"I'm a first-generation immigrant, and the first time I came to San Francisco I fell in love with the city," said Lam, an engineer in Silicon Valley who was born in Hong Kong and came to the U.S. for college.
"I really just wanted to own something in San Francisco because of my affinity for the city," Lam said.
There's a bit of irony in the couple's purchase. Until a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court ruling banning the enforcement of racial covenants, homes in Presidio Terrace could be purchased only by whites.
"The more we dug into this," said the Taiwan-born Cheng, "the more interesting it got."
Bwahahaha.
If it were me, I'd set up a homeless encampment, or maybe a portable methadone clinic or needle exchange.
Why camp exclusively for methadone users?
Pretty ludicrous to have private streets in the first place... (I know we have them in London as well; Canary Wharf for example).
I think you see a bunch of that in California because they can shove the infrastructure costs on the homeowners that way while they can't through property taxes because of Prop 13. Or something.
Which reminds me that the London tourism lot, Visit London, just released a video commercial which uses the first two lines of Blake's "London":
I wander thro' each chartered street
Near where the chartered Thames does flow...
...but does not then continue to use the rest of the poem about how everyone in London is oppressed and miserable, especially our STD-infected prostitutes.
Like how plenty of people use "Born in the U.S.A." without listening to anything but the refrain.
Born in the USA!
I went to school and I got an A!
I ate a hamburger and said Hooray!
6: Come to London and hear the youthful harlot's curse! Only $599 on Delta!
I like this line:
Since the purchase in April 2015, the couple have been quietly sitting on the property, talking to a number of land-use attorneys to explore their options.
coupled with
and that because it's been more than two years since Cheng and Lam bought the property, it could be tough to overturn the sale now.
Which reminds me that the London tourism lot, Visit London, just released a video commercial which uses the first two lines of Blake's "London"
Does it also recommend seeing the Hogarth at the John Soane's?
I like that they basically took the same plan that Boss Hogg tried to use against the Duke family, but they made it work and didn't abuse the powers of the police force in the attempt.
So the rich property owners want to convene a meeting of city officials to void the sale? And a property owner finds this purchase "troubling" AKA even if were legal, decent people would never have taken advantage of that opportunity? Further evidence for my suspicion that the powerful really do think laws are for little people.
I'd say the sale, not the purchase, is troubling in the process that led up to it - the tax bills and past due notices all being sent to wrong addresses for years and then the property being auctioned over a delinquent $1000 accumulated bill still with no notice to the actual owners. If this could happen to a bunch of rich people, there are probably many more low or middle income homeowners being screwed over in comparable situations with less means to redress it. (Not identical situations, since everyone should expect their annual property tax bill, but I'm sure there are many other ways to slip through the cracks.)
14 is correct, but the story is too good to quibble over details like that.
If this could happen to a bunch of rich people, there are probably many more low or middle income homeowners being screwed over in comparable situations with less means to redress it.
I mean, undoubtedly people do get screwed over by government liens (I seem to recall a TAL story on it) but in this specific case, surely either it's the HOA's direct fault, or they HOA has a claim against the accountants.
or they HOA has a claim against the accountants
Who could have no assets or even be dead now.
It seems like the absolute least the city could do to post up physical notices (if the HOA is correct that they didn't, who knows, could also be bad HOA).
The smart thing to do would be for the HOA to negotiate a reasonable price and buy it back. They will probably spend more on lawyers if they try to get it back by (legal) force. But they'll probably go the legal route because of "principles".
Who could have no assets or even be dead now.
Professional liability insurance.
19: If it makes them feel better, they could buy the land back and write "To an asshole" in the memo line of the check.
I'd say the sale, not the purchase, is troubling in the process that led up to it - the tax bills and past due notices all being sent to wrong addresses for years and then the property being auctioned over a delinquent $1000 accumulated bill still with no notice to the actual owners.
Yeah, this. I don't know what the legal requirements are in CA for this sort of thing for notice to the landowner, but from the story it's at least a possibility that the landowner didn't get legally sufficient notice, at which point overturning the sale would be a proper application of the law, not rich people seeking special treatment.
I mean, if they did get appropriate notice, fuck 'em.
For sound reasons that don't involve me being in trouble, I have recently learned that legal pleading start with "Comes now X". This deeply amuses me.
"Enters now Moby, stage left, with a pleading."
It's not used in NY State anymore, but there's another phrasing where asking the court to do something is phrased as "pray the court", that always cracks me up when I see it.
Yes, poor people lose their homes for this, except they don't pay because tax bill is a lower priority than heating or prescriptions, and they are often pretty disorganized.
You then get to pick your own interest rate you want to charge on the debt, possibly subject to a reasonable-for-the-70s usury cap.
Based only on the news article, it seems the hoa chose to have the assessor send notices to an accountant, and when the hoa changed accountants no one - old accountant, new accountant or hoa - updated the address. I am willing to credit this hoa and its professional consultants with a high degree of sophistication, they just fucked up. The hoa presumably had title and liability insurance on the hoa-owned common areas., including the road. And as a private road it wouldn't be maintained by the city, so someone should have picked up that they weren't paying property taxes on it even though they were paying to maintain it. So it's not like the hoa's ownership of the road was some unfathomable mystery.
I don't know if the notice provisions for tax sales of non-residential properties are less stringent, but i believe there is a requirement for at least an attempt at personal notice (in addition to mailed and publication notice) prior to sale for homes. Good luck unwinding a tax sale once the redemption period has ended, folks!
Doesn't everybody snoop on their neighbors by seeing who is on the delinquent tax list?
We were delinquent in our taxes for I think an entire year because we refinanced and the bank stopped putting taxes in escrow (without making this clear to us; thanks, dicks), but the notices were going to the bank.
Eventually, the county sent the delinquency notice to our house, but we had something like 30 days to find $4500 in order to avoid a lien.
Yikes. Our bank is pretty good about not messing with the escrow.
29 Someone managing the HOA presumably was collecting payments from the homeowners and arranging and paying for the maintenance on all that pretty landscaping. I assume that this someone -- presumably the new accounting firm -- is the entity that screwed up by not noticing that they also had to pay property tax. Which [paying property tax] is something that I'd consider a reasonable expectation for an accounting firm to be aware of, even if they didn't actually receive bills from the city.
32: Ditto. The only problem we ever had was where we accidentally double-payed our city taxes after a reassessment; unpleasant, but our bank was good about getting that sorted out.
The only thing that makes me sympathetic here is that I'd think a reasonable taxing authority would post a notice before a tax sale. I mean, sure, the taxpayer has no real excuse if notices were going to a legit address, but for a tax on real property, reasonable efforts to communicate with the taxpayer would seem to include going to the property.
Maybe they tried to go to the property but were turned away by the guy at the security gate?
The county has to make a reasonable effort to provide personal notice to property owner before a tax sale of a personal residence, but not otherwise. The mailed notice must be certified, return receipt requested, and the counties have some reliance protections on the mailing address they use. The bigger picture is that generally CA and other state laws favor certainty in land title and that includes fc and tax sale laws that balance redemption rights pre-sale with strong protections against unwinding procedurally compliant transfers. The bigger big picture is that this policy preference favors use of commercial land to secure debt.
These homeowners are sophisticated parties with resources; provided the county complied procedurally the sale is unlikely to be unwound.
When I was a mid-level associate, I got talked into standing in at the initial scheduling conference for a colleague on a pro bono case over a deficient (says we) noticed tax sale or a garage in DC. The Case of Scotty's Garage. I brought a summer associate with me, just to see the inside of a courtroom.
We did the scheduling stuff, all very routine, but as I turned to go, the judge asked me to stick around after he got through the whole cattle call. Turns out he wanted to see if he could settle the case.
We repaired to the jury room, and he started peppering me with questions far beyond what I had needed to know to handle the scheduling conference. For example, why were we representing this client pro bono -- was he a one legged Korean War veteran or something? I had absolutely no idea at all. The judge, who was widely (not yet to me) known as a nutball, got pretty upset with me, and ordered me to repair immediately to the office of our managing partner to convey his displeasure.
The summer associate ended up in a transactional practice, I think.
Anyway, we were beyond the redemption period, I think, but our claim to set aside the tax sale ws more than colorable.
I was able to find the HOA's actual court filing! SF Superior Court site, case number CGC17560170.
They seem to assert they will be able to show the city knew it was giving notice to a bad address. ("The Association is informed and believes that the City knew that the Notice was not delivered to the Association at the Kearny Street address [the accountant's address] or any other address.")
This sort of thing is indeed a longstanding and bigger problem for poor people.
Well, maybe if it starts happening to rich people more, there will be incentive to fix the system.
Just as Googlebro will lead to better employee protections, this will lead to better homeowner protections, right?
All you needed was a blank comment. Stupid techbros.
This one isn't the techbros' fault. The crickets just need to learn to spell.
The State of Connecticut didn't give me a break on the property tax on my car just because the mailed notice never reached me. It cost extra to get the boot off once I found out I'd missed the deadline, which turned out not to coincide with the regular yearly tax deadline (which doesn't surprise me now that I'm more familiar with property taxes). In fact, I still have no idea what the deadline actually was. I don't plan to go to Connecticut again at any point in my natural life, although maybe I'll have some reason to make the trip.
I was annoyed at the late fee, but it almost seemed worth it given it saved me any other interaction with the state beyond paying up at their authorized car boot/impound* dealer.
*My car wasn't impounded since I paid fast enough, but the tow truck sent out to remove the boot was operated by the impound lot.
What does "boot" mean in this context?
We used to call it portable mud puddle.
Not to be confused with a boot, which you call a trunk, or a trunk, which we call a chest. Or a chest, which you call a rack.
OT, and I can't remember if someone here recommended it in the first place, but I am thoroughly enjoying "The Traitor Baru Cormorant" by Seth Dickinson. LB, Thorn: if it was one of you two who recommended it, and I think it might have been, thanks: if not, allow me to recommend it to you.
Definitely was recommended here.
Or a rack, which you call Eye-rack.
I think Thorn, probably? She's the one who recommended it to me.
Yeah, I thought someone did when we were looking for good economic fantasy novels, but I couldn't find the thread.
Bleed 'em dry. 30 years of not paying taxes is long enough and a private street in a very rich neighborhood isn't entitled to anything need-based.
To be fair, I can imagine this kind of thing happening by accident. As for the city notifying the HOA, the details will come out in future stories, but this seems like the kind of thing where even if they did their due diligence it could easily be ignored. For example, two delinquent tax notices could get destroyed by groundskeepers by accident before anyone notices them, two could go to two different residents instead of the HOA and then be ignored because it's not their problem, two could make it to the HOA and be ignored by amateur elected officials who don't know what they're doing (less likely than usual here, amusingly, but still), two more could make it to an accountant and get lost in the shuffle when the accountant goes out of business or something. But eight notices would be a fair amount of due diligence; the city can only do so much.
This is a tiny bit personal for me, odd as that might sound. Cassandane and I bought our rowhouse five years ago. The house next door to us has been abandoned for decades, neighbors tell us. This causes us lots of minor problems and it's reasonable to worry about major problems. As best as we can tell, part of the reason it has taken so long is that anyone who wanted to buy it at a tax sale would have to foreclose on the previous owners, but they're dead, so a buyer would have to track down their heirs, and so on. If someone were to buy it and start charging for the parking in front of it, I'd be thrilled.
(In fact, tax records show that someone did buy it last month. I'm cautiously optimistic, because it isn't the first time tax records have shown that, and because a new owner is mostly good but we'll then have to deal with construction next door.)
As best as we can tell, part of the reason it has taken so long is that anyone who wanted to buy it at a tax sale would have to foreclose on the previous owners, but they're dead, so a buyer would have to track down their heirs, and so on.
Surely the tax sale is the foreclosure?
62: That sounds logical, but apparently that's not all of it. I hesitate to say it because I don't want to sound like a conservative, but my municipal government really could be a lot more user-friendly for private individuals and small businesses.
I organize the Night Out block party around me, including half a block of really ritzy houses (narrow but spectacular view). I print invites and trot round and put them wherever the mail goes. The Oldest Residents reliably turn up with excellent potluck food and we're slowly gathering younger people who might be into this retro thing.
Anyway so, one of the OR told me this time that she had specially contacted the Oldest Mansion Resident, because she thought he might like to come but she knew he never actually saw his actual paper mail and probably didn't know. And he didn't!
So perhaps the HOA owners were stymied by their house servants. Accidentally, I'm sure.