Massachusetts woman buys house, court orders her to allow a squatter to live in it
Not The Bee | March 07, 2025
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The nightmare started last fall when [Meghan] McIntyre and her boyfriend decided to move back to Plymouth and purchase their own home. Months later, instead of moving into the house they bought, they are forced to rent an apartment while also paying the mortgage on a home they aren’t allowed to live in. Instead, someone else is living in the house.
Finding out someone else is living in the house you just bought:
“It’s like a never-ending nightmare,” McIntyre said of her attempt to move back home to Plymouth.
It turns out that Ms. McIntyre purchased a foreclosed property. She was under the impression
She did not visit the house??????
that it was vacant and move-in ready. But shortly before moving in, they got a call from a former occupant of the house — someone who was “never an owner,” “never a tenant” and “never paid rent,” yet who had lived there to care for her mother and who wanted to move back in after her mother’s death.
Since when is “wanted to” a valid legal claim? I’d own a lot of things, if that were true.
Rather understandably, Meghan said no. And that’s where the nightmare really began:
‘The next day we got a call from the housing court that we had a court date,’ she said.
The judge ruled that McIntyre had to give the woman the keys and allow her to stay at the house.
!
Real estate attorney Jordana Greenman said the scenario is “horrifying,” but she said state law explicitly allows for someone’s home to essentially be seized and used in this way:
‘It is another one of those things that in Massachusetts with all of the consumer protection rules, nobody can be unhoused per se, without a court order,’ Greenman explained. ‘It might boil down to how much are they willing to pay to get this person out. And then they’ll go, which is really very upsetting. It should not be so difficult.’
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A court has ordered McIntyre to “pay for a whole list of expenses” prior to starting eviction:
McIntyre said they had to pay to restore the floors after they ripped up the carpet to replace them. McIntyre is paying the utility bills and even had to put the woman up in a hotel and pay for her meals when the heat stopped working in the home.
McIntyre said this is on top of her paying for the mortgage, HOA fees and rent. She estimated they are paying around $10,000 a month just in housing.
Thankfully, there’s some end in sight. The rightful homeowner and her squatter tenant reached an agreement:
Under the deal, the woman gets to stay until the end of March and McIntyre has to pay her $7,500 to put towards a new apartment.
I have to stop commenting here, since this is a PG site. Bring on the Emu.
