How to deal with irregular and rogue properties?

JOCCO

Well-known Member
Well folks when this comes up in your area or state. Those small useless parcels of land like 20x60 feet at the corner of your 500 acre corn field. Or 1/8 acre in the middle of your house lot with no access road. General rule I have seen many of these come up on tax acquired rolls. The trick seems to be to get one of the abutting land owners to buy it and add to the bigger parcel. Now the town planning boards and such don't allow these to be created as they are unbuildable. They (the parcels can be a pain in the butt to deal with. So lets hear your stories.
 
Fortunately, this happens seldom to never where I live. The biggest problem for many is that a house with an acre or two was separated out of a small farm when a large farm bought the small acreage. Fast forward a few decades and the farm friendly couple who occupied that house has been replaced by the neighbor from heck and they have offspring to boot. As to what you describe there is no accounting as to how previous land owners handled their affairs. Why somebody would bother to split a 20 X 60 lot from a larger tract is beyond me. Maybe a place to park a mobile home for a kid? Not a lot of brain used to solve a problem that instead made for a larger problem. I don't know that things will ever turn for me to be a buyer of any quantity of land but a fair amount of the houses are in poor condition that it would be cost effective to buy and level versus having a terrible future neighbor come along.
 

Not sure if this is what you are getting at but is related.

My Mother in Law had inherited a lake cottage on a channel from her father. Across the road from it were some small lots owned by multiple owners. She and the FIL bought a few lots from one owner and built a pole barn to house the boats, jet skis, mowers, that sort of thing. The lots there are 20' wide and 100' deep. Later they decided they wanted to build a house at the lake and live out there full time. The current rules are you have to have at least 5 lots to build. For the house they wanted that would not have been enough. In addition the lots were two deep from the road because there was supposed to be a road build 200' back from the existing road, but it was never built but shows on all the survey maps.

So her and her lawyer, who specialized in real estate law, found the owners names and began to contact them to buy the lots. Some she contacted in her own name, others the lawyer contacted. Many of the owners owned anywhere from one to three lots and they all thought they were going to build on it or put a camper on it, etc. Most eventually sold when they were told they had to have at least five to build on or park any sort of living unit. Some were land locked due to being on the second tier and with no road there was no access, especially since she had most of the road lots tied up at that point. Some actually came out to look, and yep, no road. They sold. At closing many of the owners never knew who really bought it, the attorney or his secretary was the "buyer" on many of them, with an immediate transfer to the MIL.

A group of three lots had been inherited by five siblings, three of them were willing to sell the other two not. Never could understand what they thought they were going to do with it other than pay taxes on it. So she just bought their three fifths interest and became co-owners with the other two. I believe the other two eventually sold out once they figured out what happened. On one lot the owner had stopped paying the property taxes and couldn't be contacted so she started paying the taxes and just using it as part of the whole parcel. I think they call that "adverse possession". It was one of the land-locked lots anyway. One guy said he was going to buy more lots, MIL said: no you won't, because I own all the lots around you. People get stupid when it comes to real estate I guess.

I think she ended up with 14 -18 lots total and built the house they wanted and have a nice sized yard area to go with it and the big barn for storage.
 
Some times these lots were just for that reason a camper or small mobile home or the famous hunting camp lot!!!
 
Yes exactly what I am talking about here. And at a local lake in the 1860's lots were divided very small. People went there from town buy horse, outhouse, no septic, no outbuildings. Well fast forward 125 years and yep you get it Not enough room for septic, garage and so on. One can bet vacant lots next door became very valuable. But there is a caveat most were bought up buy my uncle due to taxes lack of interest. From there he was into buy low sell high!!!
 
(quoted from post at 15:10:15 12/01/16) Some times these lots were just for that reason a camper or small mobile home or the famous hunting camp lot!!!

Probably that was the thought way back when there was no regulation out there. I think it was partially a scam too, break up what was mostly swampy land into small affordable parcels and push the heck out of them to folks who thought they were really getting something for a small price. The wife's grandfather was at least smart enough to buy a couple of lots that had lake access. The legend in the family is he tore down an old chicken coop and used the lumber to build the cottage. The MIL remodeled it back in the '80s and added on a big covered porch.
 
Don't just assume the surveyor knew his beans. I know one guy, he's actually a licensed engineer and surveyor, surveyed a property so wrong he had it about 65' out of place, he had to buy the thing later. Continually has no idea. I saw him select the wrong fire hydrant for a flood plain determination, REALLY had that screwed up. Not saying which guy or which state.
 
Local town councilman was furious at his tax bill. So he deeded off the back half of his property with no right of way. Refused to pay the taxes on it. Of course when it came up for tax sale nobody could buy it. Don't know how it was resolved after he died. I expect the goobermint won in the long run.
 
The more you talk about it the more it appears your situation is tied to a recreational situation versus an everyday living situation. Most of the problems I see are of the everyday variety and trace back to a family that were not known much for their ability to think. I do know of a situation where a brother sold a lot to his sister and her husband that was barely big enough to hold a house and driveway. That township at that time had no building codes or usage codes. Now everybody in that locality is unhappy as those homeowners spread their elbows across the property line with trash and junk vehicles.



Most lake situations here are pretty much what a land or homeowner wants to live with. There was no code back in the day and for the most part there is none applied retroactively. Some lake home owners have to park along the road as there is insufficient space for a driveway on their lot. If a cottage was built within three feet of the property line then so be it. If a home is torn down (and some have been) and a new unit built then it becomes a matter of what the insurance company dictates and most dictate an area outside the structure that permits fire control equipment in the event of a fire. Lots of situations where easements are put in for all sorts of reasons. If I were buying a lake property I would check for easements on the neighboring properties as they may have some bearing on the enjoyment of the property I was thinking about buying.
 
Realtor told me about a small odd shaped parcel near me that they can't find records where anyone owns it.
 
I don't know how things work where you live,but talk to your assessor. Here,you can combine parcels and that small parcel would just cease to exist and would become a part of your existing parcel,as long as it's contiguous.
 
That surprises me as most local governments are aching to collect property taxes. Let the tax assessor know and that will get figured out in one heck of a hurry.
 
RR yes you can but the part you missed I guess is say I own 1/4 acre in your cornfield YOU CANNOT JUST TAKE IT AND ADD IT TO YOURS at least legally.
 
I ran into something like that when I bought my land. There was a field that was beside me that he wanted but he didn't want the road frontage part. He just wanted the field for hay. The planning commission would not let him buy that part and add it to his property that already had frontage on 2 different roads. Fe had to buy a 50 foot strip that went to the road for access with it. This is Fayette county Tennessee and the law there is if you don't have 50 foot of road frontage deeded with a piece of land you can't sell it. They require that to build.
 
No,you can't do that. Reading on down,I see that a lot of what you're talking about is small vacation lots. Again,I don't know how things are where you live,but we have a few what are called "All sports lakes" here. All of the parcels around them are parts of various subdivisions. That's how multiple lots have to be set up here. Sounds like you have a different system where those things have just been sold off willy nilly by the original owner of a once larger parcel. That wasn't done here. There had to be a subdivision plan before anything was ever sold in the first place. Yes,some of them are small,but there aren't any land locks. Unbuildable parcels,yes.
 
Yes have seen many similar situations and where the neighbor "claims it" or there are 5 5 acre lots on a 20 acre parcel!!!
 
My farm was split from a large parcel back in the 50s along with another more or less equal sized parcel to my south. We share a common neighbor to our east that was originally common to both of our parcels. If you get my drift? think of a box divided in to two equal parts and then one of those parts divided in half again. Anyway all the parcels have been sold several times since they were split. At some point there was a survey goof (only thing we can figure) that the buyer and seller did not catch that created a 1/4 acre pie shaped piece between me and my south neighbor BUT that record show that belongs to our East neighbor. This pie shaped 1/4 acre only joins his parcel at the point. I noted this irregularity when I bought my place 30 years ago but only got a shoulder shrug at the recorders office. Since then the neighbor who "owns" the pie shaped piece apparently got tired of paying taxes on the worthless to him property and tried it get it straightened out. Both me and my neighbor to the south said we would pay a fair price for it and neither really cares which of us gets it as it is just a hill side next to a creek. He said OK and went about trying to get it done. After a couple years he gave up. Everybody agrees it was a screw up but zoning and other regulations wont allow him to split that parcel and sell it to either of us. Stupid things can come from both under regulation and OVER regulation is my point here. Some of the nicest and best utilized property in the state of Ohio is north and East of me where there is NO zoning period.
 
Back in the late 70's my parents bought a small piece of land, gave it to me as a wedding gift to build a house on.

I never did anything with it, the marriage was not working, glad I didn't because it would have been all for nothing...

But a couple of years after the property was bought, I got a letter from the tax collectors, seems a tiny triangular sliver of land, on the back side of the lot, land locked, 10' wide, 100' long, tapering to a triangle, was not included in the original tax bill.

So they appraised it, wanted back taxes. Here came a bill for some outrageous amount, don't remember but it was around $5000!

That turned into a 3 year battle or attending tax protest meetings, letter writing, phone calls, threatening letters from lawyers, threats to sell the property on the court house steps!... The ultimate display of government incompetent runaround stupidity!!!

Finally, I was able to catch a lady that typically only answers the phone, was able to go into the computer, move a decimal point, the late charges removed, I wrote a check for $50something dollars, end of problem.
 
Butch sometimes there is a "corrective deed" seen that done by the court to settle certain things. The town/county has no say over that one.
 
Thanks, I will mention it to him next time we cross paths. County has no reason to budge because they are getting their tax money plus he doesnt care to spend more getting rid of it than the taxes will be the rest of his life,,,
 
Some times it's the fault of a couple of neighbors and a lawyer who don't quite know what they're doing. lol

A neighbor and I traded some land one time. We just went out and measured that ourselves,had a lawyer write a quit claim deed and we filed them. No problem there,but I sold him some land to the north of his place later on so that he was squared up with a parcel to the north. I needed some cash to pay off some debt so I could quit milking cows and still be able to sleep at night without debt hanging over my head. We did the same thing on that one,had a lawyer write a quit claim deed with our description. I thought I had sold him right up to the edge of the property to the north of me,but looking at the assessors map,I see I still own a real little narrow strip between the two parcels so I actually own road frontage there,but it looks so narrow that I don't know that it's even wide enough to stand on.
I should ask the assessor some day,just how wide of a strip I still own there I suppose.
 

This is kind of related and certainly odd. In 1909 you could get a 20 foot city lot as a prize if you subscribed to the Farm Journal. Here is the documentation from a local note:

Wichita Eagle
Tuesday, November 18, 1980
page 3Z.
Feature article on demise of the “shanty town” Sheridan Park neighborhood in southwest
Wichita, bounded by Pawnee, 27th South, Meridian, and Custer. The 80 acres of
farmland was subdivided in 1909 into 20 by 100 foot lots, and for three dollars customers
could get a lot thrown in with a subscription to the Farm Journal. The area was then
known as Orienta Park. The area was two miles from the city limits, streets were never
paved, and a shanty town was built. In late 1950s and early 1960s city annexed the land.


The shacks were eventually torn down and the land re-platted.
 
A co-worker has a square inch in Lynchburg, TN, if I recall--some sort of Jack Daniels promotion from 25+ years ago. He'd get updates on "his" land every so often with such pieces of "news" as saying the neighbor's bull had got out and ran over it--usually accompanied by some promotional discounts on Jack Daniel's products, of course. Here in NY, I've seen a few problems with tiny bits of property that were next to, or landlocked by, other ones, including a couple that came up for tax sale and were bought up by people without doing any research--they just saw a listing for a piece of property and figured they'd get it cheap. One involved a young couple who where trying to buy a quarter-acre or so that adjoined their property--nothing special, and it was landlocked at the back of the property. They main reason they wanted it was they found out after they bought the place that the previous owner had built the garage partly on this little chunk. The sale started off at a few bucks and then two people, neither of whom were the owners of the adjoining home, got "auction fever" and bid up this tiny little chunk of practically worthless land to several thousand dollars--several times its actual value--leaving the homeowners in the dust and quite upset at the prospect of the new owner of the corner of their garage wanting it gone. That one ended up turning out all right in the end--if I recall the details correctly, they approached the new "owner", who by this time had figured out he'd bought a pig in a poke, and were able to settle it amicably--I believe by the homeowner paying the back taxes before the new "owner" finalized the sale, and then negotiating a fairer puchase price.
 
There is a gas station near me on the corner of a two lane
state highway and another paved road.
Behind that gas station, on the paved road, not the state highway,
there was a two acre portion of a larger hay field for sale.
The owner had deeded it to his son and his new bride to build
a house on. They mortgaged the land and lost it. No house,
well, electricity, etc. but about 200 ft of paved road frontage.

Most of this road has been turned into trailer park like lots, so
I bought that two acres from the bank and told the guy who
owned the hay field, the original owner, to use it as he sees fit
until I do something else with it. You would have thought I had
saved his life or something. It cost me $4500.

On the side of that gas station, facing the state highway, was a
tiny old house on a lot about 20 x 60 feet. Tenants destroyed
it and it was torn down. By today's standards, not buildable.
That small parcel is now for sale and borders mine so I took
a look to see what the bank was asking for that. Same bank.
$20,000 for 20 ft of frontage. I'll pass.
 
Your memory is going! you were supposed to stop by some day, LOL. Just down the road near Lucerne.
 

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