I am a very large snake and this is my dream home.
Seriously though, that isn’t just someone’s easement? How did it even end up as a separate lot?
In all honesty there are probably some perfectly reasonable official records that somehow got parsed incorrectly to give us this abomination.
My bet is that a developer bought up a huge chunk of land, and built these subdivisions on it. The roads, houses, and strip were all originally part of that property. That tiny strip is an easement owned by the HOA. It is not, nor will ever be, for sale. However Zillow didn’t know what to make of it, so just listed it as a land property and then applied its normal value calculations to the strip.
It’s listed by a realtor and the asking price is $25K. I don’t think it’s Zillow not knowing what to do, which makes this more interesting.
I bet a real asshole could easily quadruple their money with this.
Just negotiate with the owners of the 6.1 houses to buy all or some of the strip. Tell Bob that if he doesn’t pay $10k for the strip behind his house, that Catherine is willing to buy it, and then her back yard will wrap around his.
In a friendly world where every neighbour trusted each-other, they could split the $25k and each pay a few thousand for a very slightly larger back yard. But, home-owners being the assholes they are, you could probably get them to try to out-bid each other to cause or avoid petty squabbles.
The reality is they’re almost certainly already using that land and buying it would give you nothing because they could claim it under adverse possession. Actually taking possession of that strip would be nearly impossible.
Adverse possession isn’t that simple, and laws regarding it vary by state. In this case, it appears to be Washington state, which requires a number of things that indicate an uphill battle for anyone trying.
Among other requirements, it needs to be uninterrupted (occasional activity doesn’t count), exclusive (the true owner doesn’t use it) for ten entire years, notorious (impossible to miss if you ever are on the property, we’re talking anywhere from fencing it off to building an entire house on it) and hostile (without permission).
So in reality, if I already owned this, avoiding adverse possession on this property is as easy as visiting it once every 5-8 years and telling them to quit the area if they’re trying to elbow their way in (which resets the 10 year clock).
So yeah, not as much a free land grab as one might think.