A Concord woman is speaking out after she says a construction company built a house on her lot in Hawaii by mistake.
The chaos all started in 2018. Anne Reynolds said she felt like she found the perfect lot on the big island. Her daughter lives in Hawaii and the idea was in the future, Reynolds could build a home there.
“I looked at coordinates. So north, south, east, west, the position of the stars, the position of the sun when it rose and when it set,” she said. “And then, my zodiac sign and how it aligned with all that and the land was saying 'yes!'”
Reynolds bought the land at a county tax auction for $22,500. The last time she had been to Hawaii was in 2019. But then, the pandemic hit and she got busy.
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Reynolds said in June of 2023, she got a call from a realtor.
“'I just sold a house that happens to be on your land,'” she said. “'We need to resolve this.' I was like, 'what?'”
It turned out the lot was bulldozed and a three-bedroom house had been built on her property. Developer Keaau Development Partnership hired PJ’s Construction to build about a dozen homes on properties that the developers bought in the subdivision.
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But the construction company built the particular house on Reynolds’ lot by mistake. The developers asked her if she wanted to swap lots.
Reynolds said that she had already identified the land she wanted. She added it's just been one thing on top of the other.
Reynolds went back to her property last month and said that she noticed doors and windows of the house were opened.
“And then there was poop on the floor in the hallway, bathroom and I was like ‘Wow! this is so disgusting!’” she said.
That's when Reynolds built a fence around the house.
The still vacant three-bedroom, two-bathroom house on a one-acre lot in Puna’s Hawaiian Paradise Park is worth about $500,000.
A neighbor told NBC affiliate Hawaii News Now that squatters were immediately attracted to the brand new vacant house.
After the developers tried to resolve the problem without success, they sued a number of people including Reynolds.
The developers’ attorney told NBC Bay Area Thursday night that the primary claim is against PJ’s Construction.
As for Reynolds, she said it has all been incredibly frustrating.
“Of course, it feels like a big injustice, right?” she said.
Now, Reynolds will have to see if a judge can help unravel the house. Reynolds said that she wanted to eventually build a home on the lot but this was not the home she envisioned.
