In September 1994, a family that had been living in government-subsidized housing moved into a mobile home on a half-acre lot in Tornillo, in El Paso County, and began paying the woman who owned the land $200 a month for most of the next 17 years. They believed they were buying the home and the lot. Then she sold the lot to a developer buying ground for a Dollar General store and ordered them to vacate.
The seller is a licensed real estate agent with over 40 years of experience, court records show. She bought 10.75 acres in Tornillo in 1988 as an investment and sold lots on mostly oral, seller-financed deals: monthly payments, then the deed.
The family wrote “down payment” on the money orders for their first $500. Over the years they fenced the lot in chain link, built a shed and a dog kennel, planted trees, and added a porch and several rooms on a poured concrete slab, spending over $22,000 on materials and doing much of the work themselves…