Oh dear. On the face of it, your elderly aunt got a raw deal.
Unfortunately, unless your aunt is no longer in possession of her mental faculties, she entered into a contract and that's that. Whoever bought the land must be feeling very pleased with himself - the snake.
Is this going to cause her any future problems? Do you have any reason to believe that your aunt is mentally incapacitated?
H'mmmm - just thinking, this leads to a question for the forum's go-to Medicaid experts.
Suppose this lady, sometime next year, were to apply for Medicaid. What would be their view of the sub-market land deal assuming the buyer had no personal connection with her and that the deal does indeed represent a hypothetical loss of some $87K?
CountryMouse - I don’t think MS Medicaid would take too much time to deal with the what if’s on a rural land sale if sold at arms length. Caseworkers have their hands full with juggling “at need”. It’s a poor state across all categories.
Buyer may not be a snake. The land at higher price in another part of the county, it’s under 3k acre. 12 hectares to you. Pretty cheap, probably area has factors that make it undesirable, like not irrigated. Fronting highway isn’t necessarily always a positive if theres no to code egress. For decent pasture, you need several acres per cattle unit, really you need sections for cattle unless land is spectacularly lush. 30 acres isn’t big enough either to ranch or rent for pasture.
Allie - if family is concerned about the property, why didn’t someone have it appraised & do offer based on that to buy land from her?
Different problems to deal with here imo.... 1st, So is anyone, you or a cousin, DPOA for Auntie? And if so, has the POA been registered at Hinds or Madison Co courthouse? I’m assuming this is in Jackson or Ridgeland area. For MS law, for extra fun in all this, POAs are required to be recorded to be considered valid. If nobody is recorded DPOA, Auntie is kinda on her own to make decisions - even beyond bad ones - as nobody has legal standing to step in to try to change things. Someone would need to seek guardianship over Auntie if she won’t do a POA and guardianship needs an atty to do.
If there is a valid POA, they as her POA need to get a elder law atty meeting asap to deal with this. None of this is at all a DIY. MPB has a weekly on air show “In Legal Terms” and there’s a couple of NAELA level of elder law attorneys who are guests on it regularly. You can google MPB and read up on old shows to find their names.
2nd - property value can be wildly variable. I’m in New Orleans and have clients in MS from Oxford to Biloxi, land value can vary. Right now there’s land fronting Hwy 90 that you can’t give away in far west Hancock Co and then land 5 minutes away 300k in Waveland. Old Discovery Bay “waterfront” totally worthless in Harrison Co, yet M+ land in the Pass, 10 minutes away.
That 30k could be FMV aka fair market value. What you need to do imho is try to determine how far off from assessor value sale price was.
What was the last tax assessor placed value on the parcel? You should be able to go online to Co tax assessor records and find this pretty easily by Aunties name. When you find them print it up and make sure to pay attention to the PPIN as you need that PPIN # for part 2 of your Nancy Drew/Veronica Mars detective work.
For part 2, you run the PPINs on properties adjacent and all around Aunties land to see their taxasssessor value. You don’t need to know owners name per se, cause you run the search by the PPIN. You should also be able to run a on line viewable plat on the area as well. For the plat, you check off wanting dimensions, elevation, etc. If the courthouse records has in ROW (right of way) or easements as something recorded on the plat, you want that too. Why? Cause if MDOT has an easement on Aunties land, it’s value will suck. And I am being super nice in describing this. MDOT is the all powerful OZ, personally I’d never buy any property that MDOT has an easement over.
So once you’ve done part 2, you can get a pretty good take on if the 30k was a legit value for what her land was. If it’s legit, end of story. If not, it needs an attorney to deal with this. Not a DIY.
Has the deal closed?
Unfortunately, unless your aunt is no longer in possession of her mental faculties, she entered into a contract and that's that. Whoever bought the land must be feeling very pleased with himself - the snake.
Is this going to cause her any future problems? Do you have any reason to believe that your aunt is mentally incapacitated?
Suppose this lady, sometime next year, were to apply for Medicaid. What would be their view of the sub-market land deal assuming the buyer had no personal connection with her and that the deal does indeed represent a hypothetical loss of some $87K?
Buyer may not be a snake. The land at higher price in another part of the county, it’s under 3k acre. 12 hectares to you. Pretty cheap, probably area has factors that make it undesirable, like not irrigated. Fronting highway isn’t necessarily always a positive if theres no to code egress. For decent pasture, you need several acres per cattle unit, really you need sections for cattle unless land is spectacularly lush. 30 acres isn’t big enough either to ranch or rent for pasture.
Allie - if family is concerned about the property, why didn’t someone have it appraised & do offer based on that to buy land from her?
1st, So is anyone, you or a cousin, DPOA for Auntie?
And if so, has the POA been registered at Hinds or Madison Co courthouse? I’m assuming this is in Jackson or Ridgeland area. For MS law, for extra fun in all this, POAs are required to be recorded to be considered valid. If nobody is recorded DPOA, Auntie is kinda on her own to make decisions - even beyond bad ones - as nobody has legal standing to step in to try to change things. Someone would need to seek guardianship over Auntie if she won’t do a POA and guardianship needs an atty to do.
If there is a valid POA, they as her POA need to get a elder law atty meeting asap to deal with this. None of this is at all a DIY. MPB has a weekly on air show “In Legal Terms” and there’s a couple of NAELA level of elder law attorneys who are guests on it regularly. You can google MPB and read up on old shows to find their names.
2nd - property value can be wildly variable.
I’m in New Orleans and have clients in MS from Oxford to Biloxi, land value can vary. Right now there’s land fronting Hwy 90 that you can’t give away in far west Hancock Co and then land 5 minutes away 300k in Waveland. Old Discovery Bay “waterfront” totally worthless in Harrison Co, yet M+ land in the Pass, 10 minutes away.
That 30k could be FMV aka fair market value. What you need to do imho is try to determine how far off from assessor value sale price was.
What was the last tax assessor placed value on the parcel? You should be able to go online to Co tax assessor records and find this pretty easily by Aunties name. When you find them print it up and make sure to pay attention to the PPIN as you need that PPIN # for part 2 of your Nancy Drew/Veronica Mars detective work.
For part 2, you run the PPINs on properties adjacent and all around Aunties land to see their taxasssessor value. You don’t need to know owners name per se, cause you run the search by the PPIN. You should also be able to run a on line viewable plat on the area as well. For the plat, you check off wanting dimensions, elevation, etc. If the courthouse records has in ROW (right of way) or easements as something recorded on the plat, you want that too. Why? Cause if MDOT has an easement on Aunties land, it’s value will suck. And I am being super nice in describing this. MDOT is the all powerful OZ, personally I’d never buy any property that MDOT has an easement over.
So once you’ve done part 2, you can get a pretty good take on if the 30k was a legit value for what her land was.
If it’s legit, end of story.
If not, it needs an attorney to deal with this. Not a DIY.