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When you buy a home, you want to make sure that you not only love the property now, but that you will long into the future.
What would you do if developers were looking to buy the land in your neighborhood, and you tried to work with the neighbors to prevent that from happening, but they said no, and now that you are moving, the neighbors don’t want you to sell to the developers?
That is what happened to the homeowner in this story, and he feels like he should accept the high offer from the developers since his former neighbors didn’t want to agree to keep them out.
Check it out.
A few years back, I and my family moved to a college town.
We were warned by people we knew who had lived there that we needed to be careful to pick a neighborhood that was not likely to be “studentified.”
The college in town has gone through periodic expansions in enrollment, but has never seemed interested in using its own land or resources to build sufficient student housing.
The result was that student housing developers would come into a neighborhoods accessible to campus and engage in “blockbusting”.
This seems like a shady way to get property.
Like lowball the saddest house on the street, submit plans to build student housing and then the realtors swarm in scaring the other owners that the street is going to be the next frat row.
And the fact is that students and families do have problems mixing as neighbors.
This was enough of a problem that the local zoning for some neighborhoods that would have otherwise been vulnerable had some restrictions that would make student housing impractical, but leave things otherwise unrestricted (largely limits on number of unrelated individuals living in a housing unit).
A year after moving in, we learned the city was doing a zoning overhaul – much needed.
But as part of the simplication, the university’s persuasion managed to sneak in a provision getting rid of these limits.
This seems like a good idea.
When we learned of this, we figured maybe we could agree with our nearest neighbors to put in covenants/reciprocal easements that had same provisions being stripped out of zoning.
I was also most worried about vacant land.
There was one large parcel a block away, and I managed to buy it before the zoning change went through, so it was still relatively cheap.
To sweeten the deal for neighbors I was asking to sign covenants, I offered to keep the parcel vacant forever.
Unfortunately, I could not get a critical mass of people to agree – largely because many work for the college and seemed afraid of blowback if the school found out.
Honestly, my kids and I never loved the town. My wife wanted to be near her mom and sister.
The reason for staying is gone.
MIL died last year and sister then said she was moving away.
That was enough and we sold our house and left.
I did not manage to sell the empty lot, but put it on the market.
Lo and behold, I was approached by a buyer.
Turns out, this buyer is a fraternal organization, and they want the land to be their new chapter house.
They may subdivide and sell the resulting new plot to another frat or sorority.
They are willing to pay up.
He warned them years ago.
I warned the neighbors this could happen and tried to protect the neighborhood, but they weren’t motivated enough to go through with it.
And we don’t live there anymore.
But some former neighbors have heard this may be happening and now they are reaching out via email/text and complaining.
WIBTA if I said, “match the buyer’s price, or they get the land and can do as the please”?
Not at all, he tried to protect them, but they weren’t interested, so why should he lose money on the deal now?
Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.
This commenter makes a good point.
He tried to help them, now they aren’t his problem.
Exactly, that neighborhood is not his problem anymore.
He did what he could, now he needs to take his money and run.
He gave them a chance.
If these people wanted to keep the college students away so bad, they should have listened to him in the first place.
This guy is right for selling his property to the frat house.
If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.
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