered land for sale they did not have a right to sell.
I went thru a bit over an A-H flood zone almost thirty years ago. Bought a house twelve years ago and when i asked them about flood elevations, they had absolutely NO idea what I was talking about. Everybody has gotten stupid these days.
Seen that before firsthand! There was a separate issue that was since resolved, but it meant we ended up having copies of all of the surveys/maps from over the years. One day, my family and I were enjoying this piece of property minding our own business, when a realtor from the house for sale across the street came on the property with prospective buyers for that house in tow. The realtor was like "And this is..." And we are all like "No, THIS is private property. YOU need to get off of it, and need to look at your deed again!" Fun times.
I owned a house years ago that had no utility easements in the backyard. I had to run off a cable company guy that came on my property and intended to dig up my flower beds against the fence when the cable box was in the neighbors easement behind the fence. He was trying to work on someone else's cable and he had to clear a lot of plant material to access the box, so he wanted to dig my beds up because it was easier. When I showed him the survey, he left. It's very important to know what's on your survey.
I had something very similar but I wasn't home at the time. Came home to find a backhoe in my yard, several of my ceadars I had as a hedge uprooted and a trench across my yard. It was a neighborhood with all the wires underground. The guy looked at me and said, "Do you want cable?" "I already have cable." "We need to replace the line." "Well, not through my yard, are you crazy?" So, the way it was arranged, the main cable junction box was on the main road running by our neighborhood and the distribution box was in the middle of the neighborhood. Originally, they ran the wires along the roads. The neighborhood was private and we all owned the road as well. So, anyway, the way it was arranged, it was way shorter to run the line through my yard, so the guy just decided to do so. I told him to get off my property and then we had a big deal with them trying to do the line through my yard and me suitor damages. The Einstein dug up my septic tile field. In the end, there was no easement, they had to fix everything but it was a giant hassle.
Shortly after i bought my first home the neighbor pointed out the steps on my back porch actually cross the property line. He was a decent guy but if i asked them to turn down their music or have their guest move out of my drive so my guests could use it his wife would mutter about tearing off my steps or other threats about the infraction. 2 years later i bought that property too and will decide who can be my neighbors as long as i live here.
Still just at the beginning of the video, but this isn't a title insurance problem. This is a survey problem. Had they done the survey, they would have learned that the property being sold was smaller than the property being marketed. I am amazed at how many people will make their most expensive purchase and not have any idea what they're getting into. Usually it's just not reading the HOA DCCRs but yeah, surveys is another example.
@@MichaelGreen831 did you not listen to the video? He said get a survey and title insurance to take care of things like this. OP was just saying that even if they had it, the title insurance would probably fuck em too.
Very interesting. I ran into a similar situation when purchasing my first home. My mortgage company required that I get title insurance and the title company came back and stated that it was a clean title. The day I went to walk into the house the sheriff had changed the locks and had a notice on the door. I had my entire family with me whom just moved from another state with all our belongings packed into a U-Haul and very little money. One phone call to the title company and putting them in contact with the sheriff. The wheels of progress suddenly jumped into high gear. My realtor called me within half an hour asking me to meet them one town over where I was given the keys to a beautiful big home where I stayed for 90 days until they straighten the mess out. When it was time to leave I really missed the temporary home but they paid all of my moving expenses and it was nice to finally get into the home that I purchased. Yes title insurance it was so worth it 😂
Only problem with title insurance is that it often doesn't cover any claims that haven't been filed yet. There are numerous situations where there may not be a title issue on record yet, but someone might be able to make one.
I was thinking the same thing if you get injured on someone else's property they're responsible for damages the only hard part is proving injury but I'm sure someone with a little creativity could solve that
Well they can take a trespassing charge but they can still sue remember there's always the old case of a burglar breaking into a building after hours with no trespassing signs posted all over he hurt himself trying to break in and sued and won even tho he did go to jail for trespassing and breaking and entering
My sister had a lakefront property in Florida. It was in a small town and she was fortunate that someone in the tax office called here to say that the lake was up for tax sale. She was able to purchase it and avoided a situation like you described.
A few years ago the town I live in realized homes that backed up against town owned conservation land had slightly expanded there back yards mostly done by previous owners. The town inspector found homeowners had sheds, fences, and swing sets on the town land. The homeowners got letters telling them to move the stuff or pay huge fines. It was a huge problem. Most of town didn't care. The only person with a problem was the inspector. A few sheds where moved but the problem went away the inspector got in trouble for going into peoples yards, trespassing to see if he could catch people. He had the right to inspect the conservation land, from the conservation land. Instead of walking the land he decided to take multiple shortcuts and really got in trouble when the cops were called and the yard he trespassing in wasn't bordering the conservation land
I bought my property with a 4 party well on it. I assumed my water was covered. Much to my surprise, I got water bills, and NO I did not own the water rights with the property. Not only that, in the fine print on my land contract was a clause that forbids me to use pesticides or herbicides because the well is on my property. Now there are like 9-10 houses on my well, and my water pressure has dropped a lot from 25 years ago. (One of the reasons I bought the place, the water pressure was awesome and the water delicious) I bought a house when I was young and ignorant. Lessons learned the hard way. I got screwed over 6 ways to Sunday buying this place, but hey it's only 16 payments from being paid off, and when it is, I am moving, with a lot more knowledge in my head than before.
12 years, adverse posession is 7 years in Florida... I would suggest they get a lawyer to file in the courts. They have been maintaining it, and the previous peaple had been.
This is the land they are talking about: www.google.com/maps/place/Bigelow+Dr,+Holiday,+FL+34691/@28.1976833,-82.7608231,20z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x88c28dde447fd30f:0xe982d52d85852787!8m2!3d28.197437!4d-82.7581275 Click on satellite view to see the house with the pool (left side), as well as the one with the shed (rightside). Now... Here is what the development looked like in 1971 when it was new: www.historicaerials.com/location/28.1974206844397/-82.75993228584193/1971/18 Note that the easement is not clearly defined or broken out. Even the house with the pool was not built yet. I assume the easement (from its shape) was planned as a water line that would go to a new development being built to the left of this development but was never used.
@@TEverettReynolds adverse possession doesn't matter whether or not the land belonged to them. It all depends on whether or not rightful possession of said land was enforced. For 12 years, nobody took actions to enforce the possession of the land, therefore the homeowners do have a case for adverse possession prior to the sale of the land. Adverse possession could be a valid defence.
It's pretty hard to have adverse possession of property for 7 years if you never set foot on it more than 5 or 6 years ago. According to Zillow one of the properties was last sold in 2002, so that owner is probably going to be fine. Another was sold in December of 2013. That's a hair under 7 years ago, and I'd bet that's the one that got the trespassing notice, which means the owner hasn't let them have adverse possession for 7 years. The others have all sold more recently, so they may be SOL. Here's the link to Zillow: www.zillow.com/holiday-fl/?searchQueryState=%7B%22pagination%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22usersSearchTerm%22%3A%22holiday%2C%20fl%22%2C%22mapBounds%22%3A%7B%22west%22%3A-82.7611994857656%2C%22east%22%3A-82.75806130121818%2C%22south%22%3A28.196707211992525%2C%22north%22%3A28.198671605559866%7D%2C%22mapZoom%22%3A19%2C%22regionSelection%22%3A%5B%7B%22regionId%22%3A11940%2C%22regionType%22%3A6%7D%5D%2C%22isMapVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22filterState%22%3A%7B%22ah%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Atrue%7D%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3A%22globalrelevanceex%22%7D%7D%2C%22isListVisible%22%3Atrue%7D
@@NYpaddler maybe, I did suggest lawyer... There might be a way around it in that it is the whole parcel on the other side. And the previous owners erected the fence. I don't know about specific procedures, it may for example be possible to file it as a class action of all of them beeing similarly situated, at the point the judge is carving up the parcel, well, it gets a little more interesting.
I live in gold rich northeastern Georgia and worked for a real estate attorney. A lot of people are surprised to learn that they may not own the mineral rights to their property. The right are usually owned in a large block by one of several families in the area. To have the rights researched can cost thousands. My brother-in-law did not own the mineral rights to his property until the man who did screwed up and didn't pay one year. He payed the fees and picked them up. There is an actual gold mine (not operational) on the property.
I know this video is old but i am continually amazed at people who didn't actually look at the disclosures when they bought their home. I distinctly recall examining the parcel map and description of my property.
The lawyer(1) probably owns the property or is in cahoots with the owner who is also another lawyer(2) doing the same thing with lawyer(1) being the owner.
In the past, including 2008, I've performed lots of real estate appraisal work in Holiday, Florida. Back then it was fairly standard for the lender to require a land survey. I would imagine there might be some culpability there with the lender.
More likely I suspect it would be either one of the home owners or a realtor, lawyer, or other person who knows the owners and was involved in the sales process and found the property that way. I would look hard at anyone who recently had conflicts with his/her neighbors before this came about. Might have held the knowledge since the sale then when mad, did it.
@edwardschlosser1 knocking the guy off doesnt necessarily improve the situation. An issue here is that its much easier, at least conscience-wise, to do that to this guy (because he had some intent) than it is to do it to whoever or whatever inherits the land next. If you are rubbing arbitrary people out for land, then why the hell are you doing it for a few crappy back yards?
The first home that I purchased nearly fifty years ago was known as a "battleaxe" block with access via a laneway between the two homes in front of me. The homes in front of me also used the laneway to access their respective garages. When I purchased the property I was required to have a survey done for financing. The property had a rear access large enough to allow a vehicle to enter the property. There was no vehicular access at the front of the property as the home fronted a public golf course. Several years after purchasing the property one of my neighbours in front of me sold his home. Shortly after the new neighbours advised me that my vehicular access was infringing on their property and what I believed to be a driveway in reality was just a single gate entrance less than one metre in width. I requested a copy of the survey report on my property from my finance institution and sure enough the survey showed the actual legal access plus indicating the non approved vehicular access. The finance company advised me that my solicitor should have advised me of the situation, which unfortunately he had not. It seems that many, many years previously a gentleman's handshake agreement had been made allowing vehicular access to the property and that subsequent purchasers of the property in front of me were not aware that my property line infringed on their property. It was only for an observant new owner intent on claiming his rightful property that I was made aware of the situation. In effect my property value was reduced dramatically due an oversight on the part of my solicitor who should have made it known that the driveway access within my property had not been made legal. To further add insult to injury what I believed to be a driveway down to my property entrance was actually a pedestrian walkway and thus vehicular traffic was not allowed.
In Texas, that's known as An Unrecorded Easement. Depending on how long it had been going on, continuous use might have established a permanent right to continue doing so. Especially if one could show that there had actually been an agreement at one point. Settling it would probably still involve lawyers and courts, the best thing would have been for the homeowners to work it out between themselves and record the agreement for future property owners.
The assessors office owes you the taxes, with interest, that you paid for every year that access was included in their assessment and the tax bill they levied upon you. They collected twice on the same real estate from two different people, and you were not liable for yours.
@@cnault3244 Post holes. Vertical, gravel lined bottom, with a 4ft post and cement making sure he provides a solid footing for a secure fence around his own property. If you're going get rid of a body, at least put the hole(s) to good use. At least with a fence you can show it off to your neighbors and brag about your hard work.
The period of time for adverse possession in Florida is seven years, so the proeprty owners have used and maintained the disputed parcels WITHOUT permission of the land trust. Ergo, possession has transferred to the homeowners.
I was wondering about this. It's also seven years in Tennessee and my first thought when he said it was bought in 2008 was "how long is the period of time of open and aggressive use for hostile possession?". Hopefully the homeowners get an easy win here.
@@boblewis8838 oh, then you understand that when you said what you said that you were wrong. Merely using and maintaining a property for 7 years is insufficient for a party to obtain the property via adverse possession. They'd also have to either have color of title or pay taxes on the property for those seven years, in addition to occupying and maintaining the land, then have to the land conveyed to them by the courts. It doesn't just happen after 7 years by operation of law as you were intimating.
Something similar happened to one of my Aunts. Her and her husband bought a house on some land, later to find out they did not actually own the land. All paperwork even through the title insurance said it was theirs but a document that pre-dated their purchase showed that the land and the house were separate entities. The bank and the title insurance all ducked responsibility and told them that they were on their own.
That can happen when a mobile home is purchased on acreage. The seller might not disclose that the land and mobile home are in fact separate until later when the land is sold out from under you. The mobile home is considered personal property (with a title of ownership) while the land is real property (deeded to the owner of the land). To attach the mobile home to the property, it must have the hitch and axles removed, placed on a foundation. Then submit forms to the DMV to have the title cancelled and declared the mobile home is real property.
The hedge part of your story was so similar to my brother. He bought a house and almost 2 years later discovered his property was 10-15' past a row of lilac bushes that was a nice separation from the neighbors house. He had really nice neighbors. The only "issue" after the discovery my brother's lawn mowing responsibilities grew slightly, while the neighbor saved time on maintaining his lawn. Good neighbors are a blessing!
I had a similar issue with a neighbor. We had big yards but the boundary wasn't clearly marked. The only issue was mowing. We both just mowed a bit over where we we believed the line to be. When I moved in there was a vegetable garden that was clearly on his property but he said the previous owner of my house had made it and I was free to use it if I wished, which I did. I gave them lots of vegetables and they gave us deer meat.
In some older towns there use to be a road in the backyard that was used for coal delivery. This road is long abandoned but on the survey it is a 20ft easement owned by the town. The town can sell it at any time so it is a good idea to buy it first.
Wow, such a different way of buying property over there! Over here we hire solicitors/lawyers to do conveyance on any property, part of the conveyance is carrying out searches of documentation for past and future planning, services, and "title", it's really not optional, and I'm pretty sure we don't even have "title insurance" because of this. On the adverse possession aspect, I think that 12 years is the UK threshold btw (it was the very first thing that popped into my head when you outlined the issues these guys are having)
That's outrageous. It sounds like the previous 9 homeowners didn't know about that tract of land either. I guarantee you that I wouldn't grant easement through any of my property to that "trust" without it costing it "more than [it] could pay".
If the nine prior homeowners never rose the issue, and the trust exercised its ownership of the property by paying taxes on it, the trust might have eminent domain rights over it.
About 15 years ago I bought my hovel (some might call it a house) and hired an attorney to review the transaction prior to signing the paperwork. That couple of hundred dollars saved me over two thousand dollars. I was purchasing using my VA entitlement and the lender had tacked on fees not allowed under that provision. Yay lawyer. A week after moving in I got a survey done, put up a fence, cleaned up the yard, and made fast friends of otherwise ordinary neighbors. Lawyer+survey+fence=no drama.
When I was a child the homeowner behind my parents sued them and our next door neighbor for taking his backyard. Which even as a kid I thought was funny since I had watched his house built. I just remember him over yelling at my Mom. My dad looked stuff over and called the local bank holding the mortgage to see if they had any idea what to do. They sent someone out to survey since they held the notes on both houses and were concerned. In the end it turns out the street behind us was put in wrong. They built the road with the centerline about 10 ft off. So everything was off from there. Since my parent's street and house was built first the neighbor behind us lost out. But not after dragging everyone into court, etc. Lucky for my parents the bank represented them so they lost no money over it.
I have neighbor like that they try to take done my fence down when I had my land surveyed found out three feet of there property i owned before I had this done they telling me that two feet of my property was there's so put a bigger fence up
My Wife's Grandparents "lost" 50 Acres to Ft Knox when they started fencing in the Training Areas. But they had never had a Survey done so there was really nothing they could do. Nothing they could have done anyway because, hey, Ft Knox.
Someone in the government's land management office brought that land at an tax auction. Just business! File a suit to make the owner known to the public.
I don't think so. I think someone just saw an opportunity to sell the land to the adjacent landowners. See google maps: www.google.com/maps/place/Bigelow+Dr,+Holiday,+FL+34691/@28.1976833,-82.7608231,20z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x88c28dde447fd30f:0xe982d52d85852787!8m2!3d28.197437!4d-82.7581275 The property could even be sold to the houses on Tiki street, just north of Bigelow street. So it has value.
@@kennethjohnson4456 Probably not. Whoever is behind this is notorious for buying land and then harassing the local homeowners www.tampabay.com/archive/2008/05/04/the-invisible-land-grab/
@@ElJeffeweizen The case of the private road would probably fail in court. The residents have used it for 30 years and maintained it all this time, including paving it. I don't see any court now denying access to their properties. I believe adverse possession in Florida is seven years.
@@TEverettReynolds - The houses on Tiki could not use it as there is a drop off between the two yards. A retaining wall there is with a 6 to 10 foot drop I am guessing. Look at your link and view it with satelite and zoom in. The shadows give away the 1 story drop from the pool to the area below. This was a driveway/alley access for the rear of the houses and very well might have right of way or use on the deed prior to this tax sale.
Something similar occurred in Pinellas County some years ago when someone bought, for back taxes, an easement surrounding a large pond behind a dozen or so houses. The purchaser then built a tall fence blocking the view to the pond. Then charging the home owners for the easement .
Can't charge a fee to use an easement. He could charge a fee to access the pond but he'd have to set it up as a business and get licencing, permits and zoning changes. The zoning change won't happen unless he buys the zoning board.
We had a slightly different situation here in San Diego years ago, involving the beach front houses that had a boardwalk behind them, between the houses and the beach. The city actually owned a strip larger than the boardwalk, but the homeowners, pretty much all of them, enclosed the unused areas up to the boardwalk, as part of their private yards. The city made it known that when the time came to enlarge the boardwalk, the land would be reclaimed. But until then they would leave things as they were. Then came the time when the foot/ bike traffic on the boardwalk was getting excessive, and it was time to widen it. And all the homeowners, who should have known they were occupying the city's property, screamed and cried and filed lawsuits and generally threw tantrums. They lost and the boardwalk was enlarged.
That's hilarious. They do a similar thing where I live, if you fence in part of the public owned utility easement as part of your yard, they usually won't do anything, but if they need to access or do work in that area, they'll take out the offending section of fence. It doesn't happen often, but when it does I always laugh.
had a similar situation happen here in Connecticut. Long story short, A railroad had a long spur line that was not used. They pulled the tracks up 30 years ago. There was a housing boom in the area, bunch of new developments, the builders had to of known the railroad had a right of way when they got the permits. The people who purchased the houses did not do there research, railroads decides to put tracks back down.... and now about 20 mcmansions are 100 feet from a railroad track. They tried going to court but lost. The railroad legally owned the land and it was well marked out in the towns records. If anything they should have gone after the builder.
A similar thing happened at Seacliff State Beach (south of Santa Cruz). Homeowners assume they own to the edge of the oceanfront bluff but the Lot lines are actually several feet back. They have patios, decks, planters, and fences on the State side of the boundary. They cured that over time by notifying the Lot owner every time a lot listed for sale, the homeowner cleaned it up quick so as to not get a lis pendins to mess up the sale.
Where I live, this is very common. I once looked at a piece of property that was 21 acres. After viewing it, it was very obvious it was not that big. There was a housing plan on both sides of the wooded area. After looking at the lot sizes on the plot map, I could see that all the houses, (about 10 on each side), on both streets adjoining the property had "extended" their backyards about a 75-100ft beyond their property lines into the wooded area. Buyer beware... I always compare the "legal" description to the actual property.
As a title examiner if the fences on a survey doesn't match the property lines i add an exception for that to the the schedule B excluding the property outside/inside a fence
I can understand the frustration. I bought 6.5 acres in Oregon. Then 6 months later found out that 1/2 of it is a right of way for Bonneville power. Bonneville power is basically the federal government so basically I have to ask their permission to do anything with that portion of the property. Wish I had known before buying.
Every Home I've purchased, in SC and NC, required a land survey and marking posts to mark property until closing. Also at closing purchaser signs off on photos and maps showing property boundaries, I'm sure to avoid this kind of mess.
I'm located in Toronto, Canada and it's the norm here to have real estate lawyers as part of any real estate transaction. It is their job to review everything and point out issues like this. We also have title insurance as well. I wouldn't dream of purchasing a home without a lawyer reviewing everything.
In extremely rural, extremely southern Virginia one guy owned a right of way for a railway which was completely removed. He successfully forced some people to pay him for a right of way ACROSS HIS RIGHT OF WAY until his buddy the judge retired. In Indiana, a gas pipeline company was taking out trees and buildings in people's yards after decades of placement: legal control of a right of way, of course. I live in rural Pennsylvanian where the township ordinance states public roads have a 16 to 25 foot right of way, which is pretty funny since very old houses and barns frequently are as close as three feet. And of course, imminent domain trumps all private ownership. Welcome to the land f the free, if you can afford to pay.
I am so glad you mentioned the saying about attorneys who represent themselves... and then went further to talk about specializations. I've had some people I was close to as a kid become lawyers, and then NOT say "I'm a real estate lawyer from NY" when giving commentary on criminal law in california.
When we went to sell the first house we had purchased, we discovered that the original survey was incorrect. The survey was a rectangle but with the 4th side described as going off 180 degrees in the wrong direction. We had to get the prior owner to sign off on the survey change, and he said, of course, "what's in it for me".
I had something similar happen. My fence extended onto city property and one day the city showed up and told me I had to move it. Long story short; after at first refusing to do anything the city leased this area to me for 99 years after my great city councilor went to bat for me. Also I had my lawyer contact the previous owners and they paid for it under threat of them fraudulently selling me the property. When one looks at a fenced in area a resonable person would assume that is what was being offered to them in a land sale. Similar to changing out the existing carpeting or light fixtures after a house was sold. They played games with the survey too during the sale but no one cared at the time but we all knew why when this event happened. They knew and sold it under false pretenses. Ended up okay though in the end.
---We bought a new home and the builder made fun of us for insisting we wanted to get an independent survey to check it against the plat. Makes me wonder why they cared when we paid for it.
Would it work to let the grass and weeds grow on the property, then file a complaint with the city that the condition of the property is a health and safety hazard?
@@kewlztertc5386 We don't know if the Land Trust did not pay taxes. It would make sense they did if they are claiming ownership not to mention that they bought it from the city. Nor do we know if the homeowners' property taxes included the strip of land. I doubt it did. I suspect everyone paid taxes but the home owners didn't realize that they weren't paying taxes on the contested strip.
I had a surveyor do a deed search at the courthouse on my house before I built my garage. Good thing too. It's how I found out the game commission had stolen a 1/2 acre off the back of my property. The lender , tax records and previous owner showed 1.25 acre lot but the courthouse showed the deed had been changed to only show .76 acres and the other 1/2 acre had been given to the state in a clerical error. The lawyer said it would cost more to sue the state than the property is worth.
Your comments on real estate law are spot on. I am an Owners Corporation Manager in Australia and spend my whole working day dealing with this area of our state laws. I really enjoy when a general lawyer calls me to argue a point as they are often wrong and misquote the legislation. While I work in property management and provide documentation for property transfers, I would still have a licensed agent and conveyancer do my home sale.
At one time the last ten feet of my backyard was an alley. Said alley was abandoned by the city many, many years ago. Whomever was in the home then took possession of that ten feet. That little fact became interesting when a development went in on the other side of my fence. My fence didn't move. The developer built one less townhouse ☺
That's why you always get a survey before buying a house. My wife and I were going to forego, but our realtor highly recommended it. Within a month of moving in, our neighbor said she thinks our fence encroaches. Pull out the survey, all is good.
I have a piece of property on which I decided to build a garage at that time the original survey markers from before the property was subdivided still existed. So for setback reasons I measured to find my actual property line. When I found the exact corner of the property I dug down and found an old survey stake. I showed it to my new neighbor because it could help him if he had a similar project. His fence had been installed six inches on to his side of the line he asked me so I own that six inches. I said I believe so. From that time on he mowed his side with his string trimmer. He moved before I had a chance to ask if he thought I showed him the marker to get him to trim the grass or if he just wanted everyone to know that six inch strip was his.
The same sort of thing happened in Champaign Illinois a few years back,. some guy up near Chicago bought up these parcels knowing what they were and then tried getting the home owners to buy the small parcels for much more. Made a big stink etc. As soon as this broke and people noticed that the city and or county was to blame for the issues then it slowly stopped getting mentioned.
while buying my current property I noticed it didn't list an easement for access to the property. I brought this up to the title company and they easily fixed it ( for them ) buy excluding it from their policy. the selling RE agent and I spent 2 days at the court house tracking down the correct easement.
the banks definitely care. if you got a clean survey and title insurance, and the bank approves - at least nine real estate sales, presumably nine surveys, nine title insurance policies, nine property transfers w local county- every single one - at least 36 professionals in this field - had to have made big errors that no one caught. This is shady af.
When my parents purchased an acre of land many decades ago (that they built a home on in 1965) they traded a 9-foot wide strip on the south side for 9 feet of the neighboring lot on the east side, so the neighbors on the east could run their driveway out to the side street rather than onto the highway. Many years later my parents set up a trust. When we were ready to sell the property after our parents' deaths, we found out that whoever had set up the trust neglected to place the eastern 9-foot strip into the trust (it was a separate parcel). This came out in the title search that was done once we had a potential buyer. Our estate attorney actually had to consult a real estate attorney to see what could be done and avoid the 9-foot strip having to go to probate. Turned out there's a thing called the probate referee, who came out and appraised the 9-foot strip, and as the appraised value was under some figure, it didn't have to go to probate. Whew! I'll never know if my parents simply didn't know (or remember) that the 9-foot strip was a separate parcel, or whether the attorney who set up the trust screwed up by not doing a title search then.
I have .25 acres with a shed in the back. Utility workers had to mark off underground utilities because the cable company may be doing fiber optic to home upgrades. I'm wondering what will happen in the future because my shed sits right over where some of the lines they painted would travel. 🤔 As an aside, while I was house shopping, I made EXTENSIVE use of the county auditors online real estate maps as well as fema flood insurance maps to make sure there weren't any surprises.
How do you sue somebody for not holding up their end of an agreement you made on their behalf? "Your honor, dickwad owes me ten grand for landscaping services." "How did you know dickwad wanted your landscaping services." "What do you mean? I forced them on him w/o his knowledge. You know, like government taxes and regulations." "You're not the government. GTFO my court."
When I purchased my first property 30 years ago, the Title Insurance only paid the mortgage holder. To add me to the insurance cost more, which I paid. Also I had a largish down payment, but not enough to avoid Private Mortgage Insurance. As soon as I met the 20% I believe it was requirement, I was able to cancel it. From what I understand some PMI is prepaid for the life of the loan, but I have not bought a property with a low enough down pay entire since to keep up on it. Steve will be happy to hear me say "You need to get a lawyer for these things."
Steve, you mentioned both mortgages and title insurance in this video, but I don't believe either would be valid. 1. The mortgage is only made on what is titled to the specific property, so they would already know the lot size and the area covered. 2. The title search would only be done on the property being sold, while not looking at the properties behind it.
Considering they want to remain anonymous I would guess one of the 9 homeowners involved is the actual owner of the backyard strip and is looking to skin his neighbors without them finding out it was him.
There should be a law that any tax land seizure of this nature sends a written notice to the nearest property owners with the right of first refusal. It would have cost them a couple of hundred dollars each to buy their connecting land. I read about another case when someone bought a rich neighborhood street (the actual road their houses use to drive to) and when the people found out they hired lawyers, it;s just gross as these buyers know exactly they are trying to low ball a tax seizure and screw the unsuspecting neighbors.
I had a neighbor years ago who tried to have my car towed and have me arrested for trespassing for parking in my own driveway. Luckily I only got a trespass warning even after showing the police officer my dead. So I followed the police officers advice and had my property surveyed and put up a fence a few feet on my side of the property line, which left my neighbor with no driveway at all on a street that didn't allow parking. Eventually they had to tear the house down next door because they wouldn't live there and couldn't rent it with no parking. Normally I'm a good neighbor, but in this case what with these people threatening my freedom as well as property I made a exception.
@@JeremyEllwood I am hoping to move to a larger location. Get my 43 ft vertical up. Fire up the 'new to me' Collins S Line. Nothing like radios that glow in the dark. A bit rusty on my CW. Use to do about 18 wpm. 73's.
@@tompinnef6331 I am tech so don't do (need) CW (though I still want to learn it anyway - it's good info to have). I live within city limits and close enough to the approach path of Flint Bishop airport where I have to be careful of my height so once I get the needle up there, I'll be looking at a probable 25 to 30 foot vertical which, running on 2 meters isn't horrible. When at the farm, I was running a 90 foot vertical at 2 meters with 60W. God, I miss that thing. I have some HF equipment I want to get running but I need to upgrade my license to transmit for that. I've never run HF. I've listened, but never had the opportunity to chat on it. Was hearing Ireland with an HF horizontal run across the fields and excellent propagation (Winter). Real life took over and I haven't been able to hobby as much as I'd like.
A few years ago we had a situation here, almost in FLA. A locally owned outdoor advertising company had a sign on a leased plot at the entrance to a golf resort. The lease came up for renewal and the land owner would not renew because they had built 8 houses along the road to the resort, adjacent to the sign, I know the owner of the sign company and he is the kind you don't cross. Somehow he came into possession of a 10 foot wide strip between the road and the frontage of all 8 houses. He installed a fence which locked all of the homeowners out. I feel sure that in court he would have lost as I understand you can not landlock a homestead. For expedience the fence came down and the sign went back up.
When I bought my present house, my neighbor said the lot line was along his concrete driveway. i had my lot surveyed as the village required to put a drive way in. My lot line was actually about 6 feet from my neighbor's driveway.
My question is that since at least one of the surveys that was done did not specify where the land past the utillity easement belonged, did the government charge taxes on the same piece of land to two individual owners? Because if so it could be argued that the land in question was never delinquent in whole at any time in the past and therefore should never have been sold at auction in the past. Because if this is the case, and it is a big if here, then the local government could impose an imminent domain action, pay the land trust the appraisal value and distribute the land to the home owners as compensation. Done and done.
Bunch of new owners who have not owned for more than 7 years. Sale resets the clock. If one of the previous owners had made the claim and won then the deed and associated paperwork would have been updated and passed to successive owners and title insurance would cover it.
@@davidtherwhanger6795 from the story here it sounds like the county knows that the 20' piece existed and has kept tax records on it (hence being able to sell it at tax sale).the survey not coming back with information on land that was past the property line isn't surprising (once you establish where the lines and property adjacent to the client are and essentially make a property island who owns the rest of the county isn't a concern from a survey standpoint). eminent domain has a requirement to be for public use or public betterment so i dont see how a local government could utilize ED to use taxpayer money to redistribute land back to private owners with no public benefit.
Some of the home owners seem to have a pretty good claim for it, if they band together and get a really good lawyer. FL law is 7 years of occupation. The question is, can the courts apply that retroactively to the previous owners so the current owners get the relief as well?
@@bretwalley4673 it doesn't matter if they've known about it since 2008, those homeowners have had an "open and notorious" occupation of the land since then.
@@bretwalley4673 You want me to feel sorry for some asshole who knowingly buys development limited properties and then tries to bully homeowners? Now the question becomes what has this land trust company done in the past 12 years other than trying to sell this property on Craigslist.
@@bretwalley4673 Nobody here is talking about the guy with the room addition/pool except for you; it has nothing to do with this land company harassing homeowners. If this land trust company is so desperate for the property, then they should take the homeowners to court for it. They won't because they'll end up with nothing. Have you even seen the backyards? i.imgur.com/MxoVEkS.png If you think I'm overstating the land company harassing homeowners, then you haven't read much about them www.tampabay.com/archive/2008/05/04/the-invisible-land-grab/
Adverse Possession was my first thought. According to the internet(not a reliable source) , it's 7 years in Florida. They may want to check their tax records and see if they've been paying taxes on the land, but otherwise if they've been living there that long, it seems they meet most of the requirements of Hostile Claim, Actual Possession, Open and Notorious Possession, Exclusive and Continuous Possession, and cultivation, improvement, or protection from a substantial enclosure on the land. This is not legal advice.
I agree. If they've been paying taxes on that property, they need to have their property tax reassessed and bill the past paid taxes to the trust. ( I know. Unlikely to be paid)
I thought about this angle, but remember how the easement changed hands to be owned by the trust; it was sold at auction for unpaid property taxes. Nobody was paying the taxes on that land, and presumably the trust has kept their tax bill up to date. The most likely reason for the trust to own the property in the first place is to use it as a money pit to claim against other tax bills as a business loss deduction.
@@DaremoTen no..they had their homes prior to the tax sale that went to the trust, so they could not have been paying the taxes. I am leaning toward the idea that it was one of the neighbors who bought the land and does not like his neighbors.
I've been a Texas real estate broker for 35 years, but I'm not an attorney, so this isn't legal advice. I've had surveyors fail to properly document something and then later have to pay to "fix" their error. That might help the homeowner whose survey didn't show the separate parcel at all. However, basic Texas title insurance might not provide any help in similar instances here because the policy has an exception for errors in boundaries. There's an addtional title insurance rider available for about 5% more of the policy that covers shortages in boundaries and encroachments. I think that the extra coverage would help a homeowner in a similar situation in Texas.
I worked for a land surveyor in high school, saw many plots where people sssumed things like this One doctor hired us because his neighbor was installing a fence and he thought it was on his property. It wasn't. Was a pie shaped plot, and you could see between the corners. However, the doctor built a short retaining wall on the opposite side, completely on his neighbor's property. Again, you could stand on each property corner and see the adjacent one. We also had many jobs where carports were added or home additions and even one small retail store built partially on the adjoining property. I remember in a business law course for engineers in college where a golf course was built, and the owners allowed the subdivison home owners beside it to use a service road / greenway every dayof the year except one. They closed a bridge every year on one specific day so they could retain full ownership and control.
That's one way to prevent someone from getting a prescriptive easement. Another way is sign a lease for their use of the property for some nominal sum (dollar a year, maybe) If you're using property under terms of a lease, you can't then turn around and claim ownership of an easement across that property.
I have seen this situation before,, and I can make a good guess as to how it happened. An easement,, a former intended alley perhaps,, was vacated. Easements and streets can be vacated. The city processed the paperwork to vacate that easement,, and then never told or explained that the now vacant property needed to have its taxes paid. Was the vacation of that easement requested by the current owner? Now that would make a very serious case about this incident. the thing to do, is look back in the city or county records to see who owned this property before it was purchased at auction. The developer? The city? There is a great probability that no one owned the property before that auction. The city or county,, in that case, should be raked over the coals,,, very slowly.
People mention easements, but I don't see how that would apply. An easement is another person's claim to use your property. If the strip were an easement, then it would be "on property owned by these houses." Right? So if they were like "nah, we're done with your land. thank you" then the house owners would be "cool, now I can build that monster brick pizza oven I've always wanted."
@@petermgruhn No, not always. Let's say,,,, Subdivision was platted in 1927. All lots laid out,, all streets laid out. The streets are still an easement,, owned by the city, county or state. Move on 70 years and the one street is never used,, never has been used, grass growing on it and mowed by the guy next door,,, he always thought it was just part of his lawn. The city may want to 'clean up' its map,, and it would love to have property taxes coming in. They vacate the property,, a process that removes it from public right of way and makes it private land again,,, which now they want to sell to make more money. The auctions are public,,, but that means you have to go to the property tax site to check,, or the surplus property lists. It is public,,, just rarely publicized. I have used a specific case as my example that I was aware of from day one. The really underhanded portion of my example is that the city never informed the guy who had been using the lot as his lawn for 40 years. No one knocked on the door, no none said, "You should bid on the property." They just sold it. Lost his yard and part of his garage.
Great show. You brought up points I did not realize when I bought my home years ago (sold since). Question; if you paid taxes on the property in question, can you collect them back from the county/state or sue the new owner?
I'd wonder about whoever sold them those houses in the first place. *Somebody* built a whole slew of fences enclosing land that wasn't part of the properties. Could this be some sort of long con, where the property seller made it look like the property included more than it really did, so that they could come back later and demand more money for the rest? It'd certainly explain why the trust's owner wanted to remain anonymous - I doubt the courts would look favorably on such a practice.
My mother, when she was moving and needing a new place to live, found a piece of property. Nice wooded lot in a developing neighborhood. The title was reportedly clear, the land surveyed. The county reported it open for building. After digging a well and then applying for the building permits to start the house THEN the county said.. Oh by the way, the entire property is easements, you can't build on any of it... Yeah our bad, but you can't sue us. Fortunately a neighbor who had a barely trickling well was interested since her well came in with high flow. She lost some money, but the time lost was even worse.
Something similar happened to me & my neighbors. Gross mismanagement by two HOA property manager co. & poor HOA board oversight lead to 2 or 3 tracts of HOA green space going into tax sale. After the purchase the new owner of the unbuildable land locked green space tried to extort purchases of the green space behind our lots. We all told him where to stick it. Then when he croaked his business partner & daughter inherited the land & tried a softer extortion feigning ignorant heiress just trying to offload land she didn't want. My guess is that these home might had been apart of a now defunct HOA & the homes might have been sold originally as HOA patio homes where you only own house & foundation footprint. It would explain the utility easement immediately out the back-door & why a seemingly abandoned track of unusable & unaccessible land would go to tax sale.
@@fredflintstone4715 are you going to tell me that Criminals that have broken into a house and injured themselves have not successfully sued the home owner.
Glad you mentioned "Adverse Possession" cuz that was the first thing I was thinking. A good judge would probably take one look at this BS and grant it out of principle. Good ideas in the comments section too!!
I had a similar situation on a piece of property I used to own down in Lead Hill Arkansas. I had 6 acres. Huge property. All of it was road frontage except for like a 20x20 or so square that belonged to some lady. She didn't use it or maintain it but refused to sell to me. So i had to stare at all the overgrown trees and stuff right outside my front windows.
As a builder in the NY area, I buy and sell properties regularly. Often hedge rows, rows of trees, fences and stone walls are not on the actual property line. Most neighbors are not aware and get upset when I explain it to them.
This is so easy to identify by an appraiser during the purchase. Sue the appraiser AND the realtor. A good real estate attorney may have success with easement by prescription.
I have an even better idea. Have the city/county seize the land under eminent domain, pay the current "owner" the assessed value of $937 (as stated in a news report), and then turn the land over to the homeowners. Thank you Kelo v. City of New London.
@@ElJeffeweizen If you think the ruling in Kelo said the government can seize property and give it to a bunch of residential homeowners to make their yards bigger you should actually read it.
Kelo is about a private concern being able to take your property (legal plunder), because the new owners will be paying more in property tax than the present ones. One of the sad happenings in this case is the big pharmaceutical firm, after raising all this hell, abandoned their project and didn't build their multi million dollar project after all. In the end, New London wound up loosing big. A bird in the hand, right? A similar thing happened in Merriam Kansas. Someone was operating a used car lot out of an old gas station, the property of which they happened to own. Along comes the city of Merriam, who had been approached by a Mercedes dealership who wants to build there, except this pesky used car lot was in their way. The city says, "No problem, we can use eminent domain." The shiny new luxury cars go into the new lot. And during the next election, the majority of the city council gets voted out.
When you buy a house usually you know the lot size and location. Seems these people assumed the land behind them was public land and that no one would ever challenge them using it
According some of the articles I read on this one of them *did* a survey and I quote "didn’t point out the land trust property at all". Something about this sends up red flags.
In most cases law requires that "item sold separately" be written on the box. Would have been nice if the laws covering products covered homes too. How is it sellers aren't required to disclose how a yard can be clearly implied without the seller saying, oh but that doesn't come with the house. Even some fine print would be better than nothing.
Alternatively, make them fence it off and maintain it. It isn't clear if there is any access to the plot in question, so the homeowners might be able to deny access to the bastards. Catch 22: they have to maintain it but must trespass in order to do so.
Now the law requires a real estate agent and the banks interject all their regulations, the seller didn't accurately define the property and how the hell is any of this goes through without a surveyor?
I know someone else who bought a tract of land and when surveyed it included many people's back yards and their fences and whatever they had on there. He sent them a letter to move it off. Maybe this is the same story but his was a large tract of land and not some strip. There was even a highway Billboard on it the neighbor was collecting the money from. When he sent a letter to the billboard company they moved it off. This stuff does happen.
(Thought it was 7 years in Florida for adverse possession.) I was building and zoning inspector for 36 years. A lot of people don't know where their property lines are. I had people who bought property that they thought were lots but had houses on them. They'd yell at me like I was crazy. I'd show them where the lot lines were. I don't get why the title search company didn't find a problem. Surveys are great but most people don't get them. Hint: if you are on new development you really need to get a survey to make sure your house is on your lot. You have to be careful about easements, too, and if utilities go over or under your property. Zoning is another issue in that when the property was built may not match current zoning, e.g., you buy a 2 family and the neighborhood is zoned a 1 family. If the place isn't documented as a continuous non-conforming use, you could have lost your ability to have it as a 2 family. If I were the owners, I'd ask the county auditors office to reassess their own value of property downward and the lot's value upward because of all the improvements so that they have to higher taxes and holding costs. I'd ask the country for any taxes back if they were paying for improvements on the lot. if they did make improvements on the lots and under permit, why did the agency approve those changes and improvements?
Usually when there is a zoning change the existing structures are grandfathered in and can be utilized as they were designed to be used under the prior zoning. Now here is where things get more touchy. If the structures happen to catch on fire or have other major damages that would require extensive rebuilding then those structures would not be allowed to be rebuilt.They would have to be torn down to bare land and any new structures being built would have to conform to the new zoning of that land. If the owner was going to add on to the structure it would not be allowed to be done such as adding a garage were none was to begin with. This is called adding value to the land. Many people try to add value to the land knowing it was rezoned so they could force a higher price should they sell it. Zoning rules can be changed from administration to administration and the land owners at at their mercy. The land you bought for $300,000 could be rezoned and that value dwindled down to $50,000 real fast and nothing the land owner can do about it. Also of note many zoning maps do not reflect the current status of the land as well. They usually go off of existing surveys and never do a survey themselves that actually reflects the new zoning areas and properties they effect.
@@rispatha the expansion of a non-conforming use depends on jurisdiction and the how the administrator or review board interprets the language of the code. Some kinds of zoning is more amenable to modification than others. Some jurisdictions will allow a non-conforming use to be rebuilt based upon same size and same location and others will not. Economic impact can determine outcome of a decision. When a zone is going to be changed, it is important to show up to meetings to let it be known how you feel about it and if it will adversely effect you. I know of case where the woman did not want her property be part of a historic designation. The historic designation stopped at her property line. BTW, there are a lot of reasons for not having a historic designation. Also, if there is a zone change and one has to document pre-existing and ongoing use. It could affect parking, truck parking, storage and even the kind of fencing you can have. If you are a manufacturing company in a area that is being gentrified, if you don't have your documentation right you can be in a world of hurt. What I am saying is that there might be grandfathering allowed but you have to prove it. Fighting the young professionals who take over a neighborhood can be costly to a business owner. Last paragraph, yes zoning can be used to discourage development until the powers that be are ready to start a project. Case in point was a sports stadium that was installed in a residential zone where development was held back and priced for the land remained low. Yes, you are correct. I don't miss zoning enforcement.
@@eottoe2001 ... Basically all zoning is based upon the whims of those who are in control of the city/county at any given moment in time and they can change at any given moment in time regardless of any claims otherwise with few exceptions. Yes having a "Historical designation" is never a good thing unless you are int he business of preserving an areas historic buildings etc. The amount of restrictions that are then forced upon you are countless. Many cities rarely ever announce when they are having zoning and planning meetings in a timely manner or in the local news papers sections that many read. They are usually buried in the Classified section as a short blurb that many overlook. they do this so they can claim they made the announcement to the public. My grandpa wanted to purchase a piece of land across the street from his home he lived in. He had many rental properties and also had a few new homes built. SO he was familiar with how things operated in our town. The property he wanted to purchase was large enough to build 2 side by side duplexes thus having 4 rental units on the site. When he approached the city about his plans they said that e couldn't build there because of how the land was not zoned for "multi family units". So he caved in and didn't pursue the plans. 6 months later without any notice or anything else someone else bought the land and built 2 side by side duplexes on that property. No mention of how the zoning magically was changed to accommodate these 2 houses and nobody even considered contacting my grandpa and telling him that hey we "rezoned" the property so you could do what you wanted to do. What was gathered from this is that someone on the zoning board listened to the plan, denied it, then found someone they were friends with to propose the same idea behind closed doors and then as a result the zoning board said sure go for it. This town is known for playing favorites to those they like and making things harder for those they do not like. The city itself has went through the town and selectively purchased key parcels of property and rented out the houses to the public playing the landlord. Once those properties have reached the threshold on returns for the investment they tore them down. While playing landlord they rarely even upgraded anything and were basically being slumlords towards the end of the life of the property. They have also allowed a prominent corporation within the city limits to do the same thing along the way and they are continuing this practice to this day. I have watched whole neighborhoods wiped out and turned into parking lots and many other houses just torn down and turned into empty lots. by this corporation. Hell even the mayor goes along with what is going on even though many dirty underhanded tactics were and are being used.
@@rispatha Zoning can be pretty bad on a lot of levels depending upon who is in favor and who is out of favor. I had a guy who called himself a developer who soaked the banks and the city for projects that never happened. He had like 5 different addresses and a number of corporations. The buildings were in bad shape and I started ordering them down. I tore down like 4 of them until the bank woke up and took the rest of the back. (By the way,, those old building are inventory for future investment and to get more bank loans.) At some point the demos were denied because the district had been declared history. I talked to the community councils and neighbors who wanted the building down and the inverter gone, they told me they had no notification of a new historic status. The historic was a way to shield bad players in a neighborhood. If you have a lot of bad buildings in a neighborhood or town it is usually only two or three players involved. Generally where I worked they had good notification. Bad notification can hang a city in the appeals court if we didn't follow due process, but a lot of cities and counties don't. A lot of time if the medium income of the area is under $34K, no one has the money to pay for an attorney or even a survey. On your grandfather's dilemma, I would have figured out the side setback were and seen if he could have divided the lots then put two houses in or two non-attached duplexes. It would be a duplex on one side and the duplex on the other with a 5' to 10' separation. That depends on how wide lots are. Some places allow for zero lot lines providing the fire separation and access requirements are met. On the cities buying up houses and renting them out (unless it is a housing authority) is not wise thing to do. There is so much liability. I kind of wonder if those were bad properties that were put into receivership? A lot of issues with slum properties with the kind of economics we have and the values involved since Reagan and Clinton because the houses are just investment objects only. This isn't all landlords, but a lot of them are know to suck all the capital out of the building and put little or nothing into them unless forced to do so. You don't see that so much in Europe but they value the buildings and community. We don't.
Good point, since the owner has declared he owns it, by law, isn't he responsible for it's upkeep & what about all the taxes & fees these people paid on something that turned out to belong to someone else?
Can this be an example of title theft? You know, all those ads saying that criminals create a fake title and then sell the house or take out a loan against it. Could this be criminals activity?
@@imlistening1137 The way property in a subdivision is sold is by lot numbers. If you buy lot 5 of block 6 in subdivision XX, it does not include the alley behind it and can also have utility easements that encumber the title. You may have the use of the alley, but it was never part of part of lot 5, block 6. The utility easement may have gas, water, and/or sewer pipes on it or it may be a power pole with electric, telephone and cable lines on it. Utility easements can actually make the house more livable Title theft involves someone filing fraudulent documents stating that they purchased lot 5 of block 6. Most of the posts that I have seen involve efforts of the true owners in clearing the title to their property. This is when title insurance may be of use.
This happens in the UK as well. Usually with odd bits in front of buildings. Many have been forced to pay to get access to their own front door. We call them Ransome Strips.
In our state the realtor is required to disclose that information and a plat map is also provided to the buyer with the legal description. A title company is also required.
"The neighbors should have have paid more attention to the surveys" Translation you were legally setup for a swindle and the owner knows he's acting in poor faith so will stay anonymous.
One homeowner even realized that she didn't own all the fenced in property. You are putting down an awful lot of money so maybe you should do your homework. In Germany this is mandatory when someone sells a property to give out an extract of the official map including the exact limits of your property.
@@svenweihusen57 Yes one should due their best to avoid being taken. It's no longer a world where you can assume both parties have good intentions anymore. It's like the Ebay scam where people would show a tv or other moderate ticket item for a good price and have small print saying only picture. The person should have watched out better the one tricking the buyer is still a crook.
@@theyaden The problem is: who knew about the problem? Did he knew about it and just didn't care or was it some oversight decades ago. So maybe, just maybe, the seller didn't knew better. Why else would he have build the fence around something he didn't own? And there seams to be a lot of people unaware of this problem. And I certainly can't understand the one who knew about the problem and still bought the house and is now complaining.
@@svenweihusen57 I have my doubts the people buying were aware a chunk in the middle of their property wasn't being sold with the rest of the parcel. (If someone buys knowing this they are to put it polity very unwise) That the person who owns strategic chunks within these properties decided to remain anonymous while reaching out to say they will need to pay a way higher than market price to have use of their property is why I believe this is a scammer who found a legal way to cheat some people. He's got multiple people by the short hairs and I'm a bit too cynical to believe it was all happenstance.
@@theyaden Lento stated that one women check the limits so she knew about the problem. It was never stated how old these houses are so they may have been sold many times and somewhere along this the information was lost. And IMHO the real culprit here is the city. It should be quiet obvious that this is a useless property for commercial or housing activities so they should have checked it and offered the stretch to the homeowners. The current owner is certainly a leech but he is profiting from the carelessness of the buyers. Not nice but legal.
If I were the homeowners I would move my fences, or other items abd stop mowing the property. Then call the city and complain about the property not being maintained. Then not let him cross your property to maintain it, tell him he has to buy an easement. Eventually he would get sick of fines from the city and proably sell for cost.
I was thinking the same thing.
Was about to type the same.
Doesn’t help the guy with the pool
@WebCity Films Agree, but you can "allow" them to maintain it and start forcing them to pay some costs. As they add up it becomes less profitable. Not sure if that could backfire though.
@WebCity Films Perhaps not. One thing is for sure, if they all ban together and stop maintaining the property, the "owner" will have to maintain it himself. You can wait it out, watch the property and file complaints every time the grass is an inch higher than it should be and see how long he keeps wanting to deal with it.
I can almost guarantee the owner is one of their neighbors. #1 how will they know when someone "trespasses" and #2 that would explain why they want to keep their identity secret.
Possibly, or a foreign investor.
If it is one of the neighbors, they could figure it out fairly quickly by how the person accesses it to maintain it once they stop maintaining the land.
Honestly sounds exactly like something a county tax buyer would do. Someone saw this in the tax sale booklet.
There is a lawsuit in all of this: deed search supplier should be sued. Aren't there supposed to be setbacks?
my guess its more of a bill gates type of shit, that or black rock or some strange chinese company trying to subvert.
I think it's the bank. Like he said, a bank giving a mortgage loan would have wanted to know the details of the property.
I was a mortgage loan officer for 12yrs. There are 2 other professionals that could be liable. The appraiser should have looked at the survey because of potential flood zones and the total Sq footage of land in the appraisal. Also the seller and realtor offered land for sale they did not have a right to sell.
I went thru a bit over an A-H flood zone almost thirty years ago. Bought a house twelve years ago and when i asked them about flood elevations, they had absolutely NO idea what I was talking about. Everybody has gotten stupid these days.
Seen that before firsthand! There was a separate issue that was since resolved, but it meant we ended up having copies of all of the surveys/maps from over the years. One day, my family and I were enjoying this piece of property minding our own business, when a realtor from the house for sale across the street came on the property with prospective buyers for that house in tow. The realtor was like "And this is..." And we are all like "No, THIS is private property. YOU need to get off of it, and need to look at your deed again!" Fun times.
@@Telephonebill51 Do you mean if the house was in a known flood plain?
I owned a house years ago that had no utility easements in the backyard. I had to run off a cable company guy that came on my property and intended to dig up my flower beds against the fence when the cable box was in the neighbors easement behind the fence. He was trying to work on someone else's cable and he had to clear a lot of plant material to access the box, so he wanted to dig my beds up because it was easier. When I showed him the survey, he left. It's very important to know what's on your survey.
Who has been paying the taxes.
Who pays the taxes is irrelevant for an easement
I had something very similar but I wasn't home at the time. Came home to find a backhoe in my yard, several of my ceadars I had as a hedge uprooted and a trench across my yard. It was a neighborhood with all the wires underground. The guy looked at me and said, "Do you want cable?"
"I already have cable."
"We need to replace the line."
"Well, not through my yard, are you crazy?"
So, the way it was arranged, the main cable junction box was on the main road running by our neighborhood and the distribution box was in the middle of the neighborhood. Originally, they ran the wires along the roads. The neighborhood was private and we all owned the road as well. So, anyway, the way it was arranged, it was way shorter to run the line through my yard, so the guy just decided to do so. I told him to get off my property and then we had a big deal with them trying to do the line through my yard and me suitor damages. The Einstein dug up my septic tile field.
In the end, there was no easement, they had to fix everything but it was a giant hassle.
Shortly after i bought my first home the neighbor pointed out the steps on my back porch actually cross the property line. He was a decent guy but if i asked them to turn down their music or have their guest move out of my drive so my guests could use it his wife would mutter about tearing off my steps or other threats about the infraction. 2 years later i bought that property too and will decide who can be my neighbors as long as i live here.
In my limited experience, Title Insurance seems to cover everything except what actually happens.
Oh, that's just all forms of insurance.
Still just at the beginning of the video, but this isn't a title insurance problem. This is a survey problem. Had they done the survey, they would have learned that the property being sold was smaller than the property being marketed.
I am amazed at how many people will make their most expensive purchase and not have any idea what they're getting into. Usually it's just not reading the HOA DCCRs but yeah, surveys is another example.
@@MichaelGreen831 did you not listen to the video? He said get a survey and title insurance to take care of things like this.
OP was just saying that even if they had it, the title insurance would probably fuck em too.
Similar to flood insurance. It's federal and it insures you the ability to borrow money to rebuild your house.
@@Nevir202 yeah. I watched the whole thing. You skipped the first sentence of my comment.
Very interesting. I ran into a similar situation when purchasing my first home. My mortgage company required that I get title insurance and the title company came back and stated that it was a clean title. The day I went to walk into the house the sheriff had changed the locks and had a notice on the door. I had my entire family with me whom just moved from another state with all our belongings packed into a U-Haul and very little money. One phone call to the title company and putting them in contact with the sheriff. The wheels of progress suddenly jumped into high gear. My realtor called me within half an hour asking me to meet them one town over where I was given the keys to a beautiful big home where I stayed for 90 days until they straighten the mess out. When it was time to leave I really missed the temporary home but they paid all of my moving expenses and it was nice to finally get into the home that I purchased. Yes title insurance it was so worth it 😂
Can you tell us what had happened? That's a crazy story
Thank your real estate agent, aka snake oil salesman. 100% what they are supposed to deal with.
But you STILL didn't get the actual Title, did you? You're probably just listed as the "Tenant" on the Deed. See my earlier comment.
Only problem with title insurance is that it often doesn't cover any claims that haven't been filed yet. There are numerous situations where there may not be a title issue on record yet, but someone might be able to make one.
Schnieder should have an "accident" near the pool. Sue them for $50K. See how much they really want to keep the property.
The kangaroo courts today would probably find that the person who constructed the pool is liable.
Thunderhorse @ Sickle AAF/Downs Barracks-Fulda Gap
@@sceptre1922 Across the "sweet smelling field". Ironhorse! Delta Co.
I was thinking the same thing if you get injured on someone else's property they're responsible for damages the only hard part is proving injury but I'm sure someone with a little creativity could solve that
Well they can take a trespassing charge but they can still sue remember there's always the old case of a burglar breaking into a building after hours with no trespassing signs posted all over he hurt himself trying to break in and sued and won even tho he did go to jail for trespassing and breaking and entering
My sister had a lakefront property in Florida. It was in a small town and she was fortunate that someone in the tax office called here to say that the lake was up for tax sale. She was able to purchase it and avoided a situation like you described.
A few years ago the town I live in realized homes that backed up against town owned conservation land had slightly expanded there back yards mostly done by previous owners. The town inspector found homeowners had sheds, fences, and swing sets on the town land. The homeowners got letters telling them to move the stuff or pay huge fines. It was a huge problem. Most of town didn't care. The only person with a problem was the inspector. A few sheds where moved but the problem went away the inspector got in trouble for going into peoples yards, trespassing to see if he could catch people. He had the right to inspect the conservation land, from the conservation land. Instead of walking the land he decided to take multiple shortcuts and really got in trouble when the cops were called and the yard he trespassing in wasn't bordering the conservation land
As I look over large property parcels in New Mexico, I was warned to research the water, mineral and other land use rights before I buy. Good advice.
I bought my property with a 4 party well on it. I assumed my water was covered. Much to my surprise, I got water bills, and NO I did not own the water rights with the property. Not only that, in the fine print on my land contract was a clause that forbids me to use pesticides or herbicides because the well is on my property. Now there are like 9-10 houses on my well, and my water pressure has dropped a lot from 25 years ago. (One of the reasons I bought the place, the water pressure was awesome and the water delicious) I bought a house when I was young and ignorant. Lessons learned the hard way. I got screwed over 6 ways to Sunday buying this place, but hey it's only 16 payments from being paid off, and when it is, I am moving, with a lot more knowledge in my head than before.
12 years, adverse posession is 7 years in Florida... I would suggest they get a lawyer to file in the courts. They have been maintaining it, and the previous peaple had been.
This is the land they are talking about:
www.google.com/maps/place/Bigelow+Dr,+Holiday,+FL+34691/@28.1976833,-82.7608231,20z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x88c28dde447fd30f:0xe982d52d85852787!8m2!3d28.197437!4d-82.7581275
Click on satellite view to see the house with the pool (left side), as well as the one with the shed (rightside).
Now... Here is what the development looked like in 1971 when it was new:
www.historicaerials.com/location/28.1974206844397/-82.75993228584193/1971/18
Note that the easement is not clearly defined or broken out. Even the house with the pool was not built yet. I assume the easement (from its shape) was planned as a water line that would go to a new development being built to the left of this development but was never used.
and improvements (ie; pool, and shed) would help their case.
@@TEverettReynolds adverse possession doesn't matter whether or not the land belonged to them. It all depends on whether or not rightful possession of said land was enforced. For 12 years, nobody took actions to enforce the possession of the land, therefore the homeowners do have a case for adverse possession prior to the sale of the land. Adverse possession could be a valid defence.
It's pretty hard to have adverse possession of property for 7 years if you never set foot on it more than 5 or 6 years ago. According to Zillow one of the properties was last sold in 2002, so that owner is probably going to be fine. Another was sold in December of 2013. That's a hair under 7 years ago, and I'd bet that's the one that got the trespassing notice, which means the owner hasn't let them have adverse possession for 7 years. The others have all sold more recently, so they may be SOL. Here's the link to Zillow: www.zillow.com/holiday-fl/?searchQueryState=%7B%22pagination%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22usersSearchTerm%22%3A%22holiday%2C%20fl%22%2C%22mapBounds%22%3A%7B%22west%22%3A-82.7611994857656%2C%22east%22%3A-82.75806130121818%2C%22south%22%3A28.196707211992525%2C%22north%22%3A28.198671605559866%7D%2C%22mapZoom%22%3A19%2C%22regionSelection%22%3A%5B%7B%22regionId%22%3A11940%2C%22regionType%22%3A6%7D%5D%2C%22isMapVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22filterState%22%3A%7B%22ah%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Atrue%7D%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3A%22globalrelevanceex%22%7D%7D%2C%22isListVisible%22%3Atrue%7D
@@NYpaddler maybe, I did suggest lawyer... There might be a way around it in that it is the whole parcel on the other side. And the previous owners erected the fence.
I don't know about specific procedures, it may for example be possible to file it as a class action of all of them beeing similarly situated, at the point the judge is carving up the parcel, well, it gets a little more interesting.
Why is it every time Steve says "this a crazy story " the sentence ends with "from Florida "😂
To be fair, Michigan is the northern Peninsula of Florida.
What's up with the Floridians?
@@robertlee9395 The owner of the easement apparently lives in California.
@@robertlee9395 most of them are from up north.
@@ron58r Lol. That narrows it down.
I live in gold rich northeastern Georgia and worked for a real estate attorney. A lot of people are surprised to learn that they may not own the mineral rights to their property. The right are usually owned in a large block by one of several families in the area. To have the rights researched can cost thousands. My brother-in-law did not own the mineral rights to his property until the man who did screwed up and didn't pay one year. He payed the fees and picked them up. There is an actual gold mine (not operational) on the property.
I know this video is old but i am continually amazed at people who didn't actually look at the disclosures when they bought their home. I distinctly recall examining the parcel map and description of my property.
The lawyer(1) probably owns the property or is in cahoots with the owner who is also another lawyer(2) doing the same thing with lawyer(1) being the owner.
In the past, including 2008, I've performed lots of real estate appraisal work in Holiday, Florida. Back then it was fairly standard for the lender to require a land survey. I would imagine there might be some culpability there with the lender.
Not the lender, but the surveyor and title company. The lender will likely sue the title company.
Would the appraisal people be aware of it?
@@neileskew3454 yes. That's part of their job. You can't properly appraise the value of the property without knowing exactly where its boundaries are
How much do you want to bet that the lawyer "representing" the trust is also the *owner/controller* of the trust?
A typical shyster move...
More likely I suspect it would be either one of the home owners or a realtor, lawyer, or other person who knows the owners and was involved in the sales process and found the property that way. I would look hard at anyone who recently had conflicts with his/her neighbors before this came about. Might have held the knowledge since the sale then when mad, did it.
@@clouddancer7624 who said he was a Christian? They tend to be so full of hate, I wouldn't be surprised if he was.
Probably related to a city council member...
@edwardschlosser1 knocking the guy off doesnt necessarily improve the situation. An issue here is that its much easier, at least conscience-wise, to do that to this guy (because he had some intent) than it is to do it to whoever or whatever inherits the land next. If you are rubbing arbitrary people out for land, then why the hell are you doing it for a few crappy back yards?
@@myyoutubehandle1234 it isn't a generalization if you've ever been to Alabama.
The first home that I purchased nearly fifty years ago was known as a "battleaxe" block with access via a laneway between the two homes in front of me. The homes in front of me also used the laneway to access their respective garages. When I purchased the property I was required to have a survey done for financing. The property had a rear access large enough to allow a vehicle to enter the property. There was no vehicular access at the front of the property as the home fronted a public golf course. Several years after purchasing the property one of my neighbours in front of me sold his home. Shortly after the new neighbours advised me that my vehicular access was infringing on their property and what I believed to be a driveway in reality was just a single gate entrance less than one metre in width. I requested a copy of the survey report on my property from my finance institution and sure enough the survey showed the actual legal access plus indicating the non approved vehicular access. The finance company advised me that my solicitor should have advised me of the situation, which unfortunately he had not. It seems that many, many years previously a gentleman's handshake agreement had been made allowing vehicular access to the property and that subsequent purchasers of the property in front of me were not aware that my property line infringed on their property. It was only for an observant new owner intent on claiming his rightful property that I was made aware of the situation. In effect my property value was reduced dramatically due an oversight on the part of my solicitor who should have made it known that the driveway access within my property had not been made legal. To further add insult to injury what I believed to be a driveway down to my property entrance was actually a pedestrian walkway and thus vehicular traffic was not allowed.
In Texas, that's known as An Unrecorded Easement. Depending on how long it had been going on, continuous use might have established a permanent right to continue doing so. Especially if one could show that there had actually been an agreement at one point. Settling it would probably still involve lawyers and courts, the best thing would have been for the homeowners to work it out between themselves and record the agreement for future property owners.
The assessors office owes you the taxes, with interest, that you paid for every year that access was included in their assessment and the tax bill they levied upon you. They collected twice on the same real estate from two different people, and you were not liable for yours.
"Flag lot" around here.
What a nightmare!
The trust owner wants to remain anonymous, otherwise he'll wind up filling up a hole out in the middle of the woods.
The brakes on my car failed. But I have auto insurance. Be a good add on to "The Godfather".
t's Florida. He'd feed an alligator.
dam alligators and their drunk driving
=)
@@cnault3244 Post holes. Vertical, gravel lined bottom, with a 4ft post and cement making sure he provides a solid footing for a secure fence around his own property. If you're going get rid of a body, at least put the hole(s) to good use. At least with a fence you can show it off to your neighbors and brag about your hard work.
"This isn't personal, it's just business." This line occurs a number of times in the "Godfather" movies. Hm.
“Vacated easement that may used and maintained”
I would guess the real estate agents knew exactly what was transpiring and are guilty of omission.
say it in english...fraud.
agreed
What do you want to bet that the group is a bunch of real estate attorneys
Or collusion?
Doubtful. Life is to short to do business that way.
The period of time for adverse possession in Florida is seven years, so the proeprty owners have used and maintained the disputed parcels WITHOUT permission of the land trust. Ergo, possession has transferred to the homeowners.
I was wondering about this. It's also seven years in Tennessee and my first thought when he said it was bought in 2008 was "how long is the period of time of open and aggressive use for hostile possession?". Hopefully the homeowners get an easy win here.
You have no idea how adverse possession works.......
@@oneswellfoop No, actually I do having won several adverse possession cases.
@@boblewis8838 oh, then you understand that when you said what you said that you were wrong. Merely using and maintaining a property for 7 years is insufficient for a party to obtain the property via adverse possession. They'd also have to either have color of title or pay taxes on the property for those seven years, in addition to occupying and maintaining the land, then have to the land conveyed to them by the courts.
It doesn't just happen after 7 years by operation of law as you were intimating.
but obvisously they aren't paying property taxes on this property
Something similar happened to one of my Aunts. Her and her husband bought a house on some land, later to find out they did not actually own the land. All paperwork even through the title insurance said it was theirs but a document that pre-dated their purchase showed that the land and the house were separate entities. The bank and the title insurance all ducked responsibility and told them that they were on their own.
That can happen when a mobile home is purchased on acreage. The seller might not disclose that the land and mobile home are in fact separate until later when the land is sold out from under you. The mobile home is considered personal property (with a title of ownership) while the land is real property (deeded to the owner of the land). To attach the mobile home to the property, it must have the hitch and axles removed, placed on a foundation. Then submit forms to the DMV to have the title cancelled and declared the mobile home is real property.
The hedge part of your story was so similar to my brother. He bought a house and almost 2 years later discovered his property was 10-15' past a row of lilac bushes that was a nice separation from the neighbors house. He had really nice neighbors. The only "issue" after the discovery my brother's lawn mowing responsibilities grew slightly, while the neighbor saved time on maintaining his lawn.
Good neighbors are a blessing!
I had a similar issue with a neighbor. We had big yards but the boundary wasn't clearly marked. The only issue was mowing. We both just mowed a bit over where we we believed the line to be. When I moved in there was a vegetable garden that was clearly on his property but he said the previous owner of my house had made it and I was free to use it if I wished, which I did. I gave them lots of vegetables and they gave us deer meat.
In some older towns there use to be a road in the backyard that was used for coal delivery. This road is long abandoned but on the survey it is a 20ft easement owned by the town. The town can sell it at any time so it is a good idea to buy it first.
Let them trespass you, force them into court.
Wow, such a different way of buying property over there! Over here we hire solicitors/lawyers to do conveyance on any property, part of the conveyance is carrying out searches of documentation for past and future planning, services, and "title", it's really not optional, and I'm pretty sure we don't even have "title insurance" because of this. On the adverse possession aspect, I think that 12 years is the UK threshold btw (it was the very first thing that popped into my head when you outlined the issues these guys are having)
That's outrageous. It sounds like the previous 9 homeowners didn't know about that tract of land either. I guarantee you that I wouldn't grant easement through any of my property to that "trust" without it costing it "more than [it] could pay".
If the nine prior homeowners never rose the issue, and the trust exercised its ownership of the property by paying taxes on it, the trust might have eminent domain rights over it.
About 15 years ago I bought my hovel (some might call it a house) and hired an attorney to review the transaction prior to signing the paperwork. That couple of hundred dollars saved me over two thousand dollars. I was purchasing using my VA entitlement and the lender had tacked on fees not allowed under that provision. Yay lawyer. A week after moving in I got a survey done, put up a fence, cleaned up the yard, and made fast friends of otherwise ordinary neighbors. Lawyer+survey+fence=no drama.
When I was a child the homeowner behind my parents sued them and our next door neighbor for taking his backyard. Which even as a kid I thought was funny since I had watched his house built. I just remember him over yelling at my Mom. My dad looked stuff over and called the local bank holding the mortgage to see if they had any idea what to do. They sent someone out to survey since they held the notes on both houses and were concerned. In the end it turns out the street behind us was put in wrong. They built the road with the centerline about 10 ft off. So everything was off from there. Since my parent's street and house was built first the neighbor behind us lost out. But not after dragging everyone into court, etc. Lucky for my parents the bank represented them so they lost no money over it.
I have neighbor like that they try to take done my fence down when I had my land surveyed found out three feet of there property i owned before I had this done they telling me that two feet of my property was there's so put a bigger fence up
My Wife's Grandparents "lost" 50 Acres to Ft Knox when they started fencing in the Training Areas. But they had never had a Survey done so there was really nothing they could do. Nothing they could have done anyway because, hey, Ft Knox.
@@SGTJDerek dang... that would have been a long long time ago... right. Figure they would claim eminent domain... done
@@Kaliburz Knox didn't start fencing in the Bullitt County side until after Sept. 11.
Someone in the government's land management office brought that land at an tax auction. Just business! File a suit to make the owner known to the public.
I don't think so. I think someone just saw an opportunity to sell the land to the adjacent landowners. See google maps: www.google.com/maps/place/Bigelow+Dr,+Holiday,+FL+34691/@28.1976833,-82.7608231,20z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x88c28dde447fd30f:0xe982d52d85852787!8m2!3d28.197437!4d-82.7581275 The property could even be sold to the houses on Tiki street, just north of Bigelow street. So it has value.
@@TEverettReynolds One of the home owners saw the opportunity during their land and title survey. Right?
@@kennethjohnson4456 Probably not. Whoever is behind this is notorious for buying land and then harassing the local homeowners
www.tampabay.com/archive/2008/05/04/the-invisible-land-grab/
@@ElJeffeweizen The case of the private road would probably fail in court. The residents have used it for 30 years and maintained it all this time, including paving it. I don't see any court now denying access to their properties. I believe adverse possession in Florida is seven years.
@@TEverettReynolds - The houses on Tiki could not use it as there is a drop off between the two yards. A retaining wall there is with a 6 to 10 foot drop I am guessing. Look at your link and view it with satelite and zoom in. The shadows give away the 1 story drop from the pool to the area below. This was a driveway/alley access for the rear of the houses and very well might have right of way or use on the deed prior to this tax sale.
Something similar occurred in Pinellas County some years ago when someone bought, for back taxes, an easement surrounding a large pond behind a dozen or so houses. The purchaser then built a tall fence blocking the view to the pond. Then charging the home owners for the easement .
Okay, that settles it. Either I don't know what an easement really is / really could be, or people are just using the term wrong.
Can't charge a fee to use an easement. He could charge a fee to access the pond but he'd have to set it up as a business and get licencing, permits and zoning changes. The zoning change won't happen unless he buys the zoning board.
👍👍 I think the homeowners knew where the property lines are, they just wanted a few feet more. Happens all the time
We had a slightly different situation here in San Diego years ago, involving the beach front houses that had a boardwalk behind them, between the houses and the beach. The city actually owned a strip larger than the boardwalk, but the homeowners, pretty much all of them, enclosed the unused areas up to the boardwalk, as part of their private yards. The city made it known that when the time came to enlarge the boardwalk, the land would be reclaimed. But until then they would leave things as they were.
Then came the time when the foot/ bike traffic on the boardwalk was getting excessive, and it was time to widen it. And all the homeowners, who should have known they were occupying the city's property, screamed and cried and filed lawsuits and generally threw tantrums. They lost and the boardwalk was enlarged.
That's hilarious. They do a similar thing where I live, if you fence in part of the public owned utility easement as part of your yard, they usually won't do anything, but if they need to access or do work in that area, they'll take out the offending section of fence. It doesn't happen often, but when it does I always laugh.
had a similar situation happen here in Connecticut. Long story short, A railroad had a long spur line that was not used. They pulled the tracks up 30 years ago. There was a housing boom in the area, bunch of new developments, the builders had to of known the railroad had a right of way when they got the permits. The people who purchased the houses did not do there research, railroads decides to put tracks back down.... and now about 20 mcmansions are 100 feet from a railroad track. They tried going to court but lost. The railroad legally owned the land and it was well marked out in the towns records. If anything they should have gone after the builder.
A similar thing happened at Seacliff State Beach (south of Santa Cruz). Homeowners assume they own to the edge of the oceanfront bluff but the Lot lines are actually several feet back. They have patios, decks, planters, and fences on the State side of the boundary. They cured that over time by notifying the Lot owner every time a lot listed for sale, the homeowner cleaned it up quick so as to not get a lis pendins to mess up the sale.
I was there when that happened. Some people's doors ended up opening just about onto the boardwalk.
Where I live, this is very common. I once looked at a piece of property that was 21 acres. After viewing it, it was very obvious it was not that big. There was a housing plan on both sides of the wooded area. After looking at the lot sizes on the plot map, I could see that all the houses, (about 10 on each side), on both streets adjoining the property had "extended" their backyards about a 75-100ft beyond their property lines into the wooded area. Buyer beware... I always compare the "legal" description to the actual property.
This sounds just like something that will make everyone's lawyer money!
he’s probably one of the affected “neighbors”
Yep
Sounds like just another scam. 😕
As a title examiner if the fences on a survey doesn't match the property lines i add an exception for that to the the schedule B excluding the property outside/inside a fence
I can understand the frustration. I bought 6.5 acres in Oregon. Then 6 months later found out that 1/2 of it is a right of way for Bonneville power. Bonneville power is basically the federal government so basically I have to ask their permission to do anything with that portion of the property. Wish I had known before buying.
Every Home I've purchased, in SC and NC, required a land survey and marking posts to mark property until closing. Also at closing purchaser signs off on photos and maps showing property boundaries, I'm sure to avoid this kind of mess.
I'm located in Toronto, Canada and it's the norm here to have real estate lawyers as part of any real estate transaction. It is their job to review everything and point out issues like this. We also have title insurance as well. I wouldn't dream of purchasing a home without a lawyer reviewing everything.
Anything goes in America the most corrupt country in the world that masquerade as the most innocent and fairest worlds police force
In extremely rural, extremely southern Virginia one guy owned a right of way for a railway which was completely removed. He successfully forced some people to pay him for a right of way ACROSS HIS RIGHT OF WAY until his buddy the judge retired.
In Indiana, a gas pipeline company was taking out trees and buildings in people's yards after decades of placement: legal control of a right of way, of course.
I live in rural Pennsylvanian where the township ordinance states public roads have a 16 to 25 foot right of way, which is pretty funny since very old houses and barns frequently are as close as three feet.
And of course, imminent domain trumps all private ownership. Welcome to the land f the free, if you can afford to pay.
I am so glad you mentioned the saying about attorneys who represent themselves... and then went further to talk about specializations.
I've had some people I was close to as a kid become lawyers, and then NOT say "I'm a real estate lawyer from NY" when giving commentary on criminal law in california.
When we went to sell the first house we had purchased, we discovered that the original survey was incorrect. The survey was a rectangle but with the 4th side described as going off 180 degrees in the wrong direction. We had to get the prior owner to sign off on the survey change, and he said, of course, "what's in it for me".
I had something similar happen. My fence extended onto city property and one day the city showed up and told me I had to move it. Long story short; after at first refusing to do anything the city leased this area to me for 99 years after my great city councilor went to bat for me. Also I had my lawyer contact the previous owners and they paid for it under threat of them fraudulently selling me the property. When one looks at a fenced in area a resonable person would assume that is what was being offered to them in a land sale. Similar to changing out the existing carpeting or light fixtures after a house was sold. They played games with the survey too during the sale but no one cared at the time but we all knew why when this event happened. They knew and sold it under false pretenses. Ended up okay though in the end.
When a new house was build next to me it was determined the fence for the old house was mine so it didn't get torn down.
I agree, I had to get title insurance for purchasing a home, and the title documentation clearly delineated the property lines.
---We bought a new home and the builder made fun of us for insisting we wanted to get an independent survey to check it against the plat. Makes me wonder why they cared when we paid for it.
Would it work to let the grass and weeds grow on the property, then file a complaint with the city that the condition of the property is a health and safety hazard?
If the owner of that land is threatening the home owner with trespass, the home owner definitely cannot mow the yard...
@WebCity Films Home owner simply takes the citation back to the city and says, "Not my land, not my responsibility."
@@boikatsapiens499 Pretty much. County records will show that it no longer belongs to the addressed or the fined person.
@WebCity Films The homeowner didn't pay taxes on the other person's (scammer's property). both owners paid their own taxes.
@@kewlztertc5386 We don't know if the Land Trust did not pay taxes. It would make sense they did if they are claiming ownership not to mention that they bought it from the city. Nor do we know if the homeowners' property taxes included the strip of land. I doubt it did.
I suspect everyone paid taxes but the home owners didn't realize that they weren't paying taxes on the contested strip.
I had a surveyor do a deed search at the courthouse on my house before I built my garage. Good thing too. It's how I found out the game commission had stolen a 1/2 acre off the back of my property. The lender , tax records and previous owner showed 1.25 acre lot but the courthouse showed the deed had been changed to only show .76 acres and the other 1/2 acre had been given to the state in a clerical error. The lawyer said it would cost more to sue the state than the property is worth.
Your comments on real estate law are spot on. I am an Owners Corporation Manager in Australia and spend my whole working day dealing with this area of our state laws. I really enjoy when a general lawyer calls me to argue a point as they are often wrong and misquote the legislation. While I work in property management and provide documentation for property transfers, I would still have a licensed agent and conveyancer do my home sale.
At one time the last ten feet of my backyard was an alley. Said alley was abandoned by the city many,
many years ago. Whomever was in the home then took possession of that ten feet. That little fact
became interesting when a development went in on the other side of my fence. My fence didn't move.
The developer built one less townhouse ☺
Love your ARRL shirt. Been a ham radio enthusiast for 10 years now..(actually a lot longer but got my license 10 years ago)
That's why you always get a survey before buying a house. My wife and I were going to forego, but our realtor highly recommended it. Within a month of moving in, our neighbor said she thinks our fence encroaches. Pull out the survey, all is good.
I have a piece of property on which I decided to build a garage at that time the original survey markers from before the property was subdivided still existed. So for setback reasons I measured to find my actual property line. When I found the exact corner of the property I dug down and found an old survey stake. I showed it to my new neighbor because it could help him if he had a similar project. His fence had been installed six inches on to his side of the line he asked me so I own that six inches. I said I believe so. From that time on he mowed his side with his string trimmer. He moved before I had a chance to ask if he thought I showed him the marker to get him to trim the grass or if he just wanted everyone to know that six inch strip was his.
The same sort of thing happened in Champaign Illinois a few years back,. some guy up near Chicago bought up these parcels knowing what they were and then tried getting the home owners to buy the small parcels for much more. Made a big stink etc. As soon as this broke and people noticed that the city and or county was to blame for the issues then it slowly stopped getting mentioned.
I quit maintaining the property and call the city about the garbage and tall grass and let the fines fly.Or send them a bill for grass cutting.
I was just about to say that, and when the owner try’s to access it to cut the grass. Charge a “fee” 😁
Two can play this game.
while buying my current property I noticed it didn't list an easement for access to the property.
I brought this up to the title company and they easily fixed it ( for them ) buy excluding it from their policy.
the selling RE agent and I spent 2 days at the court house tracking down the correct easement.
the banks definitely care. if you got a clean survey and title insurance, and the bank approves - at least nine real estate sales, presumably nine surveys, nine title insurance policies, nine property transfers w local county- every single one - at least 36 professionals in this field - had to have made big errors that no one caught. This is shady af.
When my parents purchased an acre of land many decades ago (that they built a home on in 1965) they traded a 9-foot wide strip on the south side for 9 feet of the neighboring lot on the east side, so the neighbors on the east could run their driveway out to the side street rather than onto the highway. Many years later my parents set up a trust. When we were ready to sell the property after our parents' deaths, we found out that whoever had set up the trust neglected to place the eastern 9-foot strip into the trust (it was a separate parcel). This came out in the title search that was done once we had a potential buyer. Our estate attorney actually had to consult a real estate attorney to see what could be done and avoid the 9-foot strip having to go to probate. Turned out there's a thing called the probate referee, who came out and appraised the 9-foot strip, and as the appraised value was under some figure, it didn't have to go to probate. Whew! I'll never know if my parents simply didn't know (or remember) that the 9-foot strip was a separate parcel, or whether the attorney who set up the trust screwed up by not doing a title search then.
I have .25 acres with a shed in the back. Utility workers had to mark off underground utilities because the cable company may be doing fiber optic to home upgrades. I'm wondering what will happen in the future because my shed sits right over where some of the lines they painted would travel. 🤔
As an aside, while I was house shopping, I made EXTENSIVE use of the county auditors online real estate maps as well as fema flood insurance maps to make sure there weren't any surprises.
Well.....charge to mow “Trusts” land!!!! Because they haven’t been maintaining it. Sue them back!!!
How do you sue somebody for not holding up their end of an agreement you made on their behalf?
"Your honor, dickwad owes me ten grand for landscaping services."
"How did you know dickwad wanted your landscaping services."
"What do you mean? I forced them on him w/o his knowledge. You know, like government taxes and regulations."
"You're not the government. GTFO my court."
When I purchased my first property 30 years ago, the Title Insurance only paid the mortgage holder. To add me to the insurance cost more, which I paid. Also I had a largish down payment, but not enough to avoid Private Mortgage Insurance. As soon as I met the 20% I believe it was requirement, I was able to cancel it.
From what I understand some PMI is prepaid for the life of the loan, but I have not bought a property with a low enough down pay entire since to keep up on it. Steve will be happy to hear me say "You need to get a lawyer for these things."
Steve, you mentioned both mortgages and title insurance in this video, but I don't believe either would be valid.
1. The mortgage is only made on what is titled to the specific property, so they would already know the lot size and the area covered.
2. The title search would only be done on the property being sold, while not looking at the properties behind it.
Considering they want to remain anonymous I would guess one of the 9 homeowners involved is the actual owner of the backyard strip and is looking to skin his neighbors without them finding out it was him.
I'm thinking it's the lawyer.
I'm thinking it is a bank.--or the city of Holiday!
There should be a law that any tax land seizure of this nature sends a written notice to the nearest property owners with the right of first refusal. It would have cost them a couple of hundred dollars each to buy their connecting land. I read about another case when someone bought a rich neighborhood street (the actual road their houses use to drive to) and when the people found out they hired lawyers, it;s just gross as these buyers know exactly they are trying to low ball a tax seizure and screw the unsuspecting neighbors.
I had a neighbor years ago who tried to have my car towed and have me arrested for trespassing for parking in my own driveway. Luckily I only got a trespass warning even after showing the police officer my dead. So I followed the police officers advice and had my property surveyed and put up a fence a few feet on my side of the property line, which left my neighbor with no driveway at all on a street that didn't allow parking. Eventually they had to tear the house down next door because they wouldn't live there and couldn't rent it with no parking. Normally I'm a good neighbor, but in this case what with these people threatening my freedom as well as property I made a exception.
Hand the trust a 12 year bill for maintaining the yard.
Attach a mechanics lean
Nice T Shirt - Haven't been to a field day for a bit. Reminds me to get my radio fired up again. Take care 'Spin'
Yep, love the shirt , wonder where it came from :) do we have a lawyer in the ranks? On UA-cam :)
I need to get mine reinstalled. Moved a year ago and still working on the house so haven't gotten the needle in the sky yet.
@@JeremyEllwood I am hoping to move to a larger location. Get my 43 ft vertical up. Fire up the 'new to me' Collins S Line. Nothing like radios that glow in the dark. A bit rusty on my CW. Use to do about 18 wpm. 73's.
@@tompinnef6331 I am tech so don't do (need) CW (though I still want to learn it anyway - it's good info to have).
I live within city limits and close enough to the approach path of Flint Bishop airport where I have to be careful of my height so once I get the needle up there, I'll be looking at a probable 25 to 30 foot vertical which, running on 2 meters isn't horrible.
When at the farm, I was running a 90 foot vertical at 2 meters with 60W. God, I miss that thing.
I have some HF equipment I want to get running but I need to upgrade my license to transmit for that. I've never run HF. I've listened, but never had the opportunity to chat on it. Was hearing Ireland with an HF horizontal run across the fields and excellent propagation (Winter). Real life took over and I haven't been able to hobby as much as I'd like.
@@JeremyEllwood If I remember right - techs have access to 10 meters?
A few years ago we had a situation here, almost in FLA. A locally owned outdoor advertising company had a sign on a leased plot at the entrance to a golf resort. The lease came up for renewal and the land owner would not renew because they had built 8 houses along the road to the resort, adjacent to the sign, I know the owner of the sign company and he is the kind you don't cross. Somehow he came into possession of a 10 foot wide strip between the road and the frontage of all 8 houses. He installed a fence which locked all of the homeowners out. I feel sure that in court he would have lost as I understand you can not landlock a homestead. For expedience the fence came down and the sign went back up.
When I bought my present house, my neighbor said the lot line was along his concrete driveway. i had my lot surveyed as the village required to put a drive way in. My lot line was actually about 6 feet from my neighbor's driveway.
I wonder if adverse possession could be exercised here, especially on the fenced-in lots?
My question is that since at least one of the surveys that was done did not specify where the land past the utillity easement belonged, did the government charge taxes on the same piece of land to two individual owners? Because if so it could be argued that the land in question was never delinquent in whole at any time in the past and therefore should never have been sold at auction in the past.
Because if this is the case, and it is a big if here, then the local government could impose an imminent domain action, pay the land trust the appraisal value and distribute the land to the home owners as compensation. Done and done.
Bunch of new owners who have not owned for more than 7 years. Sale resets the clock. If one of the previous owners had made the claim and won then the deed and associated paperwork would have been updated and passed to successive owners and title insurance would cover it.
@@davidtherwhanger6795 from the story here it sounds like the county knows that the 20' piece existed and has kept tax records on it (hence being able to sell it at tax sale).the survey not coming back with information on land that was past the property line isn't surprising (once you establish where the lines and property adjacent to the client are and essentially make a property island who owns the rest of the county isn't a concern from a survey standpoint). eminent domain has a requirement to be for public use or public betterment so i dont see how a local government could utilize ED to use taxpayer money to redistribute land back to private owners with no public benefit.
File for adverse possession, claiming it had been maintained by the property owners
Some of the home owners seem to have a pretty good claim for it, if they band together and get a really good lawyer. FL law is 7 years of occupation. The question is, can the courts apply that retroactively to the previous owners so the current owners get the relief as well?
@@bretwalley4673 Sue the title company.
@@bretwalley4673 it doesn't matter if they've known about it since 2008, those homeowners have had an "open and notorious" occupation of the land since then.
@@bretwalley4673 You want me to feel sorry for some asshole who knowingly buys development limited properties and then tries to bully homeowners? Now the question becomes what has this land trust company done in the past 12 years other than trying to sell this property on Craigslist.
@@bretwalley4673 Nobody here is talking about the guy with the room addition/pool except for you; it has nothing to do with this land company harassing homeowners.
If this land trust company is so desperate for the property, then they should take the homeowners to court for it. They won't because they'll end up with nothing. Have you even seen the backyards? i.imgur.com/MxoVEkS.png
If you think I'm overstating the land company harassing homeowners, then you haven't read much about them
www.tampabay.com/archive/2008/05/04/the-invisible-land-grab/
Adverse Possession was my first thought. According to the internet(not a reliable source) , it's 7 years in Florida. They may want to check their tax records and see if they've been paying taxes on the land, but otherwise if they've been living there that long, it seems they meet most of the requirements of Hostile Claim, Actual Possession, Open and Notorious Possession, Exclusive and Continuous Possession, and cultivation, improvement, or protection from a substantial enclosure on the land. This is not legal advice.
I agree. If they've been paying taxes on that property, they need to have their property tax reassessed and bill the past paid taxes to the trust. ( I know. Unlikely to be paid)
I thought about this angle, but remember how the easement changed hands to be owned by the trust; it was sold at auction for unpaid property taxes. Nobody was paying the taxes on that land, and presumably the trust has kept their tax bill up to date. The most likely reason for the trust to own the property in the first place is to use it as a money pit to claim against other tax bills as a business loss deduction.
They weren't paying taxes if it was bought at a tax sale.
@@SusieAspen From the information given, it sounds like many residents purchased their homes after the land was sold to the trust.
@@DaremoTen no..they had their homes prior to the tax sale that went to the trust, so they could not have been paying the taxes. I am leaning toward the idea that it was one of the neighbors who bought the land and does not like his neighbors.
I've been a Texas real estate broker for 35 years, but I'm not an attorney, so this isn't legal advice. I've had surveyors fail to properly document something and then later have to pay to "fix" their error. That might help the homeowner whose survey didn't show the separate parcel at all. However, basic Texas title insurance might not provide any help in similar instances here because the policy has an exception for errors in boundaries. There's an addtional title insurance rider available for about 5% more of the policy that covers shortages in boundaries and encroachments. I think that the extra coverage would help a homeowner in a similar situation in Texas.
I worked for a land surveyor in high school, saw many plots where people sssumed things like this One doctor hired us because his neighbor was installing a fence and he thought it was on his property. It wasn't. Was a pie shaped plot, and you could see between the corners. However, the doctor built a short retaining wall on the opposite side, completely on his neighbor's property. Again, you could stand on each property corner and see the adjacent one. We also had many jobs where carports were added or home additions and even one small retail store built partially on the adjoining property.
I remember in a business law course for engineers in college where a golf course was built, and the owners allowed the subdivison home owners beside it to use a service road / greenway every dayof the year except one. They closed a bridge every year on one specific day so they could retain full ownership and control.
That's one way to prevent someone from getting a prescriptive easement. Another way is sign a lease for their use of the property for some nominal sum (dollar a year, maybe) If you're using property under terms of a lease, you can't then turn around and claim ownership of an easement across that property.
I have seen this situation before,, and I can make a good guess as to how it happened. An easement,, a former intended alley perhaps,, was vacated. Easements and streets can be vacated. The city processed the paperwork to vacate that easement,, and then never told or explained that the now vacant property needed to have its taxes paid.
Was the vacation of that easement requested by the current owner? Now that would make a very serious case about this incident. the thing to do, is look back in the city or county records to see who owned this property before it was purchased at auction. The developer? The city? There is a great probability that no one owned the property before that auction. The city or county,, in that case, should be raked over the coals,,, very slowly.
People mention easements, but I don't see how that would apply. An easement is another person's claim to use your property. If the strip were an easement, then it would be "on property owned by these houses." Right? So if they were like "nah, we're done with your land. thank you" then the house owners would be "cool, now I can build that monster brick pizza oven I've always wanted."
@@petermgruhn No, not always. Let's say,,,, Subdivision was platted in 1927. All lots laid out,, all streets laid out. The streets are still an easement,, owned by the city, county or state. Move on 70 years and the one street is never used,, never has been used, grass growing on it and mowed by the guy next door,,, he always thought it was just part of his lawn. The city may want to 'clean up' its map,, and it would love to have property taxes coming in. They vacate the property,, a process that removes it from public right of way and makes it private land again,,, which now they want to sell to make more money. The auctions are public,,, but that means you have to go to the property tax site to check,, or the surplus property lists. It is public,,, just rarely publicized. I have used a specific case as my example that I was aware of from day one. The really underhanded portion of my example is that the city never informed the guy who had been using the lot as his lawn for 40 years. No one knocked on the door, no none said, "You should bid on the property." They just sold it. Lost his yard and part of his garage.
@@Sailor376also Thanks for the example.
Great show. You brought up points I did not realize when I bought my home years ago (sold since). Question; if you paid taxes on the property in question, can you collect them back from the county/state or sue the new owner?
I'd wonder about whoever sold them those houses in the first place. *Somebody* built a whole slew of fences enclosing land that wasn't part of the properties. Could this be some sort of long con, where the property seller made it look like the property included more than it really did, so that they could come back later and demand more money for the rest? It'd certainly explain why the trust's owner wanted to remain anonymous - I doubt the courts would look favorably on such a practice.
The trustee is most definitely a lawyer. More than likely tied to local courthouse staff.
My mother, when she was moving and needing a new place to live, found a piece of property. Nice wooded lot in a developing neighborhood. The title was reportedly clear, the land surveyed. The county reported it open for building. After digging a well and then applying for the building permits to start the house THEN the county said.. Oh by the way, the entire property is easements, you can't build on any of it... Yeah our bad, but you can't sue us. Fortunately a neighbor who had a barely trickling well was interested since her well came in with high flow. She lost some money, but the time lost was even worse.
Something similar happened to me & my neighbors. Gross mismanagement by two HOA property manager co. & poor HOA board oversight lead to 2 or 3 tracts of HOA green space going into tax sale. After the purchase the new owner of the unbuildable land locked green space tried to extort purchases of the green space behind our lots. We all told him where to stick it. Then when he croaked his business partner & daughter inherited the land & tried a softer extortion feigning ignorant heiress just trying to offload land she didn't want.
My guess is that these home might had been apart of a now defunct HOA & the homes might have been sold originally as HOA patio homes where you only own house & foundation footprint. It would explain the utility easement immediately out the back-door & why a seemingly abandoned track of unusable & unaccessible land would go to tax sale.
I'm placing this comment here so that in the future I can claim this channel as mine....
Slip and fall in your backyard then sue the land trust.
In the USA thats the way to go
But they would counter sue for trespassing.
@@groofromtheup5719 It's still trespassing.
@@groofromtheup5719 Homeowner's insurance will pay for land they don't own the same way it will pay if their neighbor's property is stolen.
@@fredflintstone4715 are you going to tell me that Criminals that have broken into a house and injured themselves have not successfully sued the home owner.
Glad you mentioned "Adverse Possession" cuz that was the first thing I was thinking. A good judge would probably take one look at this BS and grant it out of principle.
Good ideas in the comments section too!!
If it were your property that was in danger of being taken because the neighbor’s ignorance of their property boundary, would you still feel the same?
I had a similar situation on a piece of property I used to own down in Lead Hill Arkansas. I had 6 acres. Huge property. All of it was road frontage except for like a 20x20 or so square that belonged to some lady. She didn't use it or maintain it but refused to sell to me. So i had to stare at all the overgrown trees and stuff right outside my front windows.
As a builder in the NY area, I buy and sell properties regularly. Often hedge rows, rows of trees, fences and stone walls are not on the actual property line. Most neighbors are not aware and get upset when I explain it to them.
This is so easy to identify by an appraiser during the purchase. Sue the appraiser AND the realtor. A good real estate attorney may have success with easement by prescription.
Here's what they should do. Dump on it and then complain about it to the county.
That would be illegal. It would be kind of hard to claim someone else did it. :)
I have an even better idea. Have the city/county seize the land under eminent domain, pay the current "owner" the assessed value of $937 (as stated in a news report), and then turn the land over to the homeowners. Thank you Kelo v. City of New London.
@@ElJeffeweizen If you think the ruling in Kelo said the government can seize property and give it to a bunch of residential homeowners to make their yards bigger you should actually read it.
Kelo is about a private concern being able to take your property (legal plunder), because the new owners will be paying more in property tax than the present ones.
One of the sad happenings in this case is the big pharmaceutical firm, after raising all this hell, abandoned their project and didn't build their multi million dollar project after all. In the end, New London wound up loosing big. A bird in the hand, right?
A similar thing happened in Merriam Kansas. Someone was operating a used car lot out of an old gas station, the property of which they happened to own. Along comes the city of Merriam, who had been approached by a Mercedes dealership who wants to build there, except this pesky used car lot was in their way. The city says, "No problem, we can use eminent domain." The shiny new luxury cars go into the new lot. And during the next election, the majority of the city council gets voted out.
When you buy a house usually you know the lot size and location. Seems these people assumed the land behind them was public land and that no one would ever challenge them using it
According some of the articles I read on this one of them *did* a survey and I quote "didn’t point out the land trust property at all". Something about this sends up red flags.
In most cases law requires that "item sold separately" be written on the box. Would have been nice if the laws covering products covered homes too. How is it sellers aren't required to disclose how a yard can be clearly implied without the seller saying, oh but that doesn't come with the house. Even some fine print would be better than nothing.
Thanks for the heads up for is to do our due diligence and ALWAYS get a survey and title insurance.
at $4,000 down, and $300/hour, hiring an attorney can be more expensive than buying a car
They should send the owners a bill for maintaining their property.
Alternatively, make them fence it off and maintain it. It isn't clear if there is any access to the plot in question, so the homeowners might be able to deny access to the bastards.
Catch 22: they have to maintain it but must trespass in order to do so.
@@ScottinWV-bgij can't charge for rent if there wasn't a lease. But I know if I don't mow my lawn the city will do it for me and send me a bill..
Now the law requires a real estate agent and the banks interject all their regulations, the seller didn't accurately define the property and how the hell is any of this goes through without a surveyor?
Holiday !!!!
I grew up on Darlington , and know EXACTLY where you’re talking about
I know someone else who bought a tract of land and when surveyed it included many people's back yards and their fences and whatever they had on there. He sent them a letter to move it off. Maybe this is the same story but his was a large tract of land and not some strip. There was even a highway Billboard on it the neighbor was collecting the money from. When he sent a letter to the billboard company they moved it off. This stuff does happen.
(Thought it was 7 years in Florida for adverse possession.)
I was building and zoning inspector for 36 years. A lot of people don't know where their property lines are. I had people who bought property that they thought were lots but had houses on them. They'd yell at me like I was crazy. I'd show them where the lot lines were.
I don't get why the title search company didn't find a problem. Surveys are great but most people don't get them. Hint: if you are on new development you really need to get a survey to make sure your house is on your lot. You have to be careful about easements, too, and if utilities go over or under your property. Zoning is another issue in that when the property was built may not match current zoning, e.g., you buy a 2 family and the neighborhood is zoned a 1 family. If the place isn't documented as a continuous non-conforming use, you could have lost your ability to have it as a 2 family.
If I were the owners, I'd ask the county auditors office to reassess their own value of property downward and the lot's value upward because of all the improvements so that they have to higher taxes and holding costs. I'd ask the country for any taxes back if they were paying for improvements on the lot.
if they did make improvements on the lots and under permit, why did the agency approve those changes and improvements?
Winning comment right here.
Usually when there is a zoning change the existing structures are grandfathered in and can be utilized as they were designed to be used under the prior zoning. Now here is where things get more touchy. If the structures happen to catch on fire or have other major damages that would require extensive rebuilding then those structures would not be allowed to be rebuilt.They would have to be torn down to bare land and any new structures being built would have to conform to the new zoning of that land. If the owner was going to add on to the structure it would not be allowed to be done such as adding a garage were none was to begin with. This is called adding value to the land. Many people try to add value to the land knowing it was rezoned so they could force a higher price should they sell it.
Zoning rules can be changed from administration to administration and the land owners at at their mercy. The land you bought for $300,000 could be rezoned and that value dwindled down to $50,000 real fast and nothing the land owner can do about it. Also of note many zoning maps do not reflect the current status of the land as well. They usually go off of existing surveys and never do a survey themselves that actually reflects the new zoning areas and properties they effect.
@@rispatha the expansion of a non-conforming use depends on jurisdiction and the how the administrator or review board interprets the language of the code. Some kinds of zoning is more amenable to modification than others. Some jurisdictions will allow a non-conforming use to be rebuilt based upon same size and same location and others will not. Economic impact can determine outcome of a decision.
When a zone is going to be changed, it is important to show up to meetings to let it be known how you feel about it and if it will adversely effect you. I know of case where the woman did not want her property be part of a historic designation. The historic designation stopped at her property line. BTW, there are a lot of reasons for not having a historic designation.
Also, if there is a zone change and one has to document pre-existing and ongoing use. It could affect parking, truck parking, storage and even the kind of fencing you can have. If you are a manufacturing company in a area that is being gentrified, if you don't have your documentation right you can be in a world of hurt. What I am saying is that there might be grandfathering allowed but you have to prove it. Fighting the young professionals who take over a neighborhood can be costly to a business owner.
Last paragraph, yes zoning can be used to discourage development until the powers that be are ready to start a project. Case in point was a sports stadium that was installed in a residential zone where development was held back and priced for the land remained low. Yes, you are correct.
I don't miss zoning enforcement.
@@eottoe2001 ... Basically all zoning is based upon the whims of those who are in control of the city/county at any given moment in time and they can change at any given moment in time regardless of any claims otherwise with few exceptions.
Yes having a "Historical designation" is never a good thing unless you are int he business of preserving an areas historic buildings etc. The amount of restrictions that are then forced upon you are countless.
Many cities rarely ever announce when they are having zoning and planning meetings in a timely manner or in the local news papers sections that many read. They are usually buried in the Classified section as a short blurb that many overlook. they do this so they can claim they made the announcement to the public.
My grandpa wanted to purchase a piece of land across the street from his home he lived in. He had many rental properties and also had a few new homes built. SO he was familiar with how things operated in our town. The property he wanted to purchase was large enough to build 2 side by side duplexes thus having 4 rental units on the site. When he approached the city about his plans they said that e couldn't build there because of how the land was not zoned for "multi family units". So he caved in and didn't pursue the plans. 6 months later without any notice or anything else someone else bought the land and built 2 side by side duplexes on that property. No mention of how the zoning magically was changed to accommodate these 2 houses and nobody even considered contacting my grandpa and telling him that hey we "rezoned" the property so you could do what you wanted to do. What was gathered from this is that someone on the zoning board listened to the plan, denied it, then found someone they were friends with to propose the same idea behind closed doors and then as a result the zoning board said sure go for it. This town is known for playing favorites to those they like and making things harder for those they do not like.
The city itself has went through the town and selectively purchased key parcels of property and rented out the houses to the public playing the landlord. Once those properties have reached the threshold on returns for the investment they tore them down. While playing landlord they rarely even upgraded anything and were basically being slumlords towards the end of the life of the property. They have also allowed a prominent corporation within the city limits to do the same thing along the way and they are continuing this practice to this day. I have watched whole neighborhoods wiped out and turned into parking lots and many other houses just torn down and turned into empty lots. by this corporation. Hell even the mayor goes along with what is going on even though many dirty underhanded tactics were and are being used.
@@rispatha Zoning can be pretty bad on a lot of levels depending upon who is in favor and who is out of favor. I had a guy who called himself a developer who soaked the banks and the city for projects that never happened. He had like 5 different addresses and a number of corporations. The buildings were in bad shape and I started ordering them down. I tore down like 4 of them until the bank woke up and took the rest of the back. (By the way,, those old building are inventory for future investment and to get more bank loans.) At some point the demos were denied because the district had been declared history. I talked to the community councils and neighbors who wanted the building down and the inverter gone, they told me they had no notification of a new historic status. The historic was a way to shield bad players in a neighborhood.
If you have a lot of bad buildings in a neighborhood or town it is usually only two or three players involved.
Generally where I worked they had good notification. Bad notification can hang a city in the appeals court if we didn't follow due process, but a lot of cities and counties don't. A lot of time if the medium income of the area is under $34K, no one has the money to pay for an attorney or even a survey.
On your grandfather's dilemma, I would have figured out the side setback were and seen if he could have divided the lots then put two houses in or two non-attached duplexes. It would be a duplex on one side and the duplex on the other with a 5' to 10' separation. That depends on how wide lots are. Some places allow for zero lot lines providing the fire separation and access requirements are met.
On the cities buying up houses and renting them out (unless it is a housing authority) is not wise thing to do. There is so much liability. I kind of wonder if those were bad properties that were put into receivership? A lot of issues with slum properties with the kind of economics we have and the values involved since Reagan and Clinton because the houses are just investment objects only. This isn't all landlords, but a lot of them are know to suck all the capital out of the building and put little or nothing into them unless forced to do so. You don't see that so much in Europe but they value the buildings and community. We don't.
Then someone else needs to rake it, dammit.
Good point, since the owner has declared he owns it, by law, isn't he responsible for it's upkeep & what about all the taxes & fees these people paid on something that turned out to belong to someone else?
Guess where all the untraceable tires and construction debris from the neighborhood are going?
Can this be an example of title theft? You know, all those ads saying that criminals create a fake title and then sell the house or take out a loan against it. Could this be criminals activity?
@@imlistening1137 The way property in a subdivision is sold is by lot numbers. If you buy lot 5 of block 6 in subdivision XX, it does not include the alley behind it and can also have utility easements that encumber the title. You may have the use of the alley, but it was never part of part of lot 5, block 6. The utility easement may have gas, water, and/or sewer pipes on it or it may be a power pole with electric, telephone and cable lines on it. Utility easements can actually make the house more livable
Title theft involves someone filing fraudulent documents stating that they purchased lot 5 of block 6. Most of the posts that I have seen involve efforts of the true owners in clearing the title to their property. This is when title insurance may be of use.
@@kennethanderson8505 thank you!
My question is was the price the homeowners paid, did it include this other property?
This happens in the UK as well. Usually with odd bits in front of buildings. Many have been forced to pay to get access to their own front door.
We call them Ransome Strips.
In our state the realtor is required to disclose that information and a plat map is also provided to the buyer with the legal description. A title company is also required.
"The neighbors should have have paid more attention to the surveys" Translation you were legally setup for a swindle and the owner knows he's acting in poor faith so will stay anonymous.
One homeowner even realized that she didn't own all the fenced in property. You are putting down an awful lot of money so maybe you should do your homework. In Germany this is mandatory when someone sells a property to give out an extract of the official map including the exact limits of your property.
@@svenweihusen57 Yes one should due their best to avoid being taken. It's no longer a world where you can assume both parties have good intentions anymore. It's like the Ebay scam where people would show a tv or other moderate ticket item for a good price and have small print saying only picture. The person should have watched out better the one tricking the buyer is still a crook.
@@theyaden The problem is: who knew about the problem? Did he knew about it and just didn't care or was it some oversight decades ago. So maybe, just maybe, the seller didn't knew better. Why else would he have build the fence around something he didn't own? And there seams to be a lot of people unaware of this problem. And I certainly can't understand the one who knew about the problem and still bought the house and is now complaining.
@@svenweihusen57 I have my doubts the people buying were aware a chunk in the middle of their property wasn't being sold with the rest of the parcel. (If someone buys knowing this they are to put it polity very unwise) That the person who owns strategic chunks within these properties decided to remain anonymous while reaching out to say they will need to pay a way higher than market price to have use of their property is why I believe this is a scammer who found a legal way to cheat some people. He's got multiple people by the short hairs and I'm a bit too cynical to believe it was all happenstance.
@@theyaden Lento stated that one women check the limits so she knew about the problem. It was never stated how old these houses are so they may have been sold many times and somewhere along this the information was lost. And IMHO the real culprit here is the city. It should be quiet obvious that this is a useless property for commercial or housing activities so they should have checked it and offered the stretch to the homeowners.
The current owner is certainly a leech but he is profiting from the carelessness of the buyers. Not nice but legal.