400K? No way. This is San Francisco we are talking about. A single, dedicated parking space can cost that much or more. They now legally own one of the wealthiest streets in the city. The minimum offer should be $10 million or more. It doesn’t really matter what the HOA thinks. They don’t own the street or sidewalks anymore now do they? Those that try to play by tyrannical and petty rules can also die by them. They just met people that beat them at their own game.
Yes, but I’m not talking about the last ten thousand years. Obviously throughout human history despots have been able to do whatever they want to their subjects on a whim. But this is the United States in the 21st century. We generally try to follow the rule of law. And part of that is people generally don’t wake up one morning to find that their property was taken from then by a hearing they didn’t know was happening based on a law they were never told about.
This is not, as some people here think it is, a case of the little people getting on over on the powerful. This is a story about the powerful screwing over the little people. If I were Cheng and Lam, I’d make a quick turnaround deal with the government and try to walk away with some profit. Otherwise, they might see the government taking the property from them just like it was taken away from its previous owners.
Hard to say what it’s worth. They don’t own the houses, just the common areas.
Why make another deal with the government? The government is the one who auctioned it.
Is the tax on the street still only 14 dollars a year? Or did the tax rate go up due to the sale?
If the HOA buys the street back, will their taxes go up?
And what the hell is up with a 14 dollar tax? Memo to SF, you should be charging more in taxes. You are probably paying more to administer that tax than you are receiving.
Those common areas needed to be maintained, and the HOA had presumably been doing it all those years. Everything from the mundane (fixing potholes, as mentioned above) to maintaining the opulent landscaping.
Now it’s on the new owners to do all that. It’s going to cost money. So the owners have responsibilities and on-going expenses.
And, the homeowners presumably have been paying fees to the HOA for the HOA to do all that maintenance. So now what? Will a certain portion of the HOA fees now be paid to the Chengs instead, to cover the work that the Chengs must now do? Or will they all work out a deal for the homeowners to continue paying maintenance fees to the HOA and the HOA will continue doing the maintenance?
The point of this question being: The Chengs may be looking a ways to profit (e.g., charging for parking), but they now have expenses associated with the property too. How will this all shake out?
I’ve noticed that toll roads are becoming popular. And some people say that government functions should be turned over to private businesses. Imagine if every street was sold to private buyers. PROFITS! 
Why do the new owners have to maintain anything? They bought a piece of property. They didn’t buy the HOA’s responsibilities to the homeowners.
Wonder what California law is on adverse possession. For how long would the HOA need to do maintenance on the road before it was theirs by law?
Yep. Turn that guard shack into a toll booth, charge a couple bucks every time you go through it, raze the gardens and landscaping, turn it all into high $$ parking.
Only winners will be the lawyers, I predict.
or simply landscape with AstroTurf - green like fancy plantings but you can park on it too!
Adverse possession anywhere only works if the lawful ( and findable ) owners don’t assert their ownership during the period of use.
IANAL, so what does ‘asserting ownership’ mean in a legal sense?
If I use and maintain a chunk of your property as if it were my own over an extended period of time, to retain ownership, do you just need to occasionally say to me, “this is my property, but what you’re doing with it is fine with me”? Or is there more to it than that?
I’m pretty sure that would do it. Then you’d have to start the period over. Hoping I ignored that for the next 7 to 30 years or whatever the local period may be.
In Britain it’s still sort of 12 years, but allowing someone to use the land rent-free is enough to keep it in the owner’s legal possession.
( I’d still charge a peppercorn rent, just to be safe. )
Thanks for educating me!
When I looked into it a few years ago, since my neighbor is using part of my lot, in California you need to use the property and pay the property taxes on a piece of land before you can claim adverse possession. I think that it is pretty clear that they have not been paying the taxes.
IANAL, but it would also be very difficult to prove adverse possession against an HOA you’re part of. That is, you’re already the owner of record (or a part of). And of course in this case they weren’t acting as owner.
What gets me confused in this instance is the question of “HOW?!” This street is evidently chock-full of lawyers and people with the money to hire lawyers. How would you miss the fact that you have to pay taxes? Further, of course, I’m not exactly sympathetic to a packet of very rich and influential people, who couldn’t be bothered to check on their taxes, who then immediately launch lawsuits at other people for 100% following the law. That’s not really something I can get behind, morally speaking, especially when this group hasn’t suffered any harm so far.
Why would they have to maintain anything? Because they own the road, sidewalks and common areas. I think they have to maintain that. It’s probably not cheap, but they should be able to find a way to cover the costs and make a nice profit.
The road is currently being maintained, that’s for sure. Anybody can go there and look. If it hadn’t been, you bet those homeowners would have realized that something was up.
The question isn’t whether the road is maintained but who is responsible for doing so.
I don’t think it works that way.
I think they need to buy three more adjacent streets and then they can start putting up houses.
Once they have four houses on each street, they can put up hotels.
I seem to recall learning it that way.