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Seems to me, the builder should have done survey before they built. They didnt, now all that money is forfeit because they failed to do due diligence. Seems like the builder is trying to pull some sort adverse possession on a greatly accelerated scale.

“Seems to me, the builder should have done survey before they built.”

Me too and also any outfit that loans money. Given no survey, then the only conclusion that I can draw is that the idiot who had the home built on the wrong lot paid cash for it...so no big loss to him.

I know that area well. The surveying methods used on Big Island are “third rock from the corner of the tree with the red flowah, then 100 steps left to the old burned out car, then make a right two times and walk uphill until you find the big monkey pod tree.”

Guaranteed every official who saw the plans signed off on it. If you are really really stupid in Hawaii you get a job in government.

Seems to me, the builder should have done survey before they built. They didnt, now all that money is forfeit because they failed to do due diligence. Seems like the builder is trying to pull some sort adverse possession on a greatly accelerated scale.

Contractors like to cut corners and they have money to pay lawyers and bribe local officials. So, they frequently get away with a lot. Most landowners would have just taken a settlement. Few would litigate to compel a contractor to remove an entire house. That has a high cost, and the contractor, usually a corporate entity, can just file bankruptcy while its owner walk away and form another company.

Seems to me, the builder should have done survey before they built.

I have owned, at various times, several one-acre lots in HPP, which has a for-the-most-part strictly rectilinear layout. On most streets, no surveying is necessary: You can just start from Paradise Drive, Maku'u, or Kaloli (the main perpendicular streets leading to the Hawai'i Belt Road) and begin walking along the given road (like 8th St. here - whose Hawaiian name is "Kahili"), counting the lots as you go.

One would have to be an idiot to miscount - though I do know personally of instances where it happened.

Some of the streets are crooked, and so it is possible to miscount.

I am surprised to learn that prices have dropped so far (again). When I purchased in 1989, I paid $15,000 for a one-acre lot on 19th - a real bargain at the time. A few years later, I paid $25,000 for a one-acre lot on 5th.

This was back when most of the development of HPP was without city power or water.

And depending upon how far from the sea one was, one could dispense with a septic tank and instead simply dig leach lines.

Regards,