Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/28/the-developer-who-mistakenly-built-a-house-in-the-wrong-place-claims-to-be-the-real-victim.html
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Suing the land owner seems ridiculous. I’m guessing a surveyor the developer themselves made the actual mistake. They should move the house off her lot or say “Our bad, you want the house? it’s yours” which would cost less. If she says no I don’t want it they need to remove it.
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It’s unclear that the developer hired surveyors. 
And now there are squatters.
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It is clear, in the article, they did not. They cheaped out.
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I’m not a legalmancer or your legalmancer; but doesn’t “unjust enrichment” only happen when there’s some sort of contract(unfortunately for clarity this apparently includes the implied and quasi flavors; not just the formal ones)?
I assume that it doesn’t cost much to throw that claim in there once you are already litigating; but it seems…presumptuous…to work on the assumption that you’ve benefitted the other party just because it cost you money(McMansion hell would like a word); and that you deserve to be paid for what you foisted on them.
Like a more audacious version of the ‘shipping people unsolicited garbage and then billing them for it’ scam that the USPS had to specifically crack down on. And with potentially similar perverse incentives: I’d assume that, during good times, developers mostly have their hands full building stuff that they are actually in a position to sell; but the option to turn an idle construction crew and your offcuts from other projects into a minimum-viable half-assed house that you can forcibly ‘sell’ to someone by just slapping it up before they stop you and then suing them seems like it’s almost certain to be one that would be financially viable under some conditions for some people; which would not be good.
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Ms. Reynold holds all the (Tarot?) cards in this case; she has every right to scream “Get off my lawn!”. The developer/builder failed to exercise due diligence in building there without an official land survey.
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Move it or she owns it. If she wants to.
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I think that’s where they’re at now: the developers acknowledge she owns the house if she wants it, but she doesn’t want a house there and doesn’t want to trade the property for a comparable empty lot. She’s asking them to tear it down.
Probably not the call most property owners in her situation would make but it’s her decision.
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They are suing in an attempt to force her to purchase it, however, and everyone else they can see. It seems like this is also the first and only house they may build – seems weird they’d choose to do it illegally and then fall apart over it. Maybe they have zero other options?
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It seems like any insurance that might normally help the developer in a situation like this won’t come into play because they so screwed themselves with their mistakes (e.g. not getting a surveyor), so they’re desperately trying to claw back whatever money they can through other means. Which has resulted in them suing absolutely anyone with any connection, no matter how remote, with the property, even though they’re the only ones at fault. Meanwhile the property owner is getting screwed by this - she had unwanted changes to her property (even if the house is removed, they probably cut down trees and changed the terrain to build it), and now she’s paying higher property taxes because there’s a house on the lot, not even counting the legal fees she needs to pay to fight their absurd claims. Paradoxically, while they may have given her a “free” house, they owe her.
I’m guessing that, between the costs of moving a house (even next door), the likely cheap build quality, and the reduction in the value of the house due to squatters trashing it (and the move), it’s cheaper for them to just build a new house. (And they definitely make more money by forcing her to pay for it.) So it’s likely the choices are either keeping the house on the lot or demolishing it.
I dunno - if one buys an empty property to build one’s “dream home,” a random tract house on an arbitrary location on the lot isn’t going to fit the bill, but especially if the plan is to build a “retreat” and you have a single-family house instead. (On top of which she has the hassle of having to deal with a house, which has squatters, at a point when she’s not in a position to deal with the demands it’s creating.)
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I think a lot of other property owners in a situation like that would have sold the now-more-valuable lot with the new house and used the profits to buy another similar lot to build the retreat they originally wanted. But it seems this property owner chose that precise location due to some kind of numerology-based criteria, so it’s less about the tangible qualities of the lot itself than its address or GPS coordinates or whatever.
Bad combination of parties involved if the goal is a mutually acceptable resolution.
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Well, except that might be difficult (and certainly time consuming). Sounds like she got a deal on the lot, and after paying off the developer for the house, she might not have enough for another, similar lot elsewhere. Plus, given that the developers apparently own all the surrounding lots, if you weren’t just trading for a similar lot, that would necessarily mean going through the whole process all over again in a different location, and even without the numerology aspect, that might mean a location far enough away that it’s not what the owner wanted. Best case scenario, it’s an absolutely enormous pain the ass - months of work, tax implications, etc. to be slightly financially ahead in buying a new property. Personally, I feel like my response wouldn’t necessarily be much different in that situation.
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In RE/SEARCH #11, on pranks, there is described the opposite of this situation: a demolition company is hired by phone to demolish a house. They show up, owner’s not there, but there’s a demolition order on the door. Faked. The actual owner (who wasn’t living there, at least) is nonplussed, and in particular, has no interest in paying the demolition company. The demolition company is put out that they worked for no pay. The instigator (I do not feel the word “prankster” suffices) is never caught.
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Yeah, the photos don’t make this house look especially amazing, and $300k for construction costs is pretty low these days, especially in a place like a Hawaiian island where materials typically cost more. It was almost certainly a concrete-slab-on-grade foundation, which are the cheapest to build but I imagine are much, much harder to jack up and move than an older-style raised foundation.
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From memory (and I’m also not a lawyer) there are some cases where you could make a claim where a binding contract didn’t exist. But the court would look at factors like whether the defendant knowingly accepted the benefit and didn’t speak up, or in some way induced the other party to convey the benefit. In this case (and we only have one version of events presented here), it sounds like she was wholly unaware of what was happening and had turned down overtures from land developers. Whether she can claim for costs of demolition is another question entirely.
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Perhaps she could retrospectively charge them for access to her land. Which was illegal trespass if not authorised.
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… or walking into traffic, squeegeeing somebody’s windshield, and then demanding money 
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Man, this sounds like the bar exam hypo from hell. I’m literally studying this shit right now and I don’t have a fucking clue what the answer is.
Here’s what I think happened, though. The developer sent her an offer to buy the property, which she ignored because she wasn’t interested in selling. They had also almost certainly noticed the lot was vacant, not in use, and had no development plans on file. I think they built the house on purpose, knowing full well they didn’t own the land. I think they were hoping the land was, essentially, abandoned. I think they were hoping they could get away with this for long enough that adverse possession would come into play and they’d be off the hook. Now, that will all be very hard to prove, unless there’s an email or something about it, but that’s what I think happened. Either that or they were hoping once she discovered a house had been built on the property, she’d just go ahead and sell to avoid the hassle.
Sadly, the law very much prefers than land be used rather than sit unused. So even though she claims to have had plans to build a retreat, she never acted on those plans, and I suspect the court is going to want to try to avoid tearing the house down and returning the land to its natural state, which is what the owner is asking for. I hate it, but I have a feeling they’ll force the sale and give her the fair market value for the property, minus the house, because that’s what she would have gotten had she agreed to sell in the first place. It’s bullshit, but if I had to guess, I’d guess that’s what will happen. I hope I’m wrong. This is such a weird case.
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I was following you up until this “sadly”. I guess this isn’t fully analogous to the apartments that oligarchs keep empty in London and NYC but that’s where my mind jumps to, when trying to decide what principles should take precedence. (But then I feel differently when people want to drill on federal lands…)
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To dispossess someone of a piece of land, you merely need trespass on it to construct a building, then claim the original owner didn’t want a building there?
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