Landlord’s spiteful move against rich neighbours
When his wealthy neighbours complained about his plans for a new home, this landlord got revenge in a spectacular way.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
That’s exactly what a builder in Florida, US, decided to do after his neighbours complained about the plans for his house.
So he ended up building a tiny 3 metre wide home to spite his millionaire neighbours, and now he’s listing it for sale for a whopping asking price of $US619,000 ($A923,000).
The home at 1952 Horn Street in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, in the United States, has quickly became known as the “skinny house”. The two-bedroom, three bathroom property has a total liveable area of just over 143 square metres and features high ceilings.
The home generated a lot of interest when it was listed by agent Ryan Wetherhold of Oceanside Real Estate.
Wetherhold explained that he and builder John Atkins had initially wanted the home to be 4.5m wide, however building codes required it to have 2.2m of space on each side.
It is located on such a narrow block of land due to nearby owners combining their lots together to build houses, creating uneven spaces.
They attempted to change the rule, however that did not go down very well with the wealthy neighbours who pushed back.
One local had started a garden on the land and told the others to come along to a meeting.
“You get that mob mentality where it carries. The board members then can’t make it their own decision.
“If there’s 100 people there that say no, and there’s no one that says, ‘Yeah, let’s do it’, those folks carry. Those voices carry,” Wetherhold told ClickOrlando.
So they were stuck with a restriction of a 3m width, less than half the typical size of the lots in the area at 7.6m, however they didn’t let that stop them.
They worked with the depth of the property – 42m – and used design techniques to create the feeling of a larger space.
“He got creative within the code and was able to do bay windows, bump-out seating that really helped and that was the difference.
“Being able to utilize his knowledge within the building code to make it, honestly, a very user-friendly, nice, practical home for a buyer,’ he explained.
The property has attracted a lot of interest, with hundreds turning up to an open house.
There’s now a potential buyer.
“Normally, you get 50 views in the first few days, and this one already had 1,000 to 2,000 within the first few days.
“So we knew right when we put it out there that it was something special, something unique and something that was definitely an eye-opener.
“I put a lot of effort into marketing, and you hope to just reach people through the normal avenues just by your marketing.
“But (the buyer) actually did see it through all the publicity it’s gotten,” Wetherhold said.
The house is ideal for “a person that wants to be in a neighbourhood of million-dollar homes but doesn’t want a maintenance factor of that and still wants to be in a nice area and pay about half the price”.
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