“An attorney for PJ’s Construction said the developers didn’t want to hire surveyors.”
Well there’s your problem.
The answer here should be simple… the developers pay for demolition, removal of the house, and restore the property back to the condition where they found it.
They’ve sued everyone instead…
The lady that owns the property, the people who used to own it, a bank, an insurance company, I think a person that lives on another lot, the person who sold them the other lots.
In all likelihood the lawsuits are a stall until they can declare bankruptcy and start a new company.
But they can’t just “restore” the property, it was full of mature native trees/plants and for bulldozed.
Also the reason they didn’t “need” surveyors, was lots are clearly marked via numbers on telephone poles. They just read the numbers wrong. Which is even worse.
But they can’t just “restore” the property, it was full of mature native trees/plants and for bulldozed.
Oh God…tree law…I never realized how much I missed this.
Psh, the trees are the easy part, trees (for the most part) stay where you plant them.
Good luck reintroducing the pocono swallow, or even being able to afford to fly a Bird Law specialist out from Philly to determine damages.
Seriously tho, this lady just got a $500k house and probably a 1/10th of that in damages for a lot she paid 22k for.
They couldn’t afford surveyors but they can pay lawyers to file a half dozen fraudulent lawsuits?
I hope a judge smacks them.
Lawyers cost a lot to win a case like this.
One lawyer to send letters to 20 people demanding they all each pay…
That doesn’t cost much, might actually work, and stalls the issue.
They also offered to “swap” her for the lot next door. F that, they should offer to buy it from her for fair market value
Is that not what they are doing by offering an identical lot next to it that cost the same?
Or just give the property the owner the house for free in exchange for not suing and cut their losses. Would probably be cheaper in the long run, especially counting legal fees.
First: she has a right to be made whole and it’s not her concern what the people who wronged her have to go through to do that.
Second: she never wanted a house. She had a special vision for the space, a space that has now been damaged.
Third: squatters have rights and she may not be able to evict them. Their rights may take precedence over hers here.
Not disagreeing with any of this but it should be clear to this lady her vision was screwed the moment a developer built a bunch of cookie cutter houses all over that area. A meditation center doesn’t really work in that area any longer.
The issue with the taxes, the lawsuit, and the squatters is exactly why I would have just taken the offer to trade properties, she has an enormous headache on her hands and bailed on the easy way out of it.
Squatters seldom have the “rights” to just take property as easily as the internet often seems to think they have. It very often takes years to assume those rights plus paying the taxes on it. And if it were so easy to do that it became such a common problem, it wouldn’t be as big a meme as it currently is.
My question is: “Just how little are you paying attention to your personal property that you unaware of a many month’s long building process taking place on your property?” Or is the property owner that stupid and has her ass that far up her own head?
I mean, I own several hundred acres of property, (farm land and forest), and a good chunk of it is 300 miles away. I KNOW what happens on that property. If someone tried to build anything on it without my knowledge or consent, I would know within a week of the start of the building and real hard pointed questions would be asked of the fools doing the building.
Why don’t they just pick up the house, and put it over there?
Seriously, I’ve seen houses being moved on trucks before, would it be faster and cheaper to do that?
Which is why she was offered the identical lot next door that still has all of that?
The Title Company has to be sweating bullets right now. It’s their whole job to prevent problems like this.
Yeah, they admit in the video that the developers didn’t hire a surveyor. The developers are completely fucked here, and I think they know it.
If they had hired a title company, the company would have hired surveyors, so it’s pretty much a for sure thing they didn’t hire a title company. Developers usually only do that at closing when they sell the property.
They are suing everyone: the county, the contractors, the current owner, the kids of the dead previous owner. They are claiming everyone but them is being unreasonable and hoping a judge gives them some sympathy. They know they fucked up and are just hoping that either at least one of the people they sued caves or the judge is an idiot/easy to buy off.
They want a judge to force her into a settlement that allows the developer to own the land and house.
This is common because our legal system is fucked up. Standard practice is to sue everyone remotely involved and let the judge throw it out as they see fit. Of course, the people tangently involved now need to spend money and effort making sure it gets thrown out.
They’re not going to get a judgment against her. Only question is how to make her whole at this point, and if trees were knocked down. That would require the cost of getting a comparable tree somewhere and putting it into the same spot with a reasonable chance to survive. You can imagine that gets quite expensive. In some states, it’s then treble damages, but I can’t find anything specific about Hawaii there. Possibly it doesn’t, since it doesn’t have the same forestry history that other states do.
This crap happens (not that at it should and you’re correct). I know someone in construction. They leaned a property that the title company just… didn’t see the lien? Property was sold, The lien wasn’t bonded off or anything either.
It got resolved but man, that would have been a mess. I think at that point the new homeowner is on the hook, and would need to get their due by going after the title company?
Yep, I have a good friend that ran into this issue on his home he bought 20 years ago. After 5 years of living in the home and making payments on it, it was finally discovered that there was no clear title to the property going back 60 years…
It took another 2 years to clean it all up, but it required the township, county, and a state agency to get involved to make a couple of problems “just go away”.
Thats insane. And at that point they were there for 7 years. Most people stay in there house longer, but any million things could have made them want to move in that window. Sick family member, job, whatever, and they would have been stuck.
Title insurance.
If you are buying property, you can get insurance against this exact issue. If the title is found to be incorrect or a lien is on the property then the insurance company has to deal with it.
If that house had a mortgage then the lending bank almost certainly required the use of one. If it had a construction loan it too probably required a title search and certification.
I could be wrong, but I thought you couldn’t get a mortgage for a house that isn’t already in a livable condition. That would have come after the thing was completed.
Developers don’t mortgage individual houses, they were still trying to sell the house to someone according to the video, and offered to sell it to her at a discount.
Again, all in the video with all the answers :)
Reynold’s attorney said they offered to swap her their lot right next door or sell her the house at a discount. But she has refused both offers. “It would set a dangerous precedent if you could go onto someone else’s land, build anything you want, and then sue that individual for the value of it,” DiPasquale said.
Good for her.
I’d also tell them to fuck off. The only reasonable option would be giving her the house (which she is now paying taxes on and requires work to make it usable because of the shit) or to bulldoze the thing (or uproot the house and move it; whatever gets it off the property) and get the lot back to its prior state.
Keaau Development Partnership sued PJ’s Construction, the architect, the prior property owner’s family, and the county, which approved the permits.
They also sued Reynolds.
The developer knows they fucked up and are hoping one of the people they are suing is poor enough or dumb enough to cave so they can recoup some of the massive legal cost they are looking at. Also suing the kids of a dead person is a little fucked up. Like “Hey sorry that your dad died but we can’t sue him so we’ll sue you instead.”
The only reasonable option would be giving her the house
No need. The house is already hers if the laws over there work as they do where I live. Anything somebody else builds on your land becomes your ownership automatically. The developer knows this and tries to bully and cajole her into getting his money back or at least cut some of the losses.
There’s a quote from the realator involved to the effect of “we need to resolve this”. Notice the language technically is just saying we’ll work this out, but it’s worded with the implication that it’s on her to make good. Which, no, it isn’t.
Her correct response would be “my lawyer will be in touch”, and looks like she did that. I don’t know if this is going to get her into Fuck You Money or not, but either way, she seems to be smart enough to let her lawyer do the talking.
The still vacant three-bedroom, two-bath house on a 1-acre lot in Puna’s Hawaiian Paradise Park is worth about $500,000. But it could cost a lot of people more than that as they head to court to sort it out.
Wow. A house is cheaper in Hawaii than it is in SoCal?
The housemate of my mother just sold her mother’s house in Orange County. 2 bedroom and 1 bath, so smaller, for over $1 million.
Unless you are a native Hawaiian, you can only lease the land for 100 years. Further, the cost of living in HI is way way higher than SoCal because everything has to be imported.
Source: ex-Navy who lived there and used to crash open houses in diamond head for snacks when he was poor.
Unless you are a native Hawaiian, you can only lease the land for 100 years.
That doesn’t sound right. IIRC, one of the biggest reasons why Guam and the Marianas don’t want to become states is that “land ownership only for natives” rules aren’t allowed under statehood (for the same reason segregating against black people isn’t allowed anymore, even though the circumstances aren’t the same), but that ship has long since sailed for Hawaii.
Had to go back and look it up. The answer is it just depends. Some land is owned by the State of HI, in which non natives can own it where other land is owned by the Natives through the Monarchy of HI and can only be leased:
https://www.hawaiistar.com/can-non-hawaiians-own-land-in-hawaii/
Did you look up paradise park on maps? It’s not close to any big city. Look further out from cities in California and you’ll see similar prices, but of course you won’t be as close to the ocean, but I guess in Hawaii you’re always close to the ocean.
It’s in one of the most gorgeous and desirable parts of the nation, a straight shot to the ocean (not all of Big Island is coastal!), and a short drive from beautiful Pāhoa.
it is extremely beautiful! but realistically, most people want to live near amenities.
The fuck are they even suing Reynolds for? They fucked up; why does she have to pay for their fuck up?
