[Aurornis]

> 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.

[amarant]

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.

[Aurornis]

> 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.

[amarant]

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

[Ballas]

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...

[kentonv]

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...

[Aurornis]

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.

[Ballas]

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.

[acegopher]

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.”