Patricia Wendler of Burlington was surprised to find the property of the Holgate home she shares with her husband, John, listed on multiple real estate websites as vacant land and part of a 24-acre wetlands tract currently listed for sale.

The real estate advertisement drew attention because it involves bayfront that is designated unbuildable under the New Jersey Wetlands Protection Act. The owners have recently advertised it as buildable, after a substantial portion of the tract was covered in sand by Superstorm Sandy. They listed the acreage for $2.2 million.

“After 13 years or so, you would think they would know that there’s a house there,” Wendler told The SandPaper, upon hearing her Holgate home site is listed among the wetlands lots now on the market. “I had heard that a company from Florida was going to come in and take that sand out of there. That’s not even an option now?”

Visiting her Holgate home previously, Wendler had noticed a “For Sale” sign that currently lies knocked down in the overwash sand. She credits the wetlands with absorbing enough sand and water to spare her house from little more than some garage flooding and yard damage from Sandy.

“I attribute all that to the wetlands; that sand would’ve been in all our houses. Our whole street was protected. I don’t know anyone on our street, or the street to the north, that got any significant damage.

“Even when we have just windy storms, we don’t get half of what other people get. It (the wetlands) was a protectant.”

Wendler disagreed with the notion of building homes on the wetlands lying behind her Holgate home.

“It’s such a shame because it was such a nice buffer from everything, nice green reeds. And I loved it,” she said. “That’s the whole reason why we bought there. There’s no (other) place where it’s not built up. The whole Island, you’re so close to everybody. To go down to the shore and live so close to everybody wasn’t appealing.”

She said their lot in Holgate was a peaceful setting, apart from traffic. “I could see the water, I could see the bay. We still had access to the beach because we could walk through that low ground. It’s the perfect location. I really would hate it if it became a big development there.”

Though she disagrees with wetlands construction, she admits the sand within the marsh along the Boulevard would represent an ideal piece of real estate.

“Maybe I’ll be buying one of those lots over there,” she joked, referring to the wetlands sale along the beach road that could possibly give a home the rare combination of both an ocean view and a bayfront view. “At that price I think somebody’s going to buy it because that seems like a low price for 24 acres. That is the most perfect spot there because you could look both ways.”

The combination of properties involved in the combined land sale are listed on sites such as realestate.com as “Lot 1, Block 1.63, 1.64, 1.66, 1.68, and Lot 2, 5 6, Block 1.71.”

Wendler’s home is on Lot 2 of Block 1.71, at the southern end of Beck Avenue.

Listing agent Susan Anderson-Ellis of Prudential Zack Shore Properties in Beach Haven would not comment on whether there had been a mistake including the Wendlers’ property in the listing. Yet Anderson-Ellis did confirm that the blocks and lots of properties in the listing were correct in online advertisements.

Wendler’s property being a part of the listing is but one discrepancy in the true ownership of the combined wetlands properties.

Ownership of the six other properties in the listing are all attributed to “David Collins E.T. Etals of Granada Hills, CA,” according to the Long Beach Township Assessor’s Office.

Anderson-Ellis confirmed Collins is one of the owners but referred other questions to the owners’ attorney, Marc Spielberg. Spielberg would shed no light on who the owners of the wetlands are, nor who made the decision to market the Sandy-overwashed land and when.

“At this point I have seen a proposed contract for the sale of the property,” said Spielberg. “I have been given the names of two individuals who are supposedly the owners-sellers of this property. That’s all I have. At this point, it’d be totally inappropriate to discuss anything about this. Personally, I don’t even know how anything on this even reached anybody’s ears.

“There are any number of times where what you are seeing may not be the full and complete records that are available,” he added.

The SandPaper asked a New Jersey title insurance agency for a preliminary search of the advertised properties, and that revealed the largest wetlands block was owned in 2010 by J. Collins, M. Forte and K. Lambert. In 2010, Block 1.63, Lot 1 – which comprises 19.47 acres of the 24 acres now for sale – was valued at $21,400.

Following a title search of one of the properties, the last deed of record reveals that J. Collins is Jeanette Collins of Beach Haven, who on Feb. 14 sold her 50 percent share in the deeds to all the lands – except the Wendlers’ block – to David Collins and Esther Tessel-Collins of Granada Hills, Calif., for $1.

The N.J. Department of Environmental Protection, which retains permit authority over wetlands development, is aware of the Holgate wetlands property listed for sale. Larry Hajna, a DEP spokesman, said this week no one has applied for development permits there.

A story last week in The SandPaper found there is local opposition to building on those wetlands, including from the director of the environmental group Alliance for a Living Ocean.

— Michael Molinaro

michaelmolinaro@thesandpaper.net