He thought he snagged a Florida villa for $9,100. He got a foot-wide strip of land.

[flvegan]

10. Stuck? Not remotely.

If the article is accurate, and the location of that 1 foot of property can be verified by a survey, neither of the two abutting villa owners can either sell nor mortgage their respective properties without getting at the very least a quit claim deed from Holness. All he has to do is wait it out. Eventually, one (or both) of the other two owners will attempt to sell or mortgage their property and when the title commitment comes back showing the ownership issue, they can simply file a claim on their title policy. Either way, he'll get his money back and then some.

Only real downside is that he'll have to pay taxes on that strip of land, and he has to hope that any declaration of restrictions can't somehow deem him a "unit owner" at which point he'll have HOA dues.

Honestly, if you're going to invest in real property like this, either get a title search done, or at the VERY least, learn to read a legal description. "The NORTHERLY 1 FOOT OF LOT 137..." is pretty clear that you're not getting an entire villa. Yes, that's the actual short legal for this subject property.

Were I currently holding $350k (the abutting units are assessed for around $175k-ish each) worth of real estate hostage on a $9100.00 investment, I'd start listening to offers when they got to $15k.