SANDPOINT – A man from San Diego thought in 2022 that he’d finally ended his five-year quest to find a second home that would eventually become his full-time residence.

The small Mountain Homestead subdivision, just north of Sandpoint, checked all the boxes for Lee Wilson: three bedrooms, close to Schweitzer Mountain ski resort and near Lake Pend Oreille.

It came on 4.83 acres, meaning that neighbors were near but not close.

But the 2022 purchase, which was north of $600,000, quickly turned into a financial calamity and ongoing paperwork nightmare.

The water turned out to be contaminated with E. coli bacteria, the property often floods because it was built on a wetlands, the community septic system doesn’t work properly and the homeowners later found out they probably don’t have a lega

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