Q: Can someone sell a brick and mortar home but not the land it is built on?
A: This is actually fairly common in parts of the United States. Baltimore has a long-standing tradition of selling houses that sit on land held by long-term lease. But, such situations can be quite complex. They can also be the basis for a fraud or a non-fraudulent misunderstanding that means you pay the money and they keep the house. Further, the Virginia Supreme Court is quite literal in its taste for the language of leases and contracts, sometimes even when the contract makes no sense if read literally. You need a lawyer to review the deal, and that lawyer should probably be in addition to the lawyer you use to close the deal, because the title agent closing the deal has a duty of honesty but not a duty to explain the nature of the property you bought.
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