Donut
Man buys property surrounding retirement community because builder was delinquent on taxes. Seeks to charge residents $80K for access to property.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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May 27th, 2010 at 9:30 am
Moron never heard of an easement. He’s going to get his ass handed to him.
Never mind the whole ’emergency vehicle’ thing for blocking the road if he’s gone that far.
May 27th, 2010 at 9:40 am
I’m pretty sure thats illegal. There was a case where some fancy ass golf-course community had folks not paying community dues so security would not let guests in. They let residents in, but not guests. There was some discussion about “right to access”, I’ll see if I can dig the article up.
May 27th, 2010 at 9:43 am
yeah, it’s all manner of illegal.
May 27th, 2010 at 9:51 am
What a dick. B/c screwing with old people is a really good business model.
May 27th, 2010 at 10:19 am
I’ll be damned. Have to find a new hypothetical.
May 27th, 2010 at 10:28 am
The law is not as clear as you would assume. He probably won’t get $80,000 a condo, but he will definitly get some compensation. This is why one gets title insurance.
May 27th, 2010 at 10:47 am
Not under the common-law, as I understand it. You cannot bar someone from their property if their only access is through your land – especially if that situation and the existing access pre-dates your ownership of the land, like in this case.
There may, however, be something in Oklahoma’s statutory law that would allow it – but I doubt it.
May 27th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Looks like a pretty classic right-of-way issue – and he isn’t going to be able to block them if they’ve been crossing that land prior to his acquisition. I have a similar situation at my mountain cabin – the last 40′ of my driveway crosses someone else’s property – but when he tried to shut me off, my lawyer had no trouble convincing his lawyer it wasn’t gonna work.
May 27th, 2010 at 11:12 am
This is also why we have eminent domain laws, and an example of their proper use. If this guy wants to act like a dickhole, then the local authorities simply need to confiscate a pathway through his land and make it public property.
May 27th, 2010 at 11:19 am
After he loses can a judge sentence him to Running the Gauntlet of the retirement community residents?
May 27th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
But isn’t one of the main themes of this blog all about property rights? Again, I guess it all depends on the owner of the ox being gored.
As to legality: HOAs do it:
http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/condoblog/2010/03/not-paying-your-hoa-fees-dont-invite-guests-over-to-visit.html?wpmp_switcher=mobile
May 27th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
No. That’s why this post isn’t about that. And I’m not rolling my eyes 🙂
May 27th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Some people need to get that ass beaten one good time.
May 27th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
HOA’s are just enforcing the terms of a binding contract between themselves and the homeowner. Nothing for a libertarian to get worked up over.
Which is why, even being an amateur radio operator, I will never have any sympathy for a ham whose HOA won’t allow him to erect an antenna tower.
May 27th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Divemedic: Property rights in the US include the well-established concepts of easements and rights-of-way.
And if the same person (the builder) at one point owned both bits of land, it’s an open-and-shut Easement by Necessity case, it looks like.
May 27th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
It makes sense that the builder would be delinquent on taxes – why would he bother paying after he’d gotten his money out?
If you buy a condo and need a parking space, you pay whatever the price is. You don’t get to negotiate the price down. The Condo Association should have obtained the land, and they now need to pay a fair price for it.
The guy’s an idiot though in not retaining a lawyer and going about exercising his rights through the system. Trying to do it himself, the city is going to screw him.
May 27th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Farmers all the time have this problem. To access their land they have to drive across others lands. And yes, they have the right. This guy should have read the laws before he tried this.
May 27th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Divemedic
The residents were given property rights by the previous owner to drive on to reach their property. The new owner cannot take it back unless there is a contract says they can.
It is property rights, it just happens to be the property rights (access rights) of the retirement community as was promised to them when they purchased the land. If the old owner gave up partial ownership of some land to someone else, any new owner is buying into that old promise.
May 27th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Let’s ask Rand Paul what he thinks about this!
May 27th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Yay! A real doughnut hole!
It’s hard to say for sure with the limited facts in the news story, but A: If the builder contractually promised access through the doughnut but failed to do so, then the residents should be perusing him for fraud. B: If the builder did have an easement, the new owner is in the wrong. Or, C: If nobody involved thought to clear this up before building or buying, then they should all be pointed and laughed at.
And, on that note, it looks as if the doughnut was seized and sold by the state for failure to pay property tax. As such, it’s less an indictment against libertarian-ish-ism than it is an example of the collective “protection” against same backfiring. 😉
May 27th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Thirdpower and Jake actually know whereof they speak. I have actually studied this law in Oklahoma 20 years ago. There is nothing in Ok. law that allows him to do such. He is obligated to provide easement to the property of others.
He not only is going to get his ass handed to him, but he will undoubtedly be countersued and lose those suits also.
May 30th, 2010 at 8:29 am
He’ll really have his ass handed to him if someone in that retirement home dies because an ambulance couldn’t respond quickly enough to the home as a result of his cinder block barricade.