This accidental bargain is about to be a lot of paperwork.
A tiny mishap has landed a Sparks, Nevada, homebuyer with a small city’s worth of homes purchased for the price of one.
Thanks to four mistaken keystrokes, the new owner of a single-family home received an additional 84 house lots, plus two common spaces for a total of 86 properties, while getting the deed for her new house, which alone is valued at $594,481, according to the Reno Gazette Journal.
The reason for the bonus homes, located in a development northeast of Reno, was simply administrative human error.
“It appears Westminster Title out of Las Vegas may have copied and pasted a legal description from another Toll Brothers transfer when preparing [the homebuyer’s] deed for recordation,” Washoe County chief deputy assessor Cori Burke told the outlet.
The error was at least obvious enough that it was noted almost immediately — but the damage had already been done.
“Because it was pretty clear a mistake was made, our assessment services division reached out to Westminster Title right away so they could begin working on correcting the chain of title for the 86 properties transferred in error,” Burke went on. Such copy-paste errors in fact happen “fairly often,” although rarely do they involve so many properties.
“This particular case is just a little more interesting because of the number of lots involved,” said Burke.
Although amusing, fixing the erroneous land grab will be quite a headache, and require the homebuyer to transfer the title back to Toll Brothers, who will then in turn transfer it to new property owners through typical channels.
“I think someone could try to make things difficult. However, the title company also has the offer and acceptance for the purchase on file so intent is pretty clear,” Burke told the publication. “I would think it would be a loser in court and doubt it happens often, if at all.”