As a potential purchaser, the greatest concern is if it’s already been more than 10 years. In my mind this is exactly the kind of situation adverse possession is for.
Even if adverse possession doesn’t apply, trying to actually evict those home owners from the land is going to be a nightmare. The validity of the lot itself may even come into question. Generally I would expect the laws governing the creation of lots to try to prevent useless lots like this.
Honestly I don’t understand how lots like this even get listed. I looked at one in my city that was a little piece of a corner between two homes. It’s far too small to build on and you probably couldn’t even fence it off legally. Literally the only thing you could do with it is try to coerce the adjacent homeowner who’s been using it to buy it from you, but that’s just evil, and who wants to be evil?
As a potential purchaser, the greatest concern is if it’s already been more than 10 years. In my mind this is exactly the kind of situation adverse possession is for.
Even if adverse possession doesn’t apply, trying to actually evict those home owners from the land is going to be a nightmare. The validity of the lot itself may even come into question. Generally I would expect the laws governing the creation of lots to try to prevent useless lots like this.
Honestly I don’t understand how lots like this even get listed. I looked at one in my city that was a little piece of a corner between two homes. It’s far too small to build on and you probably couldn’t even fence it off legally. Literally the only thing you could do with it is try to coerce the adjacent homeowner who’s been using it to buy it from you, but that’s just evil, and who wants to be evil?