[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