Posted by: admin, in General
I’ve lost a lot of money not because I moved too fast so much as that I was too lazy or indifferent, or had too much misplaced confidence in the other party to really do my due diligence prior to closing.
My main claim to fame consists of 54 water front lots 8 miles from the State house just outside Augusta, Maine right in the path of progress. The subdivision had been platted in 1926 long before conservationists began to restrict density in the area. It was heavily wooded and I was presented an offer by a lumber company to buy the timber for almost as much as I was paying for the land. Another had a ten year Option to buy the property at about three times the amount I was paying for it. How could I lose? Let me count the ways:
A year or so after I’d traded a 2900 square foot house in a gated community with 285 feet of water frontage for the property, I was in Maine and decided to take a day to look for the property. I stopped at a nearby house to get directions and discovered that the elderly man on the porch had been the person who had filed the subdivision plat. When I told him about the offer for the timber, he mentioned that he had long ago filed a deed restriction which prevented any trees from being cut down. Tilt!
Even with detailed instructions, it took almost half a day to find the land mainly because it in no way resembled the platted subdivision with all the winding roads that had been portrayed on the plat map I’d been shown. In Maine, they call this a “paper subdivision” whose main purpose is to dupe out of towners like me. First of all, there were no roads of any kind. Second, there was no room for a road. The land came to a sharp point too narrow for a car to fit on. It’s the only property I ever bought that was too steep to walk on. I had to virtually climb from tree to tree just to go from the lakeshore to the peak of the property. But, that’s not all:
Over the years, the EPA had struck and down-zoned the density to the degree that not even one single family house could be built on all 54 lots. And to make things even more interesting, the company that had the ten year Option had gone out of business, leaving me with years to go before the Option expired, during which period, I’d be unable to sell the property to anyone even if I could find someone as dumb as me to buy it.
Over the years, I’ve grown fond of my Maine “holdings”. The taxes run a couple of hundred dollars a year and I find this worth the price if for nothing else than to remind me of my folly.
That’s my story. I’m starting a contest to see who has been stung the worse. Let me know if you think you’re a competitor.
