I don't hold much sympathy for the wronged property owner, because a simple solution has been offered, but nothing's simple when patchouli oil is involved
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Property owner stunned after $500,000 house built on wrong lot
HONOLULU (KHNL/Gray News) - A construction company has reportedly built a half-million-dollar house on the wrong property.
Hawaii News Now reports that the lot owner doesn’t want the house and has endured problems like higher taxes and squatters.
Now, to add insult to injury, she’s being sued over someone else’s mistake.
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.
It all started in 2018 when Annaleine “Anne” Reynolds thought she’d found the perfect, serene parcel in Paradise Park to host her meditative healing women’s retreats.
Warning sign — trouble ahead
“There’s a sacredness to it and the one that I chose to buy had all the right qualities,” she said. [The lots all look the same to me, but I can’t detect auras and ethereal spirits, so …]
The price was also right — available in a county tax auction for about $22,500.
But while she waited in California through the pandemic for the right time to use it, the lot was bulldozed, and a house was built on the property.
She was unaware of the construction until she got a call last year from a real estate broker who had learned of the mistake.
“He told me, ‘I just sold the house, and it happens to be on your property. So, we need to resolve this,’” Reynolds said. “And I was like, what? Are you kidding me?”
PJ’s Construction was reportedly hired by developer Keaau Development Partnership to build about a dozen homes on properties that developers bought in the subdivision, where the lots are identified by telephone poles.
Big Mistake by the idiot, cheapskate developer
An attorney for PJ’s Construction said the developers didn’t want to hire surveyors.
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.
Like a shark drawn to blood, her lawyer smells money, and is encouraging her to stand firm on (his) principle —
“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. [Bullcrap]
After trying to resolve the problem, 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.
Representatives of the developers and construction company and Reynolds all said they are being reasonable, and the others aren’t. That’s why the developer says they have pulled everyone into the lawsuit in hopes a judge can help unravel this half-million-dollar mistake.
I always advised my clients to avoid protracted litigation if they possibly could, and I gave the same advice to parties as an arbitrator and mediator for the NYSE and NASDAQ. That sometimes worked, but it often didn’t, and, bless their hearts, I made a decent amount of cash from stubborn litigants.
