There’s a good deal of irony here. Presidio Terrace’s streets &common areas are now owned by first-generation immigrants. Getting their piece of the American Dream.
This decades old blunder is inexcusable. I had the same error with my tax bill after my mortgage was paid off. The mortgage company never notified the county tax assessor’s office to send it directly to me. They sent the bill to the mortgage company as usual. I caught the error when the bill didn’t come. I knew that I had to pay my property taxes. A quick phone call to the county got my address changed and they mailed me a duplicate bill. This HOA most certainly should have noticed they weren’t writing a annual check for property taxes several decades ago.
The couple wisely took their time (2 years) and got Title Insurance. The sale is irreversible now imho.
Btw, is it common for gated communities HOA’s to own the streets? Is that how they get away with prohibiting public access?
Yes, of course. You can’t just privately gate off public property.
When a housing development is built, the developer builds the roads as well as the houses, and then the roads and any necessary easements are typically transferred to the county or city. In the case of gated communities, the roads aren’t transferred to the county, but to the HOA. So they’re not ‘getting away’ with anything. The roads belong to the HOA, and they’re on the hook for fixing potholes and the like.
That couple got a damned good deal, buying the street for $90K. The residents of those 35 houses are up a creek if they’re not able to use the road. The story I read about this yesterday said the purchase included even the sidewalks.
My WAG is that, despite the length of time since the sale, and despite a seeming absence of legal ground to stand on, this sale will be overturned because money talks, and the residents of this street have plenty of it. Either that or the threat of legal action will be combined with an offer to buy back the street at a price that would give the couple a modest profit, but not one big enough to encourage others to look for similar deals.
For the houses where the only access is by the private street in question, I would imagine they have a right of way by necessity.* Which is consistent with the new owners of the street talking about charging the residents to park; the right to cross another’s land to get to a public way is not the right to park on another’s land.
*Link to a California appellate case describing the elements of an easement of way by necessity under California law.
Sure. The leverage here isn’t “Mwahaha, you can’t even get to your property any more!”
The leverage is “Look at the 120 parking spots that don’t belong to individual home-owners. Oh, sure, you’re used to parking your 4th car and your travel trailer out here, but no more… I’m sure commuters who work a few blocks away would be happy to pay us a modest monthly rental for those parking slots that WE, not you, own.”
[Quote=SF Chronicle article]
He and his wife see plenty of financial opportunity — especially from the 120 parking spaces on the street that they now control.
“We could charge a reasonable rent on it,” Cheng said.
And if the Presidio Terrace residents aren’t interested in paying for parking privileges, perhaps some of their neighbors outside the gates — in a city where parking is at a premium — would be.
[/quote]
Surely they’re subject to the HOA, which has CC&R’s governing the use of the land, right? These wouldn’t be dissolved due to the tax sale. Probably the wording suggests homeowners and lot owners pay fees, and so HOA fees might not be applied. There’s probably wording that the HOA is responsible for upkeep of the landscaping, etc., of the streets.
The new owners could charge outlandish fees for landscaping services and road maintenance, because, after all, the HOA is responsible for their maintenance. On the other hand, the HOA may not have to power to raise extortionist amounts of money. On the other hand the HOA may have legal rights to access the landscaping for maintenance for the same reason that lot owners have the right to get to their homes.
Maybe the CC&R’s specify that parking is allowed on the road, and so there’s no ability to monetize this.
I really hope these guys lawyered up before taking a gamble.
That isn’t clear to me. I assume the home owners are subject to the HOA, and tax sales of any of the homes wouldn’t change that. But the street was owned directly by the HOA. Is the HOA a member of itself? Is a potentially different street owner? If the HOA says that the street that it owns should only be used in a certain way, does that really still apply once they sell (involuntarily) the street to someone else?
Well the question remains if the SF Board of Supervisors has the legal authority to be able to overturn the sale–especially such a long time after the sale happened.
