We have a property with two houses on it in North Carolina. We live in a house in the back and we have a house in the front that we’ve used as a rental. We got a letter in the mail that DOT is going to be taking about 20’ of our yard closest to the road in order to support expanding that road. This will take a good portion of the fenced in yard for our rental house and also our well which provides water for both of our houses. When the initial inspector for DOT came out, he told us construction was going to start in the spring and we are one of the last people on the road they needed to settle with. This was fall of 2023. We obviously notified our renters what was going on and they proceeded to move out at the end of that year.
We got our offer for the land they were taking and it was a very small amount of money that doesn’t even cover the cost to tie our houses into city water, let alone anything else. I had reached out to DOT for construction plans and the engineer then told me the project was pushed to start in September of 2024.
We have not been able to get a renter in our house to this day because we keep getting told construction will start in a few months and no one wants to live in a place for only 4-6 months until their yard is torn up and they will have to live in a construction zone with no fence for their pet. Not to mention the house will be even closer to the road after everything is done and this is already a pretty major road with lots of traffic. Our house is probably 100’ further from the road and we still get woken up in the middle of the night if sirens go by. Construction finally started spring of this year, but so far has just been electrical utility work. I’m not sure when they are actually going to take down our fence and well but the DOT website says construction will be done summer of 2028. We went back and forth a little bit with the negotiator DOT hired but ultimately they took that section of our property through condemnation because we couldn’t even come close to an agreement.
My biggest argument is that we have now lost our rental income and they have not even considered the impact that this has had on our current and future income loss. At this point I don’t think we’ll ever be able to rent the house out or we’d have to drop the rent pretty low in order to do so. We have a court date but I haven’t hired an attorney because right now DOT is barely willing to give us the cost to tie into city water and the cost to replace our fence, so if that’s all I end up getting I can’t afford to give one 20-30% of the money.
I really would like them to pay us fair market valve for the house so we can just tear it down (we got an appraisal done) but do I have a case for loss of income? We are currently pro se and I have already provided discovery with all of the quotes I have received, along with appraisals.
Location: North Carolina