Unless I miss something, having this type of local news on the Hacker News homepage is surprising.
IMHO, it falls under the category of "boat programming" (https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/14486/174092). That is, it is only thanks to the "Bay Area woman" that it grabbed some attention of the Bay Area-affiliated crowd (if it was a "Budapest woman", it would be treated, factfully, as local news).
In particular, it falls short of the HN guidelines of "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
I have no ties to the bay area, I upvoted it because the mistake was a classic off by one error.
> “Mr. Lawrence testified he built the home on Lot 114 instead of Lot 115 because he counted out the lots using the telephone poles,” the court order read. “But he built the home on the wrong side of the telephone pole.”
I have no affiliation to either locality, but I thought this whole saga was interesting from a legal perspective. The sheer audacity of the developer to sue for unjust enrichment. I think it also would have been a pretty important case if it hadn't gone this way, as others pointed out, it would have opened a lot of potential avenues for developers to abuse neighbors or steal land.
Reasonable parties would have found a way to come to an amicable agreement that wouldn’t have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars of value, like exchanging lands and offering compensation.
Edit: changed dollar value, thanks Ballas for correcting me
> wouldn’t have destroyed millions of dollars of value,
Did you see the photo? It’s a small house that definitely did not cost “millions” to build. The $5 million is in the lot, which they were trying to take from her via courts.
The value of the lot comes from the location and the view, which are not easily replaceable in a place like Hawaii, even from one adjacent lot to the next. I bet the house could be destroyed with negligible change of the value of the property, if any at all. So nobody is destroying “millions of dollars of value” in this situation.
Regardless, can you imagine the implications if a developer could just build on whatever lot they wanted and then the owner had to be forced to accept some other land in exchange? If that was true, I guarantee a lot of other developers would start “accidentally” building on nicer lots too.
I think the "reasonable" solution GP is after would be to just allow the land owner to keep the house, if she so desired.
Given her plans for the land however, I can see why she wouldn't be interested in that.
Basically there are 2 reasonable solutions as I see it, the one described above, and the one that actually happened per the article.
The developer suing her for being "unjustly enriched" is just pure madness. Had they not done that, they might've gotten away without having to pay for the demolition at least, if the landowner didn't object too harshly to a "free house" deal.
Which totally should've been the landowners call of course.
> I think the "reasonable" solution GP is after would be to just allow the land owner to keep the house, if she so desired.
But she already expressed her plans to build something else on the land. Keeping the house would have saddled her with the additional cost of demolishing it and hailing away the debris, which is nontrivial.
So instead, the demolition and debris removal are being handled, which is effectively the same outcome but without her paying the costs.
I'm just saying it would be fair to give her the OPTION of keeping the house.
If she doesn't want it, the developer should indeed be forced to pay for it's removal, as has happened.
But my understanding is that she wasn't given the option to just keep the house for free, had she wanted it. Given her plans, i don't really expect the outcome would've been any different, tho one does wonder if the offer of a free house wouldn't have been tempting, had she been given it?
Suing her for unjust enrichment just kinda forced her hand to demand the building removed, which is why I'll go on record saying the developer here is likely insane, or else stupid enough as makes no difference
There seems to be a mistake in the article, if you click on the linked article [0], it states the home was listed for $499,000. She bought the land for $22,500 and they claimed that they paid $300,000 for construction.
Thanks, I was wondering about this. The house pictured obviously isn't a $5M house, and obviously isn't the house you'd build on a $5M property either. Moreover, looking at the area on Zillow, everything is in the 6-digit range, except for a few on the shoreline that get over $1M, but nothing remotely close to $5M.
Yes, this is clearly a $500k house, not $5M. The article just goofed. Maybe the SFGate writers have trouble comprehending 6-digit house prices...
The article linked in this story claimed the house (and lot) was listed for $5 million:
> The mistake was only realized toward the end of the sale of the property in the summer of 2023, when the title company was trying to close escrow on the home that had been listed for just under $5 million.
Whatever the real value, the parent comment claiming “millions of dollars of value” being destroyed is wrong.
I agree, but the numbers from the article in the OOP is wrong. The older article linked from that article(that I have also linked) seems to have more realistic numbers.
“I believe in the sacredness and the sanctity of the land,” Reynolds said. “The coordinates aligned with my zodiac sign. And you could hear the ocean.”
There weren't two reasonable parties involved or else there never would've been a house built on land someone else owns. That is not a reasonable mistake. Unless millions of dollars of investment is pocket change, in which case losing that entire investment is also nothing for the offending party. Given that millions of dollars is substantial for the offending party then they weren't acting anywhere close to reasonable.
I don't feel there is a shred of responsibility for the offended party to try and make reasonable accommodations for another party acting so unreasonable.
I don't feel any sympathy for the developer either: I feel bad for the trees that had to be cut down, the materials that had to be mined and processed, the heavy machinery that had to be moved to that location and burn gallons of fuel, the workers that had to spend their time building it all. All that will be destroyed, some valuable materials will be recycled but the bulk will be dumped in a landfill somewhere. Just the waste of it all. And just because some developer, the city, and many other parties along the way couldn't exercise due diligence. And at the end, there was so much spite between the party that no one could come to an agreement that allowed this building to stand.
Yup, what's unreasonable is the developer trying to litigate away the risks that they made themselves. Companies need to bear the brunt of their own self-inflicted FAFO.
Sounds like a reasonable judgement - even if the parties didn't come to a compromise themselves - would have been to just swap lots. Lots 115 should be empty, cause the building that should be there is on 114. So, swap the deeds and be done with it.
(Unless lot 115 is completely different to 114, but doesn't sound that way)
That sort of precedent seems like it will just lead to abuse. Buy a less desirable plot of land, 'accidentally' build on a nicer plot near by, force the owner of the nicer plot to hand over their land to you (Since they're just a bit different and not "completely different").
I'm pretty sure judges can reasonably find the difference between willfulness and accident (as the article states, multiple people who had no reason to help the builder missed the error) and decide accordingly.
But why should you be rewarded for your fuckup by taking my land from me? Why should I be punished for doing nothing wrong by being forced to take a possibly lesser plot of land.
That is reasonable ONLY if the party who owns the lot is willing to trade (possibly with some extra compensation for their trouble). However I see not reason to expect someone to trade their land just because someone else wants to.
> Reynolds was in for yet another unwelcome surprise: The developer sued her for being “unjustly enriched” by the construction of the home on her land. The developers’ lawyer told SFGATE in March that Reynolds appeared to be taking advantage of the developer’s mistake. “Keaau Development Partnership is the only entity that has suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of losses,” Peter Olson said. “She’s trying to exploit the situation to get money from my client and the other parties.”
Can you imagine if this had worked? If someone could screw up so badly as to build an entire house on land they had no authorization to build on, and sue the owner of that land? Who didn't even know it was happening until it was over?
I can think of a long line of people the builder might have a case against here, but suing someone with the argument, "I unjustly enriched you. Give me money," is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in awhile.
Unjust enrichment is mostly supposed to be if you knew they were doing work at your place when they weren't supposed to be.
Say your neighbor pays to redo their backyard. Install a big outdoor kitchen, install a fancy pool with a water slide, etc.
They mix up which yard is which. You see them come into your yard and start digging. You think "maybe I should stop them..." but don't. Instead, you let them build out a $100,000 backyard setup in your yard over the next week.
You could have stopped them. You were there. The construction workers saw you were home and saw you leave and come back several times during the week. There's no doubt you were aware of the unpaid construction work being done. Instead, you waited until all the work was completed.
In this case there's practically little way this owner, who lived over 2,000mi away from the property, would have reasonably known this construction was happening. This is why that case was thrown out.
Ironically, in the mail, we have protections for that. By law, you may keep unsolicited merchandise and are under no obligation to pay for it.
Thus: I consider the contractor to be a private courier that delivered a building upon my land. I didn't solicit this merchandise (house), and I'm not paying for it.
There's practically no way to know someone is going to mess up your address. You can't be liable for that.
If you're living at a place (or spend a lot of time there) you'd have seen the workers working at your place. Catching them mid job and letting them know right away wouldn't result in unjust enrichment. Letting someone build a whole house on your property while you knew about it would be unjust enrichment.
Unjust enrichment makes sense in different contexts.
Dine and Dash doesn’t involve a formal written contract, but the implication of sitting down in a restaurant is clear.
One of my neighbors let a family member build a house on their property without explicitly gifting them the land and you can see the inherent conflict involved when the land owner knows and approves what’s going on.
> “Mr. Lawrence testified he built the home on Lot 114 instead of Lot 115 because he counted out the lots using the telephone poles,” the court order read. “But he built the home on the wrong side of the telephone pole.”
Had he been a programmer he would know to count from 0 :)
This scenario happens far more often than most people realise, putting up a building on the wrong plot of land. If you are not going to do your due diligence then you will suffer the consequences.
If you build on the wrong plot, the only person to blame is yourself.
And certainly more minor property line disputes happen all the time--including situations where the infringement probably seems inconsequential relative to the heat it sometimes causes.
Certainly. My middle son was looking at buying a property in a near by town. He asked me to come an look at it. We had the actual shire plans for the blocks and while looking at the property lines, we measured the actual fence to fence widths. The block was being sold by the owner of an adjoining block and when we measured we found that the fence line had been moved by about 20 to 30 cm. On querying the owner about this, he was somewhat angry that we were questioning where the fence was as he was the one who had it built.
From what I could see, the builders most likely kicked the boundary peg out of the ground and just put it back willy nilly.
As a consequence, I did advise my son to have nothing to do with the property and we did inform the real estate agent of the problem. This would put legal responsibility on the estate agent if it was sold without the boundary line being corrected.
Due diligence is necessary if you are doing this kind of thing.
I remember looking at a farm property in NC. After walking the entire farm I noticed that someone had built a home on the wrong side of a creek on the farmland, instead of the other side of the creek on the land they actually owned. I notified the sellers who after talking to the county found out I was correct. They ended up having to change the lot lines. We ended up not buying the property due to other reasons. It is truly amazing to me that things like this get past the banks and county inspectors. The lack of due diligence is astounding.
Are you arguing that property rights should be based exclusively on calling "dibs" by building something on the land? If I see someone not using their front lawn, should I build my own house in front of theirs and tell them that I'll make better use of the land?
No, land rights (NOT property rights, you should be entitled to all of the value you produce) should be determined by a market system. I'm fine with her keeping that multi-million dollar plot of land for herself, but only if she actually pays society for everything being taken away.
A tax on the value of land - something people didn't produce, but comes from the value of society - is the proper way to raise income. You get rid of speculative leeches like this.
If georgism was implemented here, then the value of the lot would have increased very significantly with a house was on it. With the significant additional value, it's likely that the two parties would have been able to come to an arrangement that didn't result in destroying the house.
The root of the problem here is that the house is worth peanuts compared to the land, so the homeowner has nothing to gain from bargaining with the developer. We end up destroying something of value (housing) in the name of speculative land investment, which is a shame
In today's world, the value of the lot increased significantly when the house was built.
The owner certainly could have sold that property with the house on it, and bought a much nicer empty lot.
That is not however what the existing owner wanted to build on the property, and as a result the building is damage to the property
And why should the landowner here bargain with the developer? The developer did not perform basic due diligence on easily a 200k+ investment
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That being said, georgism plays right into this issue without the developers negligence. With LVT any land with improvements that is not determined to be it's highest and best use will be bulldozed and replaced, which is also a shame.
Yeah, true. But if Georgism was in place I would think you would have less people owning prime property but living 2000 miles away and completely unaware what is happening on the land.
I would disagree with the leech characterization. In an interview I watched, she talked about how she chose the property based on astrological alignment and her feelings when she was on this plot. She may be irrational but I think that's a perfectly valid reason to want to keep your own plot of land.
I don't think any idea that puts more responsibility on centralized government is destined for great success until there are stronger movements to force the governments in question to behave pro-socially. As it stands in the U.S. the federal government spends much more than the biggest 50 companies in the world combined and the benefits we see from that are disgustingly small.
I would love to see people find ways to make centralized government a value add in our lives, but as it stands there are too many people who want to continue to pile onto there responsibility regardless of the outcomes.
I appreciate the sentiment, but territorial boundaries are enforced by violence among almost every species on the planet and we're not that much better than any of them. Law is something we use to put hard limits on violence and sometimes it's inadequate to ensure the obviously right outcome. I do hope that leads to a modulation of where the limits are placed rather than a loss of trust in the whole endeavor.
The house was not worth $5,000,000. Let's be super generous and assume that's $500,000 worth of house. The land itself, the location, that's worth $4,500,000. Why should a $4,500,000 plot of land be kept out of production without anyone paying?
For what it's worth there seems to be a massive fuck up in the linked article. If you look at the original story, it lists the house as $500,000 and not $5 million. The land itself was bought for $22k in 2018
