Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Why does it have to be a corporation?

It can't be for private taking.
Mary Anne — (archived)

There has to be a project on the table for property to be condemned by the government. They can't just take it "because". The Sheriff of Nottingham is not in charge here.

A public official who gets wind of a major project coming up can offer to buy a property from the owner. If the owner is unwary, he can sell for less than its market value, but that would be his fault. If the buyer uses his office to misrepresent conditions surrounding the sale, that's fraud, and the seller would have legal remedies to pursue, both civil and criminal.

The public official, as the owner of record, would get market value for the property during the process of having it condemned for the project. Plus he would have had to pay all those transfer costs and so forth associated with buying property. Unless he made a killing on the property (see Paragraph 2, above), it would be so close to zero-sum that it wouldn't be worth anyone's while.

The only other way to make money off of this is to buy the property for a song at auction. Usually the property of the elderly who have either died or are going into a nursing home, or of those who are bankrupt and cannot refinance, is disposed of this way. Chancy way to do business, to depend on the health, age or financial condition of others.

If you're worried about this, I would be more concerned about the Justice Department taking property on suspicion of drug trafficking, which they can do, and later having it sold at auction, rather than any development scheme involving local government fraud. Local government is a lot easier to keep an eye on. It's smaller.

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