A friend of mine purchased a vacation home in northern Wisconsin that was repo’ed by either Freddie or Fannie. At least it’s their name on the deed.
Now, my buddy had to go into the tax office to have the bills directed to him. As they are going through things the county guy tells him that he needs a new survey because the old description is no good. I took a look at it for him and the legal description works fine. A bit confusing, but it works alright.
The only problem is that it doesn’t describe the parcel he thought he bought. It describes a triangular piece about a 1/4 acre or so of swamp. What he thought he got was a CSM’ed parcel of about 2.6 acres with a house and detached garage on it with substantial lake frontage.
The tax maps show a different owner (now deceased) for the house parcel and my friend as the owner of the triangular parcel. He has a huge mess to clean up now.
Seems that asking for a survey before the closing would have had some serious benefit to my bud. And since there was an older existing survey on the parcel I doubt we’d be talking huge money.
But who wants that danged survey that might screw up the closing?
An once of prevention???
> A friend of mine purchased a vacation home in northern Wisconsin that was repo’ed by either Freddie or Fannie. At least it’s their name on the deed.
> Now, my buddy had to go into the tax office to have the bills directed to him. As they are going through things the county guy tells him that he needs a new survey because the old description is no good. I took a look at it for him and the legal description works fine. A bit confusing, but it works alright.
> The only problem is that it doesn’t describe the parcel he thought he bought. It describes a triangular piece about a 1/4 acre or so of swamp. What he thought he got was a CSM’ed parcel of about 2.6 acres with a house and detached garage on it with substantial lake frontage.
> The tax maps show a different owner (now deceased) for the house parcel and my friend as the owner of the triangular parcel. He has a huge mess to clean up now.
> Seems that asking for a survey before the closing would have had some serious benefit to my bud. And since there was an older existing survey on the parcel I doubt we’d be talking huge money.
> But who wants that danged survey that might screw up the closing?
> An once of prevention???
While a survey would certainly have exposed this error, this is more of a title issue than a survey one.
Does your friend have title insurance to help cover this? From a survey angle, does your state require a survey or even a Mortgage Inspection?
he better pray he got title insurance
Once found a platted subdivision that all mapping back about a 100 years showed that the subdivision, based on occupation did not match the surrounding subdivisions and street dedications. The same surveyor platted all of them so it did not make much sense to me that a lot from that subdivision was crossing a street and encroaching on the lot I was surveying as had been depicted on the assessors maps for years. Took a while but finally reached a supportable theory, because of the good fit of three subdivisions, if the assumption was used. I believe that when the first lot was sold, The first house was built on the joining lot to the West instead of the proper lot, everyone who followed took their measurements from the that first house built, assuming it was on the lot described in it's description. This went on for a 100 years and even had some deed exchanges done in order to get setbacks into compliance. I filed the survey, the assessors maps have been changed and all are on notice of the problem, it is now being ignored by the owners with the hope it will go away. The problem of building without the benefit of a good survey is not a new one. There were surveys done that only considered the deed description as being correct and surveyed by holding occupation and not attempting to find out what happened. Today occupation will probably hold and some owners will lose their property, thank god no one built in the street, that owner is just going to lose his land. Guess he has already lost it, just not on paper yet.
jud
If his “vacation” house is being repossessed, he had bigger problems than a survey could resolve.
I can’t help wonder if Freddie and Fannie were set-up to provide people with “vacation homes.”
Don't know if title insurance will help him, might have perfectly clear title to the triangle. Might be his only recourse is to an attempt to collect damages from the seller.
jud
Gene, the message that I got from the posting is that he purchased a home that was foreclosed by Fannie/Freddie for use as a vacation home.
I'm sure Ontarget could clarify.
You are correct Andy.
And he does have insurance which is where I told him to start looking for relief.
I must be watching too much Fox news. I did misread the post. As any educated person can conclude, any property worth buying is worth surveying.
I would think a good, thorough title abstract should be done. Could it be that the guy has been paying taxes on the area that includes the house he "thought" he bought? Does the title committment include an address and area on their location description? Does it include a house? Was it priced throughout the title history at the value of the larger parcel with the house? At some point did a seller have two legal descriptions and forget to attach one of them?
I am not saying that the above would give him/her clear title, but it is certainly evidence of intent of what was being bought and sold. If I bought a house from you and was then told that I don't own the house, I would think that there was a good case for fraud.
Some people think that hiding the fact after it is discovered is more harmful than disclosing it. I am not positive about that. It might be that disclosing the facts might begin to prove up many things toward obtaining clear title. I am assuming that somewhere back in the title chain a seller actually had title to the correct property.
But I am definitely no expert in this area.
Tom
Tom
Getting Title Insurance with no recent survey is like getting health insurance that only covers Shingles and even then only covers you if you are diagnosed on a Tuesday in May.
If there is anything more here than a simple scriveners error, the Title Insurance policy almost certainly does not cover him. They will see this as something that would have been shown by a survey. You get no survey, you got an exception on the policy that states you are NOT covered by anything the survey would have shown.
We may be looking at a case where the buyer will never ever again make the mistake of buying land without a survey.
Larry P
great comment, Gene! I'm going to send that to my realtor friends!
confusing... did the "old survey" of the parcel have the legal for the triangle parcel or the house lot on the lake? Was this just a simple mistake or is your friend going to be up a creek trying to claim ownership of the house?
Both times that I ran into something similar, one was an easement crossing that was part of a sales contract and left off of the Deed when the contract was satisfied. The seller and his attorney payed for that one. The other was a lot left out of a sale at closing, the buyers payed for that one but I think recovered that cost from the attorney later, there was one of the kids who had an undivided interest in the tract through an estate that wanted to sell the land again, siblings put a stop to that ut it took time. What was provided to us by the owner included the tract, what was recorded did not, it was while checking what was recorded in the Clerks Office that I made the discovery and started the correction process which took about 6 months. Same attorney involved with both.
jud
I'm reminded of a similar Florida mess we discussed on the old board back in 2007:
Anybody know what ever happened with this one??
So what exactly was repo'd by Freddie or Fannie? The triangular lot or the house lot? Which description was used in the foreclosure proceedings?
This thing has UGLY written all over it.
Target, the deed from Freddie or Fannie was for the small triangle, but the foreclosed parcel to be sold was to be the house and garage. I also think that both parcels were part of a larger foreclosure. I really think that someone simply put the wrong description into the deed and now this guy is going to be screwed badly.
Also I didn't think about the survey disclosure in the title policy. They may be off the hook too.
The "old survey" was a 1980 or so "CSM" or minor land division. Easily re-traceable and describable.
A nightmare indeed.
A lawyer could probably argue that, if the buyer looked at one property and the description was another, then there was no meeting of the minds to make a valid contract and he could sue to "undo" the sale.
Yes, it's up to the lawyers at this point. An actual survey was not needed at all. Just a reading of the description by a surveyor and a look at the tax maps would probably have pointed out the problem.
If there was a Realtor(c) involved who showed the vacation home as being the object of the sale, there is possibly some negligent liability. The contract for sale is also important. Which parcel does it describe? There are certain situations where the Rule of Merger does not actually terminate the contract for sale upon acceptance of the deed. Negligent misrepresentation can be one of them. An attorney can help sort it out.
