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Think about it. It is not your property if a third party can determine the price and the timing of a sale (or confiscation).

What if it were your home and you thought you owned it and just wanted to live there (or sell it to someone else, or tear it down, or whatever!!!)? Some jackboots show up and say we've decided what your property is worth, now get out.

All of us can sell our property at "fair market value" at any time we want; somebody forcing you to sell (and set the so-called "fair market value") would be a violation of YOUR property rights.

It is not your property if a third party can determine the price and the timing of a sale (or confiscation).

Forget about that. I would contend that it is not your property once you connect it to public services such as streets or utilities. If we want to talk technicalities here, then the people in question have the right to do whatever they want with their land, but then the municipality has the right to close off all the streets that access the land. It's difficult to argue about property rights in an age when most property (especially in a state like New Jersey) has zero value without a substantial amount of "public support."

It should be noted, BTW, that the entity that purchases the property is not the same entity that determines the "fair market value." Most court cases involving eminent domain proceedings have nothing to do with the legitimacy of the forced purchase (the state's right of eminent domain will almost always stand up in court) -- they are simply battles over the "fair market value" of the land.

I don't know about this specific case, but many of these "fair market value" proceedings are nothing more than a charade on the part of the property owner. If you do a little research into some of these cases, you'll often find situations where the property owner was forced to sell his land for $200,000, but he fought it in court by contending that the land is actually worth $500,000. Lo and behold! -- a careful look at public records reveals that this same land owner successfully appealed his last tax assessment by claiming that his $250,000 assessment should have been $200,000.