I’m torn between being amused and thinking that the Chengs are real assholes.
Because the government is the one that auctioned it.
The government demonstrated once it has the power to take the property away from its owners. Cheng and Lam have to consider the possibility that the government might do so a second time.
And you have to figure in a neighborhood like this, you’re going to get the top rent: two thousand dollars.
How often do you call up government offices and ask them if there are any extra taxes that you didn’t know about but that you should be paying? I’ll admit I’ve haven’t made a call like that.
I don’t know. If somebody takes a valuable piece of property away from me, I see that as suffering harm. But you’re entitled to your own opinion.
On an unrelated note, do you leave your car unlocked and if so, where do you keep the keys?
It obviously doesn’t work that way. Our system of laws is based on English jurisprudence going back all the way to the Magna Carta and a bunch of medieval dudes figured out reasonable compromise on a variety of things, including the concept of easements.
Well, so here’s the thing, if the municipal code is written such that the street owner is responsible for upkeep, and the HOA has been doing it as business as normal for the last two years, when in fact the Chengs should have been doing it, that could give the HOA some leverage in negotiations, ie if the Chengs want to exploit their position, the HOA could try to claw back some back expenses and play hardball going forward in the near future until the Chengs cave on the poor investment.
I hope they build a tiny house on each of those medians and traffic islands.
The city should certainly have done a better job of informing the residents. It’s pathetic, frankly. But the real villains here are the HOA owners. They were being paid to manage the property, and should have known perfectly well there were taxes due. And yes, they should have known to make a phone call to the city if they hadn’t received their bill.
I once worked for a commercial real estate company (for one year, it wasn’t for me) and property taxes were a big part of each manager’s job. We had one check that was sent to the manager instead of the State, and at his old address. The check was 24 hours late, and every alarm bell in the place was ringing. The CEO 500 miles away knew about it. And we found out because we faxed the State tax administration office a list of all of our properties and asked for confirmation that the checks had been received.
Whatever charges are levied on the homeowners to resolve this should come from the HOA management company’s Errors and Omissions insurance. And the Owners need to aim their ire at the City instead of the Chengs.
What, there was some moral imperative to ignore the City auction? Nonsense!
Ha. It’s still San Francisco. You aren’t allowed to build houses there. That would violate the character of some NIMBY’s community.
This is the true issue.
Sure, it’s fun to laugh at rich people’s problems.
But it’s actually a lot more serious.
How is this situation different than the Pharma-bro sleazebag?
He just obeyed the letter of the law, right? All he did was raise the price of medicine 5000 per cent,perfectly legally.
This isn’t some random use-of-a-widget-under-light-of-a-full-moon tax or anything unusual or untoward. It’s property tax which is extremely common and is due annually on the vast majority of properties all across the United States. Any property owner reasonably should know that property tax is due and take steps to make sure it is paid.
That the HOA did not pay the property tax on the commonly held parts of the development for so many years shows neglect. That it was allowed to go on for so many years without the city taking action of this sort to collect is what surprises me.
I’m sure the city has laws that govern what sort of notice is required before proceeding with a tax sale. Usually if a certified letter to the last known address does not result in a response there is an alternate means of service such as publication in the legal notices of a local newspaper. So long as the city followed its own law in making the necessary notifications I don’t think the HOA has a case.
And since the city has no reasonable means to know who the agent for service for a particular commonly held property might be except by the property owner notifying the city of same then whoever at the HOA failed to update the city all those years ago is ultimately the one to blame for the current HOA.
I think most people would be aware they owe property tax on their house and the land it’s on. But a situation where the street that you live on is the collective property of the people who live on the street is not a common one. It’s easy for me to believe people were unaware they owed a share of property taxes for the traffic circle down the street.
True for the homeowners perhaps. Not true for whoever represented themselves as being qualified to manage the HOA.
These were not uneducated homeowners though. They almost certainly used real estate lawyers for their multi-million dollar purchases, and had financial managers of their own. So there is every reason to consider them responsible for knowing and overseeing the responsibilities of their HOA management (or hiring an auditor to do so).
It seems to me that a lot of people had to be negligent in their jobs in order for this to happen, including the management of the HOA and the real estate lawyers of everyone who bought a house in the development during the relevant timespan. And it looks likely that those negligent people will in fact be the primary losers in this situation. Though it is likely that, once all the dust has settled, the lawyers for the subsequent legal battles will end up even better off than the Chengs.
I’m rather curious as to the taxation aspect of this going forward, as opposed to what has happened in the past.
Okay, so the tax was $14 a year for ages. And Proposition 13, which I assume applies to this land, is supposed to be a sharp limit on how much those taxes can be raised… unless it is sold to someone else.
So the couple buys the common areas for $90k. That doesn’t mean that this is the assessed value of the land, it is just how much they paid for it. What happens if the assessment on the land, as one poster guessed, actually comes in at $10 million? Holy crap, that couple is in for a very large tax bill.
Since they’ve had it two years, they are probably already aware of what the tax bill is. But now, even if they “do the right thing” and sell it back to the HOA then they are certainly going to be paying more than they used to.
Aha! I think you just teased out the City’s motivation for the auction. No wonder they didn’t choose to open a phone book, or do a quick google search to ascertain the correct address for the tax bill. They would probably argue that it wasn’t worthwhile for a $14 collection, but the tax increase to be gained is probably substantial.
Unless the fact that the land is 98% easement would counter its value?
Holy Greek Goddess, Batman! If you follow the Presidio’s private golf course up and to the left, it borders on a Nike Missile Site. Just openly labeled, right there on Google maps.
That’s deep.
All Nike missiles were decommissioned over 40 years ago. Why shouldn’t the locations of the former sites be on Google maps?
In any given city, there are multiple properties with unpaid tax bills. Perhaps hundreds. Perhaps thousands. I doubt the office of the tax collector has the manpower to proactively try to contact the property owner. They have a process that works for the vast majority of property owners, and in these oddball cases, it’s not their responsibility to find the responsible person.
On the other hand, there are private companies that compile lists of such delinquent properties.
http://ed-thelen.org/t_tour.html
Pamphlet on a nearby Nike missile site. You know, for tourists.
I have. Several times over the course of my life, for various situations. You want to know what’s weird about it? The government people you talk to will invariably be surprised that you are being proactive about it, despite the fact that NOT being proactive could lead to dire consequences they would cheerfully carry out against you.
In this case, the problem was a shocking lack of the sort of annoying busybody in the HOA that makes dealing with home owners associations such a pain. Catching stuff like this is the only thing they’re good for, and they haven’t had one in 30 years?