When the O’Connors tried to sell their Wallingford home this past September, they were stunned to discover they only owned half of their yard, writes Michaelle Bond for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The buyer’s title company found two parcels of land at the property.  In the 1960s, a previous owner bought one parcel, then bought the second parcel a few years later, but never legally merged them.

After he died, his wife sold the home to someone else, who then sold it to Rebecca and Joseph O’Connor in 2018. They had unknowingly only purchased the rights to 500 square feet of the yard.

The discovery put the O’Connor’s home sale in jeopardy.

“It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does, it’s catastrophic,” said Lance Rogers, a real estate attorney working with the O’Connors.

It took months for the O’Connors to track down the property’s heirs. Now the O’Connor family is in limbo while a legal solution is found.

Because of the delay, they lost out on a home they had hoped to buy from the sale.

The O’Connor’s story highlights the importance of not relying on title companies alone to find out about ownership of a property.

Read more at The Philadelphia Inquirer about the O’Connor’s property ownership dilemma.