Land Scams

[Calfkeeper]

Recently my husband and I purchased 13 acres locally here in SW Missouri with the intent of renting it out.  It has no dwelling on it but all the hookups for either a mobile or tiny home.  Hubby advertised it on Craig's List and got quite a few inquiries. 

At least two of these inquiries have stated that they are from out of state and had been scammed.  They'd paid only $100 down for a chunk of land (not sure of size) and had packed up their RV and come out to MO to set up on it.  But when they got here turns out there was no land; now they are stranded and need a place to set up.

I guess this is nothing new, but it still burns me up that it goes on still.
Rebeccca

[feather]

Which scammed person makes out worse? The person that bought the land sight unseen, then found out they bought nothing. OR the person that feels sorry for the scammed person and lets them set up on their unused land? I'd say the second one will be scammed for more than the first.

[Ozarks Tom]

Beware of hard luck stories. Ask any landlord how many times they've been told the past landlord wouldn't fix a property, or any other reason the potential new tenants just "had" to move. Only to find out later the new tenants were deadbeats who wouldn't pay rent, tore the place up, then moved on to another bleeding heart.

[Deleted]

This is sadly true. I had someone I took pity on, especially because she had kids, who then didn't pay rent for 6 months, trashed place, and didn't hear anything when someone stole copper pipes. It was in an area that was all tenants rights but I finally got her evicted. Now for my rental property in new state I check references, google them, get last month's rent, verify employment, and my daughter lives on the property in a studio apt and keeps tabs on things. No more hard luck stories. I save my help for people where I know the truth.

[here to stay]

There was a woman here- pleasant, elderly, on social security. Needed something asap to be with daughter. My very business savvy friend rented her an apartment in a building she owned.

The short story of the  nightmare was that this woman never paid rent ever anywhere. She just got someone to rent here a place fast so references weren't checked. She then proceded to file ridiculous suits when eviction processes were started, such as claiming a cat had lived there previously and triggered her allergies. She sued another long term tenant and the landlord for excessive noise that no one else heard. This woman knew the tenant laws down to punctuation and would file an appeal or contest facts on the last possible day so that the process to evict her had to be halted then the whole thing restarted with all new time frames. After 2 years, she had never paid a dime of rent.

My friend finally paid law firm specializing evictions over $10,000 to get her out, only to find she had trashed the place. Turns out she had a bunch of cats and no litter boxes. Even with this cost and stress, my friend was happy to pay for the nightmare to end. Especially after having finally checked out some of this tenant's past. Seem she had done the same thing to many others. Never paying rent and stretching the process out as long as possible before disappearing.

[farmchix]

Between the non-existent houses for rent on CL here.....and the squatters.....you should never do a business transaction sight unseen. I would even avoid owning an out-of-state rental. Long story short, squatters were in a house next to my Momma's rental - explosion, fire, then a year of court proceedings to get them out. They were squatters.

[Deleted]

www.adn.com/alaska-beat/article/squatters-rights-keep-family-out-own-home/2009/07/30/

Result of that case.


www.alaskajournal.com/community/2003-05-19/bill-end-squatters-rights-alaska

-- The Alaska Senate has passed a bill that would wipe the 800-year-old common law doctrine of adverse possession from Alaska law.
Senate Bill 93, sponsored by Sen. Tom Wagoner, R-Kenai, repeals Alaska’s adverse possession law. The doctrine, which first was established in the Middle Ages, could allow squatters on private property to legally assume ownership of that property under certain well-defined conditions.
Wagoner said it is a doctrine the state should abandon.
"Our law, right now, allows a person who has no claim of ownership to squat on someone else’s property and, as a result of their illegal trespass, the squatter could actually secure title to the property they are squatting on," Wagoner said. "That is simply legal thievery -- to me, that is offensive and it needs to stop."

[dustawaits]

In a state I will not name .. a squatter moved onto a property. Later sold it...
33 properties he possessed in this manner and sold. I think most of these
properties were absentee owners or elderly people who were in nursing homes.
He became wealthy... the state made new laws but they do not look much better.

[Skandi]

I do not understand the hate against being able to take possesion of a vacant property,

In England you have to have lived there for 10 years then you can apply to aquire the deeds. The Land Registry will notify registered owners of any claim and give them three months to object.

If the claim is unopposed, the squatters automatically get the property. If the owner objects, the squatters have to prove not only that they have treated the property as theirs, but that they also reasonably believed it belonged to them.

There are many areas of land and houses where no one knows who the owner is. there are many homeless people tying up those properties and then having them eventually revert to the state seems daft. If you have not visited your house/land in 10 years then you do not deserve to have it. dustawaits, The british law would make that impossible as he would have to live for 330 years to do that! You have to be resident at the address to do it.

[here to stay]

Skandi, for one thing there are plenty of places so isolated and difficult access that you could actually have people squatting on the land you live on and not know it. Sometimes these lands are held in trust with the purpose of not developing them but allowing them to remain wild and free and unused.

Then proving anything in a court of law in the US is a huge burden. Simply proving you have the right to evict someone can be horribly expensive and time consuming no matter how right you are.

[Mr DAVID In Wisconsin]

Jun 2, 2017 14:32:02 GMT Skandi said:

If you have not visited your house/land in 10 years then you do not deserve to have it.

That is absolutely ridiculous. As long as I worked to pay for it and pay taxes on it no freelaoder should be able to take it from me just because they can.  I have money in savings I haven't touched in over 10 years, should they be able to take that from me also? I have an extra van that gets very little use should that be given to someone else who hasn't worked to pay for it also? 

[Skandi]

Jun 2, 2017 19:40:24 GMT Mr DAVID In Wisconsin said:

Jun 2, 2017 14:32:02 GMT Skandi said:

If you have not visited your house/land in 10 years then you do not deserve to have it.

That is absolutely ridiculous. As long as I worked to pay for it and pay taxes on it no freelaoder should be able to take it from me just because they can.  I have money in savings I haven't touched in over 10 years, should they be able to take that from me also? I have an extra van that gets very little use should that be given to someone else who hasn't worked to pay for it also? 

Should people be allowed to horde houses when there are not enough to go around? A house that isn't visited in 10 years would be falling down anyway. should they just be allowed to revert to the state and benifit no one? I am absolutly sure you have seen your van in the last 10 years and yes I DO believe that if you own something that you do not need or use you are stealing from others who could use it, I would force people who own empty houses say 5 years to sell.

[Calfkeeper]

Jun 2, 2017 0:14:19 GMT feather said:

Which scammed person makes out worse? The person that bought the land sight unseen, then found out they bought nothing. OR the person that feels sorry for the scammed person and lets them set up on their unused land? I'd say the second one will be scammed for more than the first.

Ha.  Yeah, I can feel sorry for a scammed person; but unless they pass a background check and dish out the money for said check and for rent I guess they will find someone else to scam. 

[Mr DAVID In Wisconsin]

Jun 2, 2017 19:48:03 GMT Skandi said:

Jun 2, 2017 19:40:24 GMT Mr DAVID In Wisconsin said:

That is absolutely ridiculous. As long as I worked to pay for it and pay taxes on it no freelaoder should be able to take it from me just because they can.  I have money in savings I haven't touched in over 10 years, should they be able to take that from me also? I have an extra van that gets very little use should that be given to someone else who hasn't worked to pay for it also? 

Should people be allowed to horde houses when there are not enough to go around? A house that isn't visited in 10 years would be falling down anyway. should they just be allowed to revert to the state and benifit no one? I am absolutly sure you have seen your van in the last 10 years and yes I DO believe that if you own something that you do not need or use you are stealing from others who could use it, I would force people who own empty houses say 5 years to sell.

I own a number of houses. I scrimped and worked to pay for each and and every one. What I do with them is no ones business but my own. You should feel free to give away anything you own but not a single thing I own.

[Calfkeeper]

Jun 2, 2017 14:32:02 GMT Skandi said:

 If you have not visited your house/land in 10 years then you do not deserve to have it. 

Ha ha.  Good heavens; here in rural SW Missouri we are surrounded by absentee landowners.  Properties range from 3-5 acres up to hundreds of acres, some may houses or buildings, most do not.  Many of these tracts of land were purchased by people who live in larger cities, Kansas City, St Louis...etc, with the intent to use when they retire in 10,  15, 30 years. 

Quite a bit of them are NOT visited by the owners; but some owners advertise larger tracts in rural papers and rent their properties for hunting during whatever season is open.  Local residents also hunt on some of these properties.  I could only imagine the Hatfield and McCoy fighting that would break out if the gov't were to waltz in and seize these properties and try to auction them off to the highest bidder, or to whomever claims to have squatter's rights or hunter's rights to them. 

Locally there was a 600 acre plot owned by a couple of attorneys in Kansas City.  They had owned it for many years, probably over ten, if not 20.  They recently sold it to the MO Department of Conservation for over a million.  I doubt they, they attorneys, had visited the land more than once in that time.  I wonder what they would have done had that land been seized by the gov't?  LOL

[here to stay]

Jun 2, 2017 19:48:03 GMT Skandi said:

Jun 2, 2017 19:40:24 GMT Mr DAVID In Wisconsin said:

That is absolutely ridiculous. As long as I worked to pay for it and pay taxes on it no freelaoder should be able to take it from me just because they can.  I have money in savings I haven't touched in over 10 years, should they be able to take that from me also? I have an extra van that gets very little use should that be given to someone else who hasn't worked to pay for it also? 

Should people be allowed to horde houses when there are not enough to go around? A house that isn't visited in 10 years would be falling down anyway. should they just be allowed to revert to the state and benifit no one? I am absolutly sure you have seen your van in the last 10 years and yes I DO believe that if you own something that you do not need or use you are stealing from others who could use it, I would force people who own empty houses say 5 years to sell.

Here, if people pay the taxes and maintain it so it is not a public nuisance, there is zero obligation to provide it free- which is what a squatter is-  to anyone.    

For example, if a person bought a rural cabin decades ago but got too old to make use of it and it is neither adequate nor desirable as a residence,  you think that anyone should feel free to  move in, treat it as their own, not pay property taxes ,  and then it should be taken away from its legal owner just because the iwner was unable to defend their ownership?   I have read horror stories of British owners being unable to shift off squatters but I never really understood the idea behind it.    

There is more than enough housing here to house everyone and then some.  What there is not is  housing up to  code that is as cheap as some want it to be.   Some like the idea of never paying for property or  taxes,  submitting to codes and laws or taking on other burdens of ownership.  Just because they are brazen enough to just occupy it without permission does not mean they should get it.   There is never any reason to think you own a whole house when you don't as ownership is a public record.  

[feather]

I think it is pretty clear that the political head sets of this country and other countries, are different. That's why I live here. Moving to another country to squat in a house, is always an option. If I in fact agreed with that kind of thing.

That is why the laws are so different in each country. The laws reflect the ideas kept by a majority of its population.

In the US, if I choose to own 20 properties for rent or use, and use that as a retirement, to sell off later, many years later, then that is retirement. If instead my 20 properties were squatted and I lost them, I will live my retirement homelessly and my country provides few to no options.

[bowdonkey]

And then there's eminent domain! Squatting by the rich.

[Ozarks Tom]

Skandi, A major difference between this country and others is the sanctity of private property, enshrined in our Constitution. It was a huge departure from English laws of the time, a prime reason for immigration here, and the basis for a capitalist society.

I understand the socialist mindset that pervades Europe and Great Britain, thankfully, we haven't reached that point here as yet. What a person works for and owns here is theirs to do with as they wish, whether someone else might want it or not.

[Deleted]

We have a tourist economy.
More than half of all homes are summer bed and breakfast and lodges with multi cabins.

In fall they are closed up. In the winter people like myself look out for the owners to prevent this from happening. Not every tourist place had some one like me there to prevent this.

Should a person lose their business asset to a lowlife.
Many lodges beg for someone to stay on their property and have a contract for not only free housing but a pay check. It is great for college kids here. They just have to pass a background check.