Disputes over land are no joke, folks.

And when a landowner gets locked into a battle with a city, it’s most likely gonna turn into a mess.

In today’s story, a guy came up with a clever solution to fight back against the city who was pressuring him to sell his land.

Let’s take a look!

Local hero sticks it to city hall.

“This happened quite a few years ago. Where my hometown is, is a thing called ALR, Agriculture Land Reserve.

Basically, there are areas of land that can only ever be used for agriculture, in order to protect prime agriculture land from becoming highways and strip malls and things like that.

A friend of a friend (let’s call him Fred) had inherited a piece of such land on the outskirts of the city.

He had no interest in doing any kind of farming, but the ALR rules allow for the property owner to have a personal residence on the land, So he built a house on it and had a nice place to live just outside of town.

Now, city hall has ways of acquiring ALR land and using it for non-agriculture purposes…I’m not familiar with how exactly, but they can, and it is about impossible for anybody else to.

The city has some plans…

One thing the city would do is acquire ALR land and turn it into condo developments. They had a vision for three high-end condos to be built where Fred’s property was.

They had already bought the properties on either side of Fred’s land, and were going after his too. The city was only offering Fred the property value, and since he just built a house there, he would be losing on the deal so Fred said no.

While the condos on either side of Fred were being constructed, the city used every tool they could to try and expropriate Fred’s land, but the ALR restrictions made it tricky.

Finally, they told Fred that since his land was ALR, he needed to be using it for agriculture within 30 days, or they could take it from him.

This was about to get interesting!

Fred’s response? PIG FARM!

He crammed as many pigs onto his property that he legally could…full compliance with farming regulations, health and safety…whole nine yards.

Since he had fulfilled his obligations with the ALR, the city could not touch him.

Period.

The city had already pre-sold a number of these condos and naturally, none of the buyers were very happy to have spent a small fortune to live next to a big stinky pig farm.

Most of the buyers obtained grounds for dismissal on their purchase agreements, while the rest filed a big lawsuit. The city’s project was sinking fast.

It was time to get paid!

The city started negotiating with Fred, and the story ends with the city finally making Fred an offer for his land that was so ridiculous, he had no choice but to accept.

The city finished their condo project, but thanks to Fred they did not make nearly as much off of it as they had anticipated.”

Check out what readers had to say about this on Reddit.

This person chimed in.

Another individual shared their thoughts.

And another person spoke up.

This guy handled this complicated situation perfectly!

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.