Imagine going through the entire process of buying a home and just days before your set to move in you hear, "You're trespassing, I'll shoot."
That's what happened when a reporter with Channel 4 tried asking a man why he was squatting in a home that was just bought by a family and calling that place his home despite not paying anything for it.
When we talked to the family in Clay County that was supposed to move in on Monday, they were shocked to hear the home they just bought for $440,000 was broken into, and on top of that by a pastor. Pastor Marcelous Dunbar moved in and wasn't alone. He had claimed that the property was his through adverse possession, a very controversial Florida Statute, but the Clay County Sheriff's Office didn't think so. Dunbar was arrested Friday afternoon on grand theft and burglary charges.
A local real estate attorney Tommy Shea says adverse possession happens one of two ways, you can physically take possession of the property or you can create what would almost resemble a fabricated deed. Shea says one of the things that stops this from going any further is if that person doesn't pay for taxes and they have to be there for seven years. Dunbar was there for just a couple of days and didn't have much of a claim.
Dunbar isn't the only person who has filed for this type of ownership. Clay County officials say they've had at least five other applications for adverse possession. Clay County property appraiser Roger Suggs says he's never seen anything like this. Since 2007 there had been one claim for adverse possession, all five in this case coming within weeks of each other.
Attached at the bottom is the arrest report.
In that report it say the Realtor had done a walkthrough, no one was there, had hired a cleaning service, no one was there and then a day later that's when Dunbar moved in. The family closed on the home a week ago. The report did confirm that the screws on the locks had been removed and the pastor had moved in.
The homeowner talked to our news partner Channel 4 and said, "I purchased the property legally and on the same day I've got an individual that went in and filed for occupancy of the home."
The Realtor did say this was a family that bought the home; they're currently with the military and have four children.
The pastor had said he was doing everything according to state law. He says he's working on reducing Jacksonville's homelessness and that's why he took the home and has other people living in there with him. He says he's doing it for a good cause. When we reached out to him he said this would blow over, it wasn't a big deal and then hung up. His bond was set at $150,000.
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