Eminent Domain
 

Has anybody here ever dealt with Eminent Domain?
Won? Got a share of the profits?

Share of the Profits?

Eminent Domain means the government took your land. The only profit there could be would be that since you didn't accept their "fair market value offer", you ended up in court to try and receive more money than they offered. Usually these cases end up with the government getting the land they wanted and you end up with less than the original offer. Only when you can afford a big time attorney do you have a hope of actually getting more for the land than originally offered by the government since you will have to prove that the land is worth more than that offer, which is normally based on the assessor's valuation of the property. The norm is that once you turn down the government offer, the land is taken by Eminent Domain and you get nothing or at best a reduced payment.

Realistically, there is usually a power company or developer behind the push for eminent domain. "Winning" might mean appealing the initial decision to apply eminent domain and having it reversed. Usually there is a planning board that decides whether or not a plan is 'in the best interest of the community' vs the right of the individual. If the board rules in favor of applying eminent domain, then you can appeal to the state supreme court.

IDK what the OP refers to as getting a 'share of the profits', if you win they don't get your land. If you lose they pay you the value of the property.

I was threatened with eminent domain when the city wanted to lay a sewer line though my pasture. They wanted to pay me $500 to tear up what worked out to an acre of pasture (55' wide and I don't remember how long) and 3 fence lines. I refused.

I also work for the city involved. I got called into the mayor's office on work time and got raked through the coals. It was left for me and the city engineer to work out. I point blank told him to go right to the eminent domain because I wasn't signing. I also pointed out that it would probably take a couple years to work through the courts and that would mess up the federal grant they had to lay the pipe.

I was quickly offered a much more reasonable price for the easement. When it was all said and done I had to sign off on the paperwork. I pointed out the number of times I had to round up livestock because of their poor temporary fencing and said it was $500 of my time they had used. I eventually got the $500 check and they got the signature.

The sewer line is in my pasture, so I really didn't win but at least I wasn't totally screwed in the deal.

I believe Things like pipelines , toll roads , railroads , housing developments and shopping centers have used Eminent Domain. I think they all generate profits for the builder/operators .

2 years ago it was decided that the city needed more electricity, which would mean that they needed bigger poles, which would mean that they would need to go in with bigger trucks, which meant that the right of ways would need to be changed to reflect the need for big equipment.

Everybody along the right of way got a notice explaining this, along with the estimation of what they intended to pay us.

So. If we had refused outright we would have ended up in court to sort things out, which takes time and money. We did not want this and we knew that the power company would not want this either. So, instead of fighting, my husband asked for a little more money *AND* a change in the wording of the right of way. As it was written there was not any limit to how they were going to use the land, and that meant they could have put up a building or do whatever else they wanted on the right of way, so DH got them to change the wording to say that they could put up and maintain the power lines and I forget what else. If DH had asked for a BIG change in the wording they would have refused and we would have ended up in court, but they agreed to a small change and slightly more money because it was fast, and time is money.

If we had refused they just would have used Eminent Domain in order to MAKE us sell them the right of way. Governments can DO that, and the government wanted more electricity and so they could honestly claim it was for the public good.

We ended up with getting 25 cents per square foot for our signatures, which came to over $1000. I lost several fruit trees and I had to move a small greenhouse to get out of the way of the big trucks. They put up a temporary fence to keep my dog from running off, and I told them I would prefer that they just left it and they did. I think the reason they were so agreeable about leaving the fence is that the manpower to remove it was more expensive that the worth of the chain link fence. So I suspect the contractor made a larger profit that way, though probably a slight one.

They did restore the land, more or less, and while it was not entirely satisfactory to me I was so very glad to see them gone! So I decided it was good enough. I smiled and told the foreman that the men had been very professional, (which was true as they left no litter, did not use bad language, did not leave ruts on the ground, and so forth).

They left after restoring my land and putting back up my fence, and I have not seen them since. We still own the land, but selling them the larger right of way means that they can come onto our land anytime to care for their property (power poles, lines, etc)

When the power company wanted to build a substation, they wanted 40 acres of our property, my father wasn't opposed as the town never cleaned the ditches and it was too swampy to plant. At the time he settled but when his friend who owned the adjacent land through which the power lines would go showed him how much more he could have gotten if he had went to court, my father was sorry he didn't. that was in the 60's then in the 90's they wanted to put a bypass through the lower part of our land, they came with an offer, one was take the money and settle, or the second was take the money with the option to sue later for more. We took the second option. We never bothered to sue, but later a person came from the state and said they wanted to close this case up, and offered more to close up and settle permanently. So we took it and it was enough to build a woven wire fence between our property and the bypass . Now thats New York, might want to ask around in your state to see what they do there.

I lost a house once to eminent domain in a suburb of Mpls. They basically took down an older but VERY well kept neighborhood that was vibrant with everyone knowing their neighbors...and they built a bike path and sold the land to a developer who put up little McMansions. The city made a LOT more on property tax revenue.

When the idea was first broached NO ONE wanted to sign off. Some of the people had become disabled or retired. No way they would qualify for a new mortgage. Their current home was paid for so they were doing okay. The city was not offering anything close to what they would be able to purchase another home with. Some of the younger families were in the same boat.

The city then hired two "workers" to go around and look for code violations. They were vicious. My then husband was replacing the breaks on a car so he had it up on blocks, realized he needed some part or another and hoped on his motorcycle to run over and get one. He was gone maybe 30 minutes. During that time they issued a citation for being a "public nuisance" and for having "junk vehicles on the property." He got home when they were writing out the citation and even showed the guy the part he just bought and they guy continued to write the ticket. Had to go to court over it to get it cancelled. The fine was 500.00.

Another neighbor had a small RV parked in his back driveway. Perfectly legal and not disallowed. He had a Winter cover over it. The citation man was caught on his property undoing the cover to make it look like it was trashed.

Another neighbor had his garbage bin moved and a picture taken of it and was also cited for being a public nuisance for having "trash in front of his house."

This was a really well tended neighborhood. Nothing about it run down, but the homes were smaller so the taxes were less. The citation people kept coming around over and over and over and then the city took the neighborhood saying it was "blighted" and becoming a hazard.

I kid you not.

We were able to actually get a good settlement but it was not without a huge fight. The offer they gave us made our home appear to be smaller than it was. It was a 1 1/2 story. They would not count the 1/2 story toward the size of the home even though it had dormers and was huge. So I brought in the property tax stubs that showed the taxes on X square footage. We also had a double lot. It was a long (front to back) parcel and while the street length wasn't as wide as newer neighborhoods, it was in keeping with the age of the neighborhood and we had been taxed for years on two buildable lots. So I went down to the zoning office and asked if the lot could be built on and he said yes that it could because the road frontage size was in keeping with the neighborhood. He was nice enough to put it in writing. Apparently he didn't know that the city had other plans. So I could take that to the hearing to prove we had two lots and could have put up a second home on the extra lot.

It was a MESS. Some of the people never really got over it. Old people were kicked out of homes they had lived in their whole lives. People were pretty devastated.

They were slick liars the entire time they dealt with us.

No, you DO NOT receive any of those profits....

I bought my first home (a dump) at a tax auction for 1500.00. The guvbmet bought me out six years later to build a parking lot for over 80 grand. It worked for me but it also explains why our country is going bankrupt.

It is extremely unusual for housing developments and shopping centers to use eminent domain. Of course, building roads to them, cities, counties, and states will sometimes use eminent domain to acquire the land for roads, utilities, etc.. And sometimes quasi-governmental entities will be created to build a huge project deemed to be "for the public good" in order to acquire land. Instances in my area have been for Texas Motor Speedway and Cowboys Stadium.

Land owners do no share in profits. They are entitled to be paid full market value for any land acquired plus additional funds for damages to the remainder if they exist.

Also in Minneapolis, anyhow Twin Cities, they condemned a car dealership and built the headquarters for Best Buy there.

One of those typical deals where the govt is in charge of everything, so the same interconnected govt people get to decide everything.

The car dealership fought a long time, but lost in the end.

Courts decided it was in the public good for a city to have higher tax revenue on a parcel of land, that was enough justification for condemning property and taking it over.


And no, you don't get a piece of the pie, it doesn't work that way.

You get your money like it was a willing sale, and that is the end of it.

Paul

Rambler, I remember when they did that. I was stunned. It's not all that uncommon in some areas of Minnesota (typically around the Twin Cities) to have even business property taken and sold to another business entity because they will get more tax revenue. Seems like a horrible abuse of what eminent domain was intended for. I've seen them do it for parks, bike paths, developments and businesses. Ugh.

My wife's family had a beach house up on Long Island in NY state that was claimed via Eminent Domain so that a neighboring town could have fair access to its private beach frontage. We took a trip up there several years ago so she could see where the house of her childhood summers had been and found the area cordoned off as private property. Turns out they built a yacht club.

I think from that moment on I've always viewed Eminent as a misspelling of Imminent Domain.

Remind me never to move to Minnesota. Vultures have no business profiting from the misery they cause. How is this legal and the profiteers not brought to justice? Abuse of government power plain and simple.

for ten grand an acre they could not only have the right to build and construct power lines.... they could own my farm outright!

Ive seen that a lot Id like to know if anybody have ever won a share of the profits?



Do you feel that way about things like Railroads too? Or is it just the house story that makes ya mad?( it does me too)

Ive wondered about that why are some pipelines paying more for a ROW than the could buy the entire land for?

10 grand does not buy much land here! But, when you consider that I still own the land I thought it a very fair offer!

In Missouri eminent domain used to be for public use projects, but now any corporation that wants your property can take it. (For the benefit of the community, of course.) If you don't like their offer, they hire big time lawyers, hire a company to find something wrong with your property and have it condemned. A locally owned store here got condemned because of lack of curbs. Now there is a Walgreens there.

We have about 40 to 70(?) acres of ROW on our land for the electric company and town. I'm not sure of the exact number. I have the right to say they must use mechanical weed control. They can't spray or use chemicals. This is just ROW and power line. They can't build structures. They can't do anything beyond the maintenance. Getting the wording right so you give up the minimum amount is important. Retaining control over what they'll be able to use on the land (herbicides, pesticides, etc) is very important to me as we farm here, I raise my kids here, we drink the water, etc.

As a child I watched developers use eminent domain to destroy my uncle's farm by convincing the town they needed to shift a road. Nasty. Virtually all things I seen being done by eminent domain are not worthy and should be stopped if there is not a willing seller. Eminent domain should be saved for truly extreme cases and then when it is used the government should have to pay 3x the highest appraisal because it was not a willing sale. If they're going to abuse someone for the 'common good' they should have to pay dearly for that.

Hopefully they weren't producing fruit trees. I'd feel ripped off if only got 1000 dollars and lost my fruit trees.