Next time just remove the land claims and take the items, that always works for me. The function you triggered is really only there to stop people from sharing land space, allowing people to place items, then stealing those items, like if renting. But you own the land now, so just unclaim and take the unclaimed items.
That should not work, as when changing the land the residents should automatically be kicked. We'll investigate if that is possible and it will be fixed in case that works, but I wasn't able to reproduce in a quick test.