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Comment by robnado | Hacker News Reader

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

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> 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.

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.

[0] https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-home-built-on-w...

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.

All value isn't monetary. From the article:

“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.”

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...

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 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.

Not realistic.

The county granted a flawed permit. The builder built on the wrong site. The new buyer skipped a formal survey.

There's a web of lawsuits that have to play out in courts to seek insurance or pass through of damages.

The developer destroyed millions of dollars of their own value by cutting corners and now they have to suffer the consequences. That is reasonable.

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.

Why do you assume they didn't try that?

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