It often seems that money buys power. When someone has a lot of money and is in a position of power, people who are actually in charge can sometimes be hesitant to do anything that would make the rich, powerful person mad at them.

In this story, the person with power is a wealthy developer, but by relation, his son seems to be able to do whatever he wants without the town actually enforcing any of their laws.

The laws he’s breaking are related to a construction project at his house, and the HOA neighborhood near his house wants justice. They’re finding this quite complicated to achieve.

Keep reading for the whole story.

Construction project causing damage to our property

There are 6 homeowners who collectively own a cluster subdivision as an HOA.

The neighbor on the other side of the cluster subdivision is NOT part of our HOA (he does not pay taxes on the land, he does not maintain it, etc).

For some context, this neighbor is the son of one of the wealthiest developers in the area – I’m sure he has significant influence over members of the town administration.

This neighbor started large construction project last spring which involved a large retaining wall, a pool, a cabana, etc. This project required the town to grant him a large number of zoning variances because of the anticipated scope of the project which we protested but were granted anyway.

The construction project has caused multiple problems.

Fast forward 8 months – the construction project is mostly complete but a number of issues arose during the process:

1. He never had a survey completed and initially constructed the retaining wall on our property based on measurements made by both parties.

He moved it once we noticed but parts of it likely still are on our land.

We are in the process of obtaining a survey.

But that’s far from the only problem.

2. This retaining wall is gigantic and I’m sure there are laws that dictate how these things are built for safety reasons. I am certain he has abided by none of these.

3. During the construction process he destroyed a large patch of grass on our land by driving his construction vehicles onto it. He promised to restore it to its original condition. He has since patched it up but has left berms in unsightly locations which he refuses to move.

4. Perhaps the biggest concern is he “hid” a drainage pipe within the retaining wall (it is buried under some small rocks). This drainage pipes apparently drains much of his runoff directly onto our land. This is after he told the town and us repeatedly that he would install a self-contained runoff mitigation system.

The town refuses to help them.

We have gone to the town several times with these concerns but they have either ignored us (they don’t respond to my emails or calls), or stated “this is a civil matter”.

We don’t want to have to hire a lawyer but would consider it if it became necessary.

He is clearly in the wrong.

He has violated our property boundaries repeatedly without permission. He has lied to us numerous times. He has even verbally assaulted my 80+ year old neighbor who used to be president of the HOA (and has since handed the job off to me).

OP isn’t sure what to do.

What makes things challenging is he appears to control the town planning and zoning offices due to his father’s status as a high profile developer.

My questions are..

– how can we get the town to enforce town laws?

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– do we need to hire an attorney? If so, do we go after the town or after the neighbor? How much money can we expect this to cost?

This whole situation sounds awful.

I hope Reddit has some advice.

Here’s a vote for hiring an attorney.

Another person offers advice.

This person has some suggestions.

Everyone thinks they need a lawyer.

If the law is on their side, this should be an easy and welcome case for a good lawyer. I hope they win and win big. The developer’s son needs to learn that he’s not above the law.