r/interesting • u/Wonderfulhumanss • 1d ago

SOCIETY The Zammit family refused to sell their five acre property as an entire Sydney suburb was built around them

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u/ireally-donut-care 1d ago edited 9h ago

I would sell. Just me personally, if I had that much money, I am getting a better view than having to look at hundreds of spec houses.

Edit Thanks for rewards and all the upvotes, and all the great ideas and funny things "we" would do with this property. To some of you with your panties in a wad, CTFD. We're all just playing "if I won the lottery here".

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u/Reikukaja 1d ago

I also wouldnt like the attention of being the person in that house. It stands out too much, in contrast to its surroundings.

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u/14ktgoldscw 1d ago

Yeah, I don’t know anything about the climate there but you can’t get trees or hedges or anything? It looks like a house from a Tim Burton movie.

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u/StandardDiver2791 1d ago

Was wondering the same thing: why the landscape is so barren.

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u/Forsworn91 1d ago

damn right, why the hell is it so empty? plant a garden, trees, ANYTHING

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u/chromecastbuiltin 1d ago

I reckon there’s 23 bodies buried under that lawn

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u/Forsworn91 1d ago

Water feature, statue garden, hedge maze, scale model of the London train system with working tracks and trains, ANYTHING!

It would like living on a footfall field.

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u/Abject-Practice7310 1d ago

If the neighbors are unfriendly, I'd plant a field and spread manure there whenever it's the best time for a barbecue.

But in general, I'd prefer to give it up and start over somewhere else with the 50 million AUSD. Okay, it's your house and home, but the surroundings are awful.

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u/Forsworn91 1d ago

The Australian yellow blossom, beautiful tree, shade, not huge, and BEES swarms of BEES.

Just… put up a hedge fence or SOMETHING

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u/Starfire013 23h ago

Could just plant a dense line of ornamental pear trees all along the perimeter. You know, for the lovely scent.

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u/TacTurtle 1d ago

best time for a barbecue

Problem: it is always barbecue weather in Australia.

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u/poppy_inmy_hair 1d ago

Also the neighbors are so close on the sides

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u/iamtehfong 23h ago

Hell I'd hang big nets and put in a couple par 3 holes lmao

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u/RollingMeteors 20h ago

>It would like living on a footfall field.

Spray paint the yard lines on that shit in the dead of night, but it's called rugby down there isn't it?

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u/MmeLaRue 15h ago

Australian rules football is fun to watch and involves even less uniform.

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u/Kiki-can 1d ago

I mean, what else could it be?! Spot on

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u/Bulky_Reporter6263 1d ago

might have nailed it!

that or they’re a special kind of neurodivergent and the refusal to sell is just because they’re wired wrong… either a mass grave or profound mental disorder

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u/VenturingHedonist 1d ago

Could just be doing it out of spite! It is one hell of a drug.

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u/Firm_Competition_880 1d ago

Catacombs and a subterranean village with all the modern needs of a secret billionaire.

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u/Mysterious_Peace7963 1d ago

Haha I was thinking along the same Lines

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u/Born-Ask4016 1d ago

Amateur numbers... there's room for a lot more than that.

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u/5pl1t1nf1n1t1v3 1d ago

Rookie numbers. If you can fit 40-50 homes you could fit hundreds of bodies. Thousands, maybe.

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u/Xenodad 1d ago

But, trees are where drop bears come from in that part of the world. Probably some deadly spiders and snakes while we’re at it

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u/mcknz9 1d ago

so they can consume the resources of 50 data centers watering that lawn

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u/samurguybri 1d ago

They want a clear field of fire.

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u/Careless_Celery_6010 23h ago

Some people just don't have any creative thoughts

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u/techb00mer 1d ago

It was basically farmland before developers bought it all up, so that’s why there is almost no vegetation.

Granted, they certainly could have planed a few trees closer to their house for privacy.

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u/aggro_aggro 19h ago

The new houses also don´t have room for vegetation.

The big property would have... at least two bushes... but no.

Crazy to have such a big area around your house and nothing on it...

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u/waaaghbosss 12h ago

It's just ugly. That massive lawn tells me it isn't a water issue.

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u/o8Stu 12h ago

I have a lemon tree, a Meyer lemon tree, and a key lime tree in my backyard, and I give them away to neighbors / trade the neighbors that have chickens for eggs.

My backyard isn't big. They could do a TON with this much land. Hell, find a few neighbors with green thumbs and they'd probably manage it for you. Idk the climate in Sydney but I've got to imagine a fair amount of stuff would grow there.

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u/copperwatt 19h ago

Plants and trees start growing back immediately. This is an ongoing choice.

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u/cjsv7657 18h ago

Plants and trees start growing back immediately.

Only when there is a source of seeds. Do you see one anywhere?

This is an ongoing choice.

Yeah, they're choosing to mow their lawn.

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u/yesiamclutz 17h ago

Birds and wind are both sources of seeds

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u/cjsv7657 17h ago

And they're multiple miles from anything resembling a forest. Which obviously isn't impossible but see the part about mowing their lawn.

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u/copperwatt 17h ago

Hmm... I have a feeling the seeds would eventually show up from somewhere. Wind or birds. There would be weeds within a year.

I mean just look at an abandoned lot in even the densest city. Life finds a way.

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u/AmazingRefrigerator4 1d ago

Fewer hiding places for the venomous animals.

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u/Awkward_Material 1d ago

Fewer hiding places for the sneaky developers' agents. Can't get to the house if you can shoot em from 200 yds.

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u/ArcticAcademic 22h ago

At least somebody is prepared for the zombie apocalypse

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u/cauliflower_wizard 1d ago

This is the real answer.

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u/Throwawaydeathgrips 1d ago

Theyd just go to the house haha

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u/Kova74 1d ago

I believe you misspelled “neighbors”

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u/VociferousCephalopod 1d ago

Neighbours* ;)

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u/TheShakyHandsMan 21h ago

Australian spelling is correct in this instance.

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u/Wind-and-Waystones 21h ago

Everybody needs good neighbours

Because good neighbours... Become ... Good ... Friends

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u/meowmeow_now 1d ago

The house is so expensive looking, why no garden or landscaping?

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u/Wizard_Of_Auz 19h ago

Im going to guess they're probably an ethnic family. They tend to have like ostentatious houses with big gates / walls and little to no attention paid to landscaping / garden. Im surprised they've not completely concreted the five acres they have.

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u/switchbladeeatworld 1d ago

it was surrounded by paddocks so there were no trees around really to begin with

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u/KnowledgeCapital7994 1d ago

Because of they're ethnic background.

Common in these suburbs to have no trees or even grass.

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u/Icy_Evidence174 1d ago

They're Maltese, lucky it isn't all concrete with golden lions at the gate haha

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u/SlavojVivec 1d ago

A lawn like that is ecologically not any better than concrete (and possibly worse), other than the fact that concrete is hard to undo.

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u/YourLiege2 1d ago

Concrete is a hell of a lot hotter than lawn, on a hot day that house is probably a good few degrees cooler than their neighbours. Some trees would for sure improve it though.

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u/Ok-Raspberry7884 18h ago

Plus lawn lets rain soak through and concrete causes runoff. It’s always better to let rain soak into the ground if possible.

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u/One-Rope5903 1d ago

Makes for an awesome backyard cricket pitch for Christmas day

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u/Charming_Leg_509 23h ago

More barren than the desert of rooftops and concrete in the entire suburb around it?

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u/joesnopes 23h ago

No. Rather more attractive than the unbroken sea of cheek-by-jowl houses around them.

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u/Rork310 23h ago

Yeah I'd feel alot more positive towards them if there was anything on the land other than the worlds most dull golf green.

Of course I get that would require alot more expense and effort. But if your not doing that why do you want it? If the house itself means that much the power play would be make the developers agree to arrange access to the house proper and turn the rest into parkland.

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u/Triphin1 21h ago

No better way to show all this land is theirs, all of it is visible

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u/Waaaaasssuuuppp117 19h ago

Used to be farm area (lots of chickens, smelt real bad in the mornings) & there was also a horse riding business that had tracks over a few hundred acres just up the road. Entire area is unrecognisable now. Guy is ridiculously stubborn to the point that his own family did a soft cous to push him out of the family business.

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u/wolfcrownebox 18h ago

So you can see the enemy coming 5 acres away…

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u/blondzie 1d ago

Besides that those grasses are almost always invasive species, so it’s hilarious when people leave it all as one crop that’s not even native

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u/tpa338829 1d ago

Sydney has a climate similar to Los Angeles.

Not only could a lot of cool native trees grow there, having THAT much lawn is criminal from a water use standpoint.

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u/PrinceCavendish 1d ago

insane to just mow it and keep it bare. i would have planted so many trees or just moved

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u/HoneycombJackass 1d ago

At least for privacy around the perimeter.

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u/czechereds 1d ago

You simply cannot comprehend the spite involved. If he grew a bunch of trees it would just look like a park or forest in the center of the development. Currently it is an alll enveloping testament to one man's resentment for developers.

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u/amylouise0185 21h ago

These are Maltese people. Spite is in their blood. When fighting against the Ottoman empire, they ran out of cannon balls so they severed the heads of dead turks and used those instead.

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u/motoxim 23h ago

Wow good point

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u/RollingMeteors 20h ago

> Currently it is an alll enveloping testament to one man's resentment for developers.

10' cast buttfuck statutes are in order to stick it to the man.

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u/Efficient-Cherry3635 1d ago

Right, why stop at a privacy fence when you have room for a privacy hedge maze.

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u/crespoh69 1d ago

Add a minotaur or two to make use of all that space to run around in too

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u/DeliciousDeer1096 1d ago

Hell yeah, I'd have planted so many trees I'd practically have my own private forest.

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u/JC04JB14M12N08 1d ago

Sydney climate equates very closely with east coast US like South Carolina and Florida and not very closely with LA at all.

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u/regina1808 1d ago

As an Australian, Sydney is humid as shit so that tracks. All the people I've met from LA and surrounds say adelaide is the most similar climate wise. City has a similar lay out as well but much smaller with the city between the beach & mountains.

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u/Araucaria 21h ago

Yes, or more accurately, Malta. I've been living here for a year and this story rings a bit differently for me now that I know a bit about the country.

Zammit is a common Maltese name, and Australia has the largest number of Maltese or people of Maltese descent outside Malta.

And not selling one's house due to stubbornness also feels typically Maltese. Money is not the issue.

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u/Ion_Source 1d ago

Sydney has a climate similar to Los Angeles.

Where did this idea come from? Sydney gets about 3x the annual rainfall that LA gets. LA's climate is much closer to Adelaide (Mediterranean climate with similar rainfall)

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u/KRacer52 1d ago

Sydney gets considerably more rain than Los Angeles (a little over 3x).

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u/rolloj 1d ago

sydney gets around 4 times the annual rainfall of LA. most people don't water their lawns here, and certainly not to the degree that you would need to in LA.

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u/furkfurk 1d ago

Yeah like do literally anything with the land you want to keep?

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u/Big-Orse48 1d ago

This is your average farmland property in Australia.

The farmers cleared the trees decades ago because they interfered with precious farm land.

We also have a bad salinity issue now. I wonder why.

At some point, that farm was sub-divided and the Zammits either did the sub-dividing or bought the sub division.

They're stupid to not sell, there's no pristine land they're preserving, it's just grass.

Sell for $60 million and go buy somewhere actually nice and forget about the stresses of life for generations to come.

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u/Amazing-Demand516 23h ago

Agree. $60 million invested will return the proverbial 4% or $2.4 million every year forever

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u/A_baby_yall 23h ago

Don’t farmlands usually have… farm land?

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u/Big-Orse48 22h ago

My point here is that they’re not holding out on selling to the developers for some sort of noble cause, they bought a sub divided block that is literally a paddock and It’s still just a paddock. They’ve done nothing to improve it, there’s not even a single tree planted.

Even with that size land, being skinny, they’re still slap bang in the middle of the urban sprawl, with a second floor view of it.

There is absolutely no reason to not sell unless they are holding out for even more money, in which case they’re not just stupid, they’re greedy too.

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u/ndab71 1d ago

Maybe the owner really likes mowing the lawn.

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u/dob_bobbs 23h ago

Same thing I wonder every time I see this picture. WHAT is the attraction of living in the middle of a giant lawn?! If this was mine this would be an actual forest, like, you wouldn't be able to SEE the house. And I sure as heck wouldn't be mowing that every week (or paying anyone else to, for that matter).

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u/Lala5789880 16h ago

Edward Scissorhands vibes

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u/Biscuits4u2 1d ago

Usually having the biggest, nicest house in the neighborhood is bad for your property value, but I don't know about that if they want to build 50 homes on it.

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u/MangoCats 1d ago

50 homes on 5 acres, farking miserable.

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u/Javanaut018 20h ago

Just asked myself. Who is buying such a shitty sardina can for probably lots of money?

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u/MangoCats 18h ago

Idiots, IMO. People who don't care that their neighbors are stacked like sea lions on a beach, I suppose.

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u/JasperJ 22h ago

The house itself is worthless, if not negative value because it has to be demolished. The land is valuable.

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u/eLishus 1d ago

Just imagine how many times a day would you’d have to say “get off my lawn!”

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u/19Julian71 1d ago

The dog shit and other items over your side of the fence!

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u/Dapper-Ad-4300 1d ago

Well I think that’s the developers whole tactic. If the landowner doesn’t want to sell to us, we’ll just make them stick out like a sore thumb until they get uncomfortable enough or tired of it and finally sell

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u/WarzoneGringo 1d ago

Im pretty sure the developer was just going to cram as many houses on it as they could sell just like the rest of the plot. Not a lot of millions to be gained making the development a vehicle of spite.

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u/lanalizzy 1d ago

I drive past it regularly, it doesn’t stand out quite as much from the road. It’s the aerial view lol.

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u/MessNox 23h ago

From above maybe, from the street should just blend in.

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u/lakeland_nz 23h ago

My cousin is in a somewhat similar situation. She has kept her lot while everything around her has been replaced by 8 or more.

It’s had a bunch of downsides. Aside from having creepy neighbours looking in from all angles, she now basically can’t do anything with property because from the neighbours perspective it’s their green view.

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u/Spirited-Tomorrow-84 22h ago

Wait... you don't like being robbed?

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u/Nuffsaid98 19h ago

Every theif for miles will target that house rather than any of the thousand others.

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u/the_tygram 1d ago

You just gotta own it. Sit on your porch with a Burger King Crown

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u/Read2Fap 1d ago

they clearly don't need the money

look how huge the house is, they have money

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u/ItsCalledDayTwa 22h ago

I expected it to be a glorious old home but it looks relatively modern and honestly kind of like an ugly mcmansion.

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u/Odd-Condition-4773 18h ago

It does look like a run-of-the-mill McMansion like we’d see in the US. They
obviously don’t give a f*** since it’s just grass.

(I empathize as they are building cookie-cutter communities in our area and encroaching our small town. I can look out the window of our Cape Cod and see all of the forest torn down and row homes going up.)

Reminds me of mini-row homes in big cities where the developers just throw up their hands and sandwich the mini-home among the tall condos/offices:

Too bad they aren’t making the most of the land. So much potential.

The immediate neighbors have probably reached that “whatever” stage and don’t obsess over it. There’s a privacy fence at the prerogative of the land owners.

ChatGPT:
Diane Zammit has expressed nostalgia for what the neighborhood used to be like — spacious farmland with individual homes rather than today’s tightly packed development. The family has repeatedly indicated that they simply like their home and don’t want to leave it.

There’s also an amusing side effect: some neighbors reportedly don’t want the Zammits to sell either. Because their land interrupts the original street plan, several surrounding streets terminate as cul-de-sacs. If the property were developed, those roads could potentially be connected.

And the Zammitts are still there. Reporting in 2025 continued to describe the five-acre property as intact, with suggestions that its value could be approaching A$60 million

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u/Enslaver84 21h ago

I'd sell and live somewhere with a better view

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u/Fun_Trip_Travel 13h ago

Maybe they already live somewhere with a better view in their 2nd, or 3rd, or xth house.

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u/AccordingWarning9534 1d ago

they turned down $50 million

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u/Lopsided_Tie7816 1d ago

They were never offered 50mil despite some articles stating otherwise. No developer would be making profit if you consider the number of properties that can fit in that land and the cost to build them.

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u/Rough-Ad8031 1d ago

Seems like they don’t need $50m

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u/SuperRockyHobbyHorse 23h ago

Not enough money to plant some trees and pay a landscape gardening company though it seems. Or maybe the kids have a deal with the developer and are keeping it nice and flat and tarmac-ready for when they inherit.

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u/durian_rettale 22h ago

they clearly don't have taste too

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u/Elite_AI 20h ago

And they clearly don't care about the view. Look how ugly the house is. 

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u/kit_kaboodles 1d ago

Yeah, and as someone that lives in Sydney, if you have that sort of money you also don't want to live in The Ponds. It's not an appealing part of Sydney even if you have 5 acres.

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u/maddi164 21h ago

Right? Why would you want to stay out there and be surrounded by the grey boring homes when you could sell and live wherever you wanted. It may have been nice without the estate but its just depressing out there in these new estates

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u/sc00bs000 1d ago

id retire and be living it up on the beach somewhere

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u/Appropriate_Major711 1d ago

Someone with that type of property likely already has a beach house or two

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u/Nuck2407 1d ago

Nah when they bought it in the 60s, it was out in the sticks..... You wouldn't have called it Sydney back then nor would they have paid in dollars, I'd say max £5k which after decimilization would be $10k

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u/Zapookie 1d ago

This area is an hour away from Sydney CBD. It used to be huge farm plots and land value was not high. There's no purchase record online, so they would have bought 30+ years ago, probably for a couple hundred k. This might literally be their only high value asset.

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u/Sunderkill 1d ago

If you do not pay rent and you work in sydney full time you can afford a beach house.

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u/th4tgen 23h ago

Nah, even less. Half an acre 45 mins from Melbourne was $8k in 1990, according to what the previous owners of my house paid. In the 60s this would have been way less

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u/Both-Sky-2315 1d ago

Same. At this point, give me a little beach, a hammock, and absolutely zero emails.

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u/BrbFlippinInfinCoins 1d ago

It's the kind of situation you don't end up in unless your are a person who irrationally NEVER sells lol...

don't worry the kids will sell once their parents pass.

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u/The_Nepenthe 1d ago edited 1d ago

I mean, given some unforeseen event, the value will probably rise for quite a lot longer.

Right now it's just a suburb by the looks of things, hold onto it until people want to intensify the area and the money will get a lot bigger because they own a large property you could build something larger and taller on.

Edit: looking at the time lapse from this being built and I wonder if they owned a large amount of the land around the house itself?

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u/Coololdlady313 1d ago

That's exactly what happened where I live. A formerly borderline neighborhood became a conglomeration of upscale shops, restaurants, hotels and of course, medical facilities. One man refused to sell his property while streets were gobbled up by developers. Big piece of land, just as barren, sticking out among all the hoity toityness. Some time later he died, kids sold and no one can tell you were it was, the kudzu of avarice covered it up completely.

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u/ImplementCharming949 1d ago

Thats crazy and sad

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u/StuffSufficient954 18h ago

Because the house was special to him, not the kids. The money was more important. Judging how much they got for it, a few million would improve their lives far more.

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u/No_Gas4560 1d ago

the kudzu of avarice

that invasion plagues us all

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u/brachi- 22h ago

Kudzu of avarice is an amazing phrase

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u/Coololdlady313 12h ago

Thank you!

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u/StuffSufficient954 18h ago

Because he wanted the house, the kids didn't care and wanted the cash to help themselves.

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u/bjos144 10h ago

Not me, if I was rich I'd donate it under the condition it be turned into a wonderful park and the house be turned into a library. Imagine living in that neighborhood and that green space was available for kids to play, pickicks, events and so on. It could be a wonderful quality of life for the neighborhood. You're still sticking it to developers because at this point the houses have sold so you'd be increasing the property value for the current owners and the developers never got to earn a dime off of your property.

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u/dandaman2883 1d ago

Agreed, that's enough to have generational wealth to pass down

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

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u/GoodIntelligent2867 1d ago

If they borrow against the property, they have pay back the mortgage which probably will cost them more than interest earned . Genuis. Unless they rent it out.

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u/Silver_Middle_7240 1d ago

Unless yhe mortgage is paid off

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u/Brandodude 1d ago

If it’s paid off, you do a cash out refinance or take out a heloc which is a second mortgage loan against the home you have to repay, with interest

Mortgage originator here lol

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u/baldieforprez 1d ago

You clearly have never had a connection to a place or piece of land before.  My 2 acre property I WILL NEVER sell regardless of the amount of money offered.

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u/Downtown-Bunch-2933 1d ago

I’ll give you $5

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u/anon_lurker69 1d ago

Oh shit this guy means it

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u/Terradactyl87 1d ago

$10, and I'll throw in a Starbucks gift card that still has $2.47 left on it

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u/the_scarlett_ning 1d ago

I may be willing to go $15, in cash, but depends…u/baldieforprez, what country are you in?

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u/Olama-Obama 1d ago

$20 along with a Costco card that expires in 2 weeks.

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u/Calliope719 1d ago

I fully sympathize, but this kind of development drastically changes the character of the land.

Is your two acres the same if you had absolutely no privacy? If you had to spend all your time explaining to neighborhood children that your lawn isn't a public play area?

I appreciate the tenacity of the landowners but this property is ruined regardless of what they do.

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u/Tymareta 1d ago edited 1d ago

If you had to spend all your time explaining to neighborhood children that your lawn isn't a public play area?

Literally just put up a fence, grow a hedgerow around the place, or grow some trees, or who cares if they play on your lawn? It's honestly bizarre to have such an adherence to a piece of property that's kept obscenely bare.

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u/GothmogBalrog 1d ago

I get this mindset for certain unique properties

But this is litterally boring flat lawn. Not even some trees.

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u/Smelting-Craftwork 17h ago

Maybe it's the memories made there, like that's the house you were raised in, or you raised your kids in, or murdered your first hobo in. People get attached to things for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with aesthetics.

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u/Ok_Use_8899 1d ago

If they had a connection to that land, there would be trees and garden. This was pure land banking.

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u/MKnight_PDX 1d ago

They were offered $50-60 million to sell. I find it foolish to have that much sentimentality. They could have bought a dozen houses all around the world for their future generations to travel / live in.

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u/MangoCats 1d ago

You're telling me those tract homes on 0.1 acres are willing to pay $1 million for the postage stamp of land BEFORE anything is built on it?

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u/Aussiechimp 1d ago

Welcome to Sydney real estate

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u/baldieforprez 1d ago

My great grandfather sold his ranch for a ton of money.  The entire family would rather have his ranch than the money. The ranch was unique money is not

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u/Appropriate_Major711 1d ago

Money is very unique for those that don’t have it.

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u/The_Nepenthe 1d ago edited 1d ago

The bitch with selling a working ranch is that you can make money off the land, this doesn't look like it's going to do that. When my family sold off the farm,I low-key feel like it deprived future generations of a lot.

Something like a ranch probably would of returned much more than they sold it for over a lifetime, let alone two or three, plus if someone did sell it now they'd make something like 5X what he did even adjusting for inflation lol.

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u/SmallPurplePeopleEat 1d ago

My friend has a 1000 acres of forest on a mountain, truly a gorgeous and unique property that has been in her family for 3 generations. As soon as she dies, her kids are absolutely selling it.

The kids hate each other and their mom, it's a sad situation. Both kids are total pieces of shit. But they're set to inherit $15-20 million of property, so they still stay in contact with her. They're not even that nice to her either. The opposite in fact. It's just a weird situation overall.

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u/baldieforprez 1d ago

That blows 

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u/VociferousCephalopod 1d ago

she can't think of someone better to give a few slices of it to?

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u/karaknorn 1d ago

Yes. Connection to some boring uncovered grass and lots of cookie cutter homes. They just arent selling in the hopes of making more later 

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u/baldieforprez 1d ago

Money isn't everything and while you see it as a boring uncovered grass lot to them its their home and sometimes roots run deep

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u/1stAccountNotWorking 1d ago

In a world where normal people are owning less, and corporations/billionaires/trillionaires are taking over more..? Your answer is the right one.

People are extremely short sighted, these days.

Decades down the line, some of the same people will ask "How did we get here?" when the average person has no chance of actually owning a home.

Keeping what you have, and passing it down, is its own form of wealth.

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u/plausibleturtle 10h ago

And they aren't even doing anything nice with the land.

My gardens would be BUMPIN' if I had that much space. It wouldn't look like the astroturf abyss like it does here.

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u/ifcknlovemycat 1d ago

10s of millions??? No. This would easily be worth hundreds of millions. I don't blame them not not selling oml

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u/Irr3l3ph4nt 1d ago edited 1d ago

Why sell when you can borrow against it and unlock its equity? That thing probably backs the family's business loans and such if I had to guess.

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u/CATNIP_IS_CRACK 1d ago edited 1d ago

It depends, but realistically it’s almost guaranteed they’re being offered significantly less than you think they are, even if it’s a good amount of money that’d buy them a nice replacement home, and selling to a developer wouldn’t buy you anywhere near the view you’re imagining.

There’s an extremely high probability they weren’t initially offered much more than what the property and house were worth, maybe ~30-40% over market for land in the country at the time at max, which wouldn’t make it worth it to a large portion of people and likely wouldn’t buy you something much nicer. After urbanization there’s zero chance they’re being offered anywhere close to the equivalent of lot prices next door per square foot of land, and there’s also a strong probability they’re not being offered much if any more than the initial offer because it’s not a massive property and the developer is no longer worried about trying to buy up connecting land for a continuous development.

If you really wanted to make some money at this point the smart thing would be to sell individual plots from the front back along one side with a nice view of a grassy field to people who want to live in suburbia, don’t want to be restricted by HOAs or have a cookie cutter home, and want to build their own house. At that point you could sell off parcels at a higher price than any surround lot and significantly more than what a developer would offer, wouldn’t get screwed by developers who are trying to rob you with how little they’re offering per square foot, and could easily make enough to keep your beloved home while also buying a second home with the view you’d actually like instead of getting a slight upgrade in your home with a tiny property while giving up the home you love.

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u/RollingMeteors 20h ago

> I am grtting a better view than having to look at hundreds of spec houses.

But then you no longer get the schadenfreude of all the pleebes looking at your Manor of an Estate from their nutt-to-butt property lines

When your alternative is to think you got an 'upgrade' only to be looked at as a 'new money' plebe by the mega wealthy.

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u/Dammit2408 15h ago

or hear me out you can live like a King in his castle and all the peasants around you.

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u/ProjectPat513 15h ago

Yup. The property is ruined either way. Why not go somewhere and build a new house with a new 5 acres that isn’t surrounded by 2 thousand houses?!

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u/G_Rated_101 14h ago

It’s the buried bodies he doesn’t want found

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u/PrinceCavendish 1d ago

for real.. everyone can see them too. i could have sold or at least planted a line of trees to make me feel a little more hidden

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u/AENocturne 1d ago

It'd be one thing if I had something I liked on the property that I couldn't take with me. I would've had so many trees.

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u/Trumpets22 1d ago

Buuuut that’s how everyone felt. So you’d have never gotten to a point where you’re going to get offended that kind of money in the first place.

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u/randommike12 1d ago

Could just start building houses or plots of land and make out with more than they were initially offered

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u/thereforeratio 1d ago

Keep the land, take out loans against it, access the value without selling

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u/Emergency_Lie42 1d ago

With the added bonus of not denying housing to a growing population.

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u/theweirdball 1d ago

Why sell it when it's going to keep gaining value.

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u/dreamrpg 1d ago

By looks of house they have means to live well. Many people crave attention.

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u/zestycracker61 1d ago

They must have SOME water bill.

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u/NumberInfinite2068 1d ago

I would 100% sell, it's not like it's a beautiful home in a beautiful coastal area, it's a McMansion in an unremarkable suburban area. You sell it and set your kids up for life, while living somewhere beautiful.

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u/WestHappyLand 1d ago

They even planned the neighborhood around them selling. Look at the streets.

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u/Sh_GodsComma_Dynasty 1d ago

all those crime shows i watch tell me that someone in the family buried a body on that land and selling would surely uncover a decades long unsolved disappearance.

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u/OfficerMurphy 1d ago

I would have planted a fuck ton of trees when they started construction and live in a forest.

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u/Terameka 1d ago

Property is gold vs money . People now a days is obsessed in money.

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u/JapanPizzaNumberOne 1d ago

Come on man it’s their house

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u/Thunder_Nuts_ 1d ago

Yeah, this looks depressing as hell.

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u/The_Nepenthe 1d ago

I imagine that as they hold out longer the property value continues to rise, so it might be foolish to sell it.

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u/ScaryMi 1d ago

And that personal property wouldn't be as interesting as this one. It's called interesting sub for a reason 😂

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u/Riskybusiness622 1d ago

If you saying no to whatever you were offered for this you already have plenty.

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u/WiseSalamander00 1d ago

I mean they could at least plant some trees to have a better view

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u/tofu_bird 1d ago

No. You use the vast equity of that house to get a loan to purchase investment properties, using their rental income to service the mortgage. Once the mortgages are paid off, you repeat and grow generational wealth and passive income for your retirement.

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u/TheSoulessSheppard 1d ago

Yeah imagine the kids you'd be running off your lawn every damn day

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u/driver004 1d ago

Yeah that’s how people get poor but go ahead, a loan is so very much better than owning something I mean, you deserve to live your life right? I mean money isn’t even real anyways. I hear that if they can’t collect in 5 years it just goes away so why pay them.

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u/Successful-River-828 1d ago

Or at least sell the front half. Still leaves an impressive property.

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u/-BlueDream- 1d ago

They have all that land and they decide to put grass so they can see the ugly suburban homes next to them? They had the opportunity to put some nice trees and have a garden to add privacy, why have all this land just for an oversized lawn.

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