There is a state environmental agency that has authority to change water permits. No one knows if he has or intends to apply for a change.

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality

Let’s look at it this way. Todd and Vistra came to an agreement on a purchase price. Somewhere between 90 and 110 million. Agreed? Ok the state offers Todd 25 million to stop the transaction. Ok now do you think Vistra is going to take less than the agreed price with Todd? When Todd agreed to pay whatever the price was then they set the price of what it was worth.
So the State is still going to be out the 25 million plus the 110 million purchase price.

I agree with what I think you are saying. About 2-3 months ago a willing buyer and a willing seller agreed on a price of somewhere between $90 million and $110 million. What better way is there to come up with market value than a recent, arms length transaction between two willing, uncoerced parties?

There's your market value, between $90 and $110 million. Todd can claim whatever he wants about future value. Good luck to him with that. If you bought your house and land in June for $400,000, how are you going to argue with the appraisal district that its value is really only $80,000?

So what happens if someone offers Todd 200M for the property ? Sell sell sell lol

If someone with enough money but little enough brains offers Todd $200 million for a property that is about to be condemned, I say they should both go for it.

Big time hypothetical but if that happened the state would have to pay fair market value which would be 200M.

selling price does not set fair market value. It may raise value some when used as a comp with other land in the area. Future value is not fair market value either...Vistra was the smart one, took the money and laughed all the way to the bank.

Just because someone over pays for a property doesn’t make that the value. State appraisal says it’s worth 85.

I will bet a dollar to a donut that Todd gets at least what he paid for the property plus his expenses, and I really doubt that he is going to lose the property. The state had the first option to buy the property, they chose not too, Todd bought it fair and square, if it goes to court I do not see how Todd could lose. No more comments from me, going to sit back and watch it all unfold, I do hope somehow it remains a state park.

What happens if it doesnt appraise for 200M?

Edit

Actually the feds would be looking into collusion. But I get your point and it was big time hypo

So when they built Jerry World they condemned at least 100 houses that people bought fair and square. Some had lived there over 30 years. That has nothing to do with Imminent Domain. ID is taking land from the few for the common good of the many and over compensating them in the process. That's what it is. You act like just because you own property legally it can't be condemned. In this case you have 80,000 visitors per year vs 400 homes. I wish the state had done this right from the beginning but the state has the legal right to do this. Now the price might be too high and Todd is intentionally destroying the park to make it as painful as possible on the state. And that's his legal right. Whole thing stinks and state blew this big time. If they want it it's going to cost them 1.5x to get it back plus whatever damage has been done to the park. If the state doesn't do this the lake will be drained to 1/2 it's current size, thousands and thousands of fish, animals and birds will die. It's f'd up.

Correction and one of my questions from the beginning. Their first offer when they found out Todd had agreed to buy it was some stupid low number. 6 or 7 million. Has the state even done an appraisal. It will come out at some point but I've seen no evidence of one yet.


bronco made a good point. Its not future value. Its the value at some point along the way.
Todd officially bought it on June 1.
TPWD voted to purchase it with any means possible at their Jun 10 meeting.
Around July 25 the TPWD commissioner sent a letter responding to the Freestone County commissioners that said clearly that they had not started the eminent domain process.

What was the value on any of these days. On June 1 Todd had plans to make a billion plus dollar development on it.
It has to be valued at more than he paid for it IMO.
This a different eminent domain case than any I've ever seen. I have never heard of a case of eminent domain being used to buy land that was under development.



If I buy a unique piece of wood for a buck and plan to build something with it I darned sure would think it robbery if someone came along and said they could take it and only give me a buck for it.