A homeowner in Orlando, Florida, learned the hard way that it does not always pay to try to make extra money off of your hard-earned assets. The property owner was sitting on a large plot of land, which they decided to split into two properties. When the time came around, the landowner decided to sell one of those plots to the highest bidder of the Delaney Park property, which is exactly when things started to go straight to hell.
“Y’all are like the Hatfields and McCoys here — you’re never going to go agree,” Orlando City Councilwoman Patty Sheehan said about the problems floating around the Delaney Park properties.
The homeowner owned both properties with two separate mortgages. They decided to merge the properties by building a single building in the middle of the two properties. Was this a mistake? In time, it would be. But only time would be able to reveal that point.
When the mortgages went into foreclosure, the mortgage with the property, the home, went to the bank. The side with the pool went back to the original owner. No one lived in the vacant home for six years while the bank tried to figure out what to do with the weird Florida property that had been built on split mortgage land that should never have been done that way in the first place.
“We’ve had to kick (out) vagrants, we’ve had to watch the property …. So it’s taking our time, and it’s a constant effort to maintain that,” said neighbor Richard Sconyers.
The owner of the smaller plot of land, which did not have enough land on it to build a house, decided to build a fence. He placed the fence directly over the pool and through the other home’s garage area. This totally blocked their access and made the home on the other plot of land basically worth less because it could not be used to its full extent because of the bizarre double-mortgage thing that had been done to it by the original owner, who was unable to maintain the lavish plan.
There was an outstanding offer. The smaller plot of land owner offered to pay $300,000 to buy the property with the home on it. But the bank that had the property refused. In turn, the bank offered to pay the man with the plot $40,000 for their small sliver of land so they could get back half the garage and pool and remove the fence from the land once and for all.
Thankfully, democracy saved the day. The local Florida City Council voted that the original owner (the owner of the small plot of the land – the one who installed the revenge fence) could build a small property on their land.
“It was a great outcome,” said Jeff Aaron with the GrayRobinson law firm. “We paid good money for a piece of land. And for four years, Deutsche Bank has held us hostage, unable to develop our land.”
Yet, no one wants the bank’s eyesore. The fence remains an issue for this property mistake.