You know you’re in for a good bargain especially when you grab a villa at the price of a four-wheeler. But shopping online has the occasional downside.
This proves true in the case of a South Florida resident who thought he grabbed a great deal by paying over 6 Lakhs in an online auction for a villa, but what he actually got was just a strip of land.
Kerville Holness was proud to bag a $177,000 (Rs 1,23,30,067)Tamarac villa for only $9,100 (Rs 6,33,918) but all he got was a 1-foot-wide, 100-foot-long strip of land on Northwest 100th Way — valued at $50 (Rs 3483), reported South Florida Sun Sentinel.
The land that Holness currently owns starts at the curb where two mailboxes have been installed, goes under the wall separating the garages of two adjoining Spring Lake villas but was never attached to either of the adjoining properties.
“So what can Holness do now? Make the people living there get their mailboxes off his grass? Remove the water meters that are in his ground? Maybe try to charge rent to both villas for the joint wall and roof that sit on his land?” said an official.
Holness abused the auction site for providing false information and urged the officials to return the money he paid for the strip of land he never wanted.
He said that the property appraiser photos linked to the auction site show a villa being on the parcel he made a bid on. But the appraiser’s site and information on the county’s tax site also show the negligible value of the property, that there is no building value, that the land takes up only 100 square feet and that the property is one-foot wide.
“If I’m vindictive enough, I can cut right through the garage wall and the home to get to my air space, but what use would that be to me?” Holness said.
“It’s deception. There was no demarcation to show you it’s just a line going through [the villa duplex], even though they have the tools to show that.”
But the officials we quoted saying that there is nothing they can do to process the refund request Holness is seeking.
“He may go to court and find some error in the sale procedure,” said Gary Singer, a real estate attorney who writes a weekly column for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “Generally speaking, he bought what he was supposed to have bought.”
Beware, buyers. Those discounts and sales can often be a marketing gimmick just to bait or sometimes fool the customers!!
Cover image: Flickr