For the last few months, I've been in the unenviable position of having to prove that my house is what I say it is.  Sounds pretty ridiculous, doesn't it?  Welcome to the Florida Keys.

Almost exactly 31 years ago, my parents bought this house as a vacation home.  It was marketed and sold to them as a three bedroom, two bathroom modular home.  They took that description and a copy of the seller's insurance to the insurance agent when they applied for a policy in their names.  Everything we knew told us it was a modular home.

Windstorm insurance is always a hassle in the Keys.  We won't even get into a discussion about rates and such, but this year the main windstorm insurance company opted to cancel everybody's policies and make us reapply.  In order to do so, first I had to prove that my roof is less than 25 years old.  I know exactly when it was replaced -- 1999 after Hurricane Georges ripped off some of it.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find the paperwork, so I had to pay an inspector to come out and do a roof certification inspection.  $150, but worth it.

In the course of all this, my insurance agent went online to check the county property appraiser's description of my house.  That's when my woes really began.  The property appraiser lists my 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house as a 2 bedroom/1 bathroom mobile home.

Can you say, WTF?  For 31 years, my dwelling has been incorrectly listed.  What a nightmare waiting to happen.  Say, for example, that a big storm blows through and wrecks my house.  I'd file a claim under the insurance policy written for a 3/2 modular.  The insurance company might then check the property appraisal and say, "Un-uh, we don' t know what you think you're trying to pull but that's a mobile home."  Right then and there they could have refused to pay any claim at all, or only pay based on wrong information.

Can you say, "Mary would be royally screwed -- and not in a good way?"

I called the county.  No surprise that they weren't able to take my word for it that they had the wrong description.  According to their records, they even had a copy of something called RP stickers that are given to mobile home owners that were issued to the previous owner in 1972.

I didn't care.  I still knew that it is a modular home.  The property appraiser came out to take a look, since there was still that little error in number of beds and baths, too.  She looked under the house, took some pictures and said, "I don't see any metal joices.  Let me talk to someone else in my office."

She did, but given that they still had those RP sticker things on record, they decided that I needed further evidence in the form of an engineer's report.

So, I tracked down a local engineer and asked him to please come inspect my house.  He did and, lo and behold, it's a modular home.

Which I'd said all along.  Now, however, I have the paperwork to prove it and it only cost me lots of aggravation, stress, and $350.00

$350.00 to be proven right. 

You might wonder, as I did, how come nobody noticed the discrepancy before -- like when my parents bought the house.  Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, during title searches, deed paperwork, etc., ownership transfers, tax transfers, etc. that somebody might/should have noticed that it wasn't a mobile home like it said on the property appraiser's records?

You might also wonder, how somebody removed a 2/1 mobile home from a piece of land and built a 3/2 modular home -- without anybody noticing.  And without pulling the permits to do so, which might have tipped off the property appraiser way back when.

Welcome to how business was done in the Keys.  Lots of things happen without anybody seeing. 

There's a certain weird irony at work here.  Sometime between 1972 and 1978, a guy changed an entire dwelling without paperwork.  In 2009, I had to jump through hoops to get the paperwork corrected.

I'm sure that my taxes will also increase now, but by God the description of the house is right!  I'm vindicated.