SF residents get a shock: Someone bought their street
sfchronicle.com
sfchronicle.com
Only this time, it's a middle-class couple doing the same to one-percenters in one of the most elite neighborhoods in the country. Clearly, their predatory scheme must be stopped!
Well, it should, right? If you don't support the practice when it targets the poor, presumably you shouldn't with the rich either. I too find the irony entertaining, but that doesn't mean I'm not hoping for a sane outcome. I would also like to see the Cheng's make some money, since they did put work into this project, just not an extraordinary amount that gouges the homeowners.
Given SF property prices and that it was bought at an auction, selling for $300k-$400k would net them a nice profit, and is well within the means of 35 wealthy residents pooling their means.
Wasn't there some quote along the lines that "you can judge a society by how it treats the lowest"? I suppose it depends on your definition of "lowest", but I'm also a fan of Rawls' theory of justice which is roughly: a just policy is one which you would accept without knowing which side of it you'd be on.
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -- Anatole France (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France)
I can't say I see a huge issue with treating the rich worse than the poor in this instance.
'Fair' is just an ideal; at any given moment there's tons of unfairness around, big and small. If SF had a bug tracker, issues of the poor being preyed upon would be P1 bugs. This issue should be a P3 (which means nobody will ever get around to it).
It's sort of like being alerted to a bug that shows random account personal information, and the instance reported happened to be all test accounts. You don't assume the problem is not large just because in this instance the accounts affected were test accounts, you need to determine whether it affects real accounts.
There's nothing stopping someone from buying up a poor street and charging more for parking than the residents can bear. That's a much worse scenario, but results from the exact same factors as this scenario.
If they weren't rich, they wouldn't have been in this predicament in the first place. Make your bed and lie in it.
[Disclaimer: first person just as a rhetorical device. Author is privileged.]
This sort of arbitrage is fundamentally something you can only do to the middle class or rich, people who are sheltered enough to know convenience. In addition, the richer the people you target, the more likely your scheme is to pay off. This is not the sort of thing to hope for volume with.
That property held in common between a group of people be sold to a third party without their knowledge or consent, possibly because of a tax bill they were not aware of.
> This sort of arbitrage is fundamentally something you can only do to the middle class or rich, people who are sheltered enough to know convenience. In addition, the richer the people you target, the more likely your scheme is to pay off. This is not the sort of thing to hope for volume with.
I disagree. Poor people sometimes own land that has high market value, but they value their neighborhood more. See gentrification. My neighborhood has a park that our HOA fees go towards. If I was to learn at some point that our HOA mismanaged funds so badly that the park was sold to a private party and someone decided to develop some portion of it into residential or commercial real estate, I would be pissed, and I think I would have reason. It would be a real loss to me, as my family uses the park regularly. What's more, it's a public park, so even though my neighborhood pays for the upkeep, anyone can use it.
My neighborhood is new, and isn't poor, but I could easily see something similar playing our in an older neighborhood here (which is not SF), where some interesting property ownership was done during development.
It's not predatory when private property gets seized to pay for thirty years of back taxes and then sold to the highest.
These are two quite different practices.
As I said in a different reply, I think it's highly dependent on situation, and facts that may not have been presented. Was the money for the taxes paid in good faith by the residents but not delivered to the city for some reason? Was fraud involved based on some management company? Was the city informed by the accountancy at some point that they were no longer a valid recipient of tax requests and did not follow up (and is it required to act in good faith in situations like that)? Given the low cost of the taxes and the relative wealth of the residents, it's not impossible that they paid a large lump sum to some management company to just deal with it for the next 50 or 100 years and something went wrong.
Details like those are what would swing my opinion in this case. The residents seem wealthy enough that there's little reason for them to let it slide this long, but if they had reason to believe it was being taken care of and that there tax responsibilities were paid, I think that puts the situation in a different light. We just don't have that information, one way or the other.
I wasn't really taking the predatory part of the original statement all that seriously so wasn't addressing it specifically, and wasn't paying close enough attention to your initial reply to note that you were specifically addressing that aspect, so that's my mistake.
If a management company screwed up, the HOA may be able to get compensation from them. If it was the HOA itself then the residents probably have little recourse, since ultimately they are the HOA.
Ooops toll road use isn't what was expected... that N years is now literally forever.
I don't remember the article mentioning that example. But here's another one with bait-and-switch of the promises of toll roads...
Why? I support other protection systems that only apply to the poor. Right to a free lawyer, or to food stamps or to certain scholarships. What makes this different?
Other people might have a good idea of how to answer this already, and power too them, but I didn't so I think this is a noteworthy comment, and just wanted to call that out.
Interesting rhetorical, but no? This presumes that:
1. The manner of seizure is the same; were the poor in the OPs examples given the chance to "own" their situation? I'm sure it happens, but in all the cases and situations I've seen, the poor are simply subject to the choices of those with better means (wealth, status) to sway decisions.
2. Those you are asking believe in equality across the board instead of some variation of progressive social balance. Not saying that I believe this one way or the other, but I can see why someone would make the argument that what's "fair" is relative in situations like this.
I just think that saying this to start the discussion is an unfair way of painting everyone who opposes your point of view negatively.
Poorer people often own property, as it's one of the few ways of amassing any wealth that are more protected in our society. Sometimes it's inherited. I don't find it unreasonable to think there are neighborhoods of poorer residents that have some property held in common, such as a garden, park or green strip.
> 2. Those you are asking believe in equality across the board instead of some variation of progressive social balance. Not saying that I believe this one way or the other, but I can see why someone would make the argument that what's "fair" is relative in situations like this.
I believe the recourse available should be the same regardless of means. I believe the penalty or cost can in some circumstances take into account means. I think that translates into wanting all people to have an equal chance to resolve the situation in their favor in similar circumstances, regardless of wealth, even if the cost to do so may scale somewhat with wealth.
> I just think that saying this to start the discussion is an unfair way of painting everyone who opposes your point of view negatively.
I don't think so. "Presumably" plays a very important role in that statement. It leaves it open for people to explain a separate point of view, which many have done. I try to choose my words with care, and not be overly assertive about opinion.
With apologies to Anatole France, "the law, in its majestic equality, allows the rich as well as the poor to have their parking spaces used for profit."
Indeed, a righteous outcome would be for this couple to triple or quadruple their investment and make several hundred thousands of dollars, for the effort of going to an auction and then hiring lawyers. Hard work!
All those combine to something. I'm not sure what it is, but I don't think it's nothing.
The fault arguable lies with the accountant who failed to transfer this to the successor accountant. Either way there have been homeowners who have lost home in the same manner - who couldn't afford to correct the problem.
Each and everyone of the residents of this private street: * could have notice the auction. * could come up with money to buy out the couple
Also notice that the couple is now responsible for the maintenance on the street. Charging for parking seems reasonable way to make the street self supporting.
Why do the homeowners have a private street in the first place? Oh... because they wanted a gated community. Tears that no one paid the property taxes on their little enclave.
The answer to that may differ from person to person, and may depend heavily on facts not presented here, such as whether the money was paid be the homeowners but didn't make it to the city, whether the city should have or did know the accountant's address was no longer good for decades, etc.
Because I support sane outcomes when this happens to poor communities, I support the same when it happens to rich ones.
I'm not so sure. If a property that is held in common is going to be sold, perhaps a good faith effort to contact the property owners requires a bit more effort, regardless of whether the amount due is small. The sale price was $90k.
As for the winner, kudos to him. Now he'll either settle for a significant amount of court, or mired in years of civil trial.
I can guarantee that a couple having the capacity and sophistication to spend 90k to acquire a private road knowing that their title will certainly be challenged by several far richer families and would require further investment in defending said challenge, are themselves part of the 1%
Of course we don't know (or at least I don't - I didn't read the article) the background of the owners. They might well be rich.
No.
"The median Bay Area income rose 1.8 percent from 2011, tied for fourth-largest annual gains in the nation. The region’s ranking was unchanged from last year’s survey. The Bay Area’s 2012 median income was 22 percent higher than California’s median income of $58,328."
[https://blog.pacificunion.com/bay-area-median-income-second-...]
The idea that raising 2 years of income is easy is a joke.
Most families do not operate this way: few save that much, and not many have extended family saving that much. Even of those who do, many do not get along with their family well enough to risk borrowing large sums of money.
This was not a group of middle class people coming together. This was a single couple, spending their own money.
I agree with you that some middle class people could raise 90k if they needed to. Maybe to pay health care expenses for a loved-one. They would not be spending it buying private roads.
Why not? They are able to raise far more than that on business ventures as long as they have a business plan that's approved by the bank. Additionally, people buy houses to flip them on credit all the time as well. If you have private investors backing you, this would be an easy sell. That's much easier than you might think as a middle class person, there's an entire section of the real estate industry devoted to private money loans for slightly riskier investments than banks will fund, but at different interest rates. Contractors and investors use them all the time for short term investments (such as building our a lot for 2-4 homes, or some property flips that a bank isn't willing to fund, but a private investor that has worked with the person on multiple loans over a decade has no problem with).
Farmers buy land on auction all the time. It is very common for the auctioneer to have a local banker at the auction site so that someone who wants to bid can get approved for a loan right before bidding. The banker knows how much he will give a loan for (based on an appraisal he has done on the land), and the minimum down payment. This amount is different for different farmers (a farmer who does best practices can get much more profit for acre and thus is worth giving a larger loan to - bankers know who these farmers are)
That's arguably the bottom of the middle class...
That doesn't mean that there is no argument to be made about financial security being a defining aspect of middle classiness.
If you owned just one parking space on this street, how much do you think you could rent it out for on Craigslist?
This land has 120 parking spaces. And it was being assessed at $14 a year in property tax -- not just the parking spaces, but all of the common property.
Change in ownership means reassessment for the purpose of property taxes. Even though the homes in this neighborhood have undoubtedly been bought and sold repeatedly, they formed a legal entity that's held the common area in perpetuity with the side benefit of never having to have this land's value reassessed and property taxes increased.
Makes me wonder if you could perform legal gymnastics to have a home in SF owned by a trust or other legal entity, then sell ownership of that legal entity to avoid property taxes being increased during a future sale.
"Nevertheless, buyers of commercial property have found a way to avoid this reassessment. Instead of buying the property, they buy the legal entity that owns the property. Under rules set by the Board of Equalization, a change in ownership of such an entity doesn't trigger a new assessment of its properties unless more than 50% of the entity is acquired by a single person or business."
"[Michael] Dell agreed to buy the entity that owns the Fairmont Miramar for $200 million in 2006. But after the deal was struck, Dell rewrote the contract, bringing in his wife and two investment advisors as partners. Because none of them held more than a 49% interest in the entity that owned the hotel, the hotel kept its assessment from 1999"
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-michael-dell...
http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/11-a-good-walk-spoile...
Note that the new owners are not threatening to cut off access to the houses. I'm pretty sure that would be illegal. They are merely threatening to charge for parking. Parking space is valuable and something people should pay for.
Edit: I also want to say that having your property auctioned off after you fail to pay property taxes for thirty years is hardly a "technicality."
The expectation that parking should be cheap or free is bizarre when you take a step back and think about it. I don't expect the government to provide massively subsidized self-storage spaces, yet I do expect massively subsidized places to store my private vehicle.
Because presumably, your tax money is already paying for it.
Free use of government property is a great thing when it's a public good, but parking is not one of those situations.
I don't expect private cars to ever disappear, but starting to line up the economic incentives to to disincentivize private car use makes a lot of sense if we're really serious about addressing global warming.
If tax money built the parking spot and tax money maintains the parking spot, then why should the government get extra income from the parking spot? Is my tax burden alleviated when I pay to use this parking spot?
It's not a matter of alleviating your tax burden, it's a matter of alleviating everyone else's tax burden so they're not subsidizing your car. You should pay for what you use unless there's a compelling reason for it to be subsidized, not the other way around. Roads are essential for freedom of movement and in any case are too difficult to toll on a massive scale, so it makes sense to subsidize them. Parking spaces are inessential and easy to charge for, so we should charge for them.
Paying to store your car is not a "tax" so it cannot result in being double-taxed. It's a standard payment in exchange for use of property.
Besides, last time I was in SF I didn't see any free parking. It was all meters and expensive garages.
Free parking is rare in SF, which makes it all the more unusual that the people on this street had it for thirty years because they didn't pay their taxes for it.
Gonna need to provide some sources if you want to claim that public parking doesn't benefit society.
But parking at home? There's a straight line connection between the car owner who uses the space and the cost of the space. I shouldn't expect the government to pay for my parking any more than I should expect the government to pay for my house. In fact, paying for people's houses would be a lot more reasonable, since people need housing, but don't need parking.
I can't come up with any such counterarguments for public parking. It doesn't benefit non-drivers in any way, and the people it does benefit mostly don't need public assistance.
Edit: who pays majority of taxes for road use? It's car owners. You have cheap buses only because car owners paid majority of the bills for road network maintenance and development.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_transit_in_the_United_Sta... [2] https://taxfoundation.org/state-gasoline-tax-rates-2017/
Gas taxes don't cover all road expenses. I looked at Virginia's data (since that's where I live) and nearly as much road construction/maintenance money comes from normal sales taxes as comes from gas taxes. Another substantial chunk comes from the Federal government, and the Feds pay out substantially more than they receive from the Federal gas tax.
$600/year to maintain ~200ft^2 of road seems relatively reasonable to me.
I've heard it said, although I can't find a cite right now, that the construction of an underground parking complex may cost $40,000 per space. You can see how that sort of thing would push the average up a lot.
You can also adjust "annualized costs" a lot by changing assumptions about useful lifetime. In practice, many American suburban parking lots are maintained very poorly and probably come out very cheap per space.
The PDF linked from the article does show more detail than the $600/year figure. While some categories cost a little less than $600/year, several categories cost a lot more, so the average gets up there even though the expensive kinds are rarer.
http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the_cost_of_a_parking_...
Which is basically property ownership/landlordship in a nutshell. Not that I'm disagreeing with you, just pointing out it's something we accept all the time already.
Like everything else, there's a spectrum, and I find the couple described in the article to be on the extreme "slumlord" end, except even more obnoxious because they are masquerading as nice gentle good samaritans.
In fact, they already did, by paying the debts of the property.
All of this was triggered by some super-mega-rich people not paying taxes for ~30 years, which after all this time amounted to a grand total of $900. After ample warning, the street was put up for auction and was bought by someone.
This whole situation could've been headed off at the pass several times: by paying the owed taxes at any point or by outbidding everyone at the auction as a last resort. But they took the "do nothing" route - maybe because they thought they could get away with it? - and got punished for it.
No sympathy from me. We all have obligations, and I get no shred of sympathy from my government when I fail to meet them (they slapped a €20 administrative fee on top of an unpaid €0,20 fine when they mailed the notification to me, just so you can get an idea... that 100x the cost of the fine in "administrative fees").
Why should they get anything more or less than what the average citizen gets?
Still, I don't have much sympathy. You'd think someone at some point in the 30 years they weren't paying taxes would have said, hey, you know, we haven't paid property taxes for the street in quite a while, maybe we should see what's going on with that.
If I had some problem stemming from failing to pay taxes for three decades, I doubt I'd be treated nicely either.
You might argue that the street was always privately owned. But if the parking fees had existed when the residents were searching for a home, they could have factored them into the price, and if the result was too high, they could have easily picked another offer. Thus the parking fees would have effectively been part of a competitive market for housing. However, now that they already live there, moving out would have a significant financial and psychic cost. The limit on the price the couple can get away with charging is set by that (along with, of course, the perceived cost of alternate parking arrangements, again both financial and psychic) - not by anything related to the market value of the land they own.
Yeah, it sucks that they've lost something they assumed they'd have forever when they purchased their property. But that's why you need to make sure that the HOA is in good shape when you buy a house that has one. Apparently nobody noticed, for thirty years, that the HOA wasn't paying taxes on its property, or that the wrong address was listed for it. Did they never have an internal audit?
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hQNIidI...
While I'd like to assume the new owners researched the deed before purchasing, I get this feeling they didn't since it was an auction and simply saw an opportunity to take advantage of wealthy people. My question is, why didn't the city just convert it into a public road?
https://sf.curbed.com/2015/10/14/9911570/unicorn-alert-san-francisco-driveway-for-sale-asks-50k
The laws of easements and adverse possession are highly fact based so it's not worth opining on this case without more facts. But the takeaway is that you _always_ want to have an explicit agreement with people who are using your land, and ideally you want them to pay an annual rent that you enforce, even if it's a token sum of $1.[1] Once you allow people to use your property without an explicit agreement, you open the door to either outright losing your property or losing the ability to control your property.
This is a good thing because, on balance, if somebody willingly sits on their rights for a long period of time it's better that he lose out rather than permit him to, out of the blue, disrupt the settled expectations of everybody else. But it does mean that as a property owner you have to remain at least minimally vigilant.
That's why these streets sell for such little money. If the ability to monetize ownership of these private streets were clear cut, you can bet that they would sell for much more at auction. I doubt this couple were the only speculators who saw this opportunity.
[1] Don't think of paying a token sum as a pointless ritual. In the eyes the law, the regular exchange is objective evidence of the existence of the contract and its continuation.
Adverse possession seems to require an element of you know, possession. No one possessed this property except the HOA until the nice couple bought it, and then their ownership has been the opposite of notorious because they didn't want to come into the light until they had their legal ducks in a row. If the couple had been paying the taxes for the last 30 years it might come under adverse possession. If this goes in favor of the couple without limit to whatever they want to do, it would be because the auction is unreservedly upheld. I basically agree that there is some chance that at least an easement will be found to exist in favor of the HOA. The tax collector did sit on their rights to the detriment of all, including a bit of degradation of the already weak reputation of tax collectors.
My question is, why didn't the city just convert it into a
public road?
A couple things to note:
(1) if the couple does win, then it only bolsters someone else's case to do something similar elsewhere. When it happens in a poor neighborhood and people are up in arms, guess which case will get cited.
(2) there's no way in hell this is going to stand. there are probably mistakes that were made in not notifying all the homeowners of the sale. the homeowners are too rich and too powerful to not find some kind of loop hole.
(3) that couple is in for a world of legal hurt. if they choose to fight they're going to rack up a shit load of legal bills. it's them vs 40 rich people. yes, $90k for the street and $5M in future legal bills. even if they win, they'll be buried in legal bills. And then when they do try to collect parking fees, the homeowners are going to hassle them for every dime. if the couple thinks the homeowners are just going to roll over and merrily pay them any amount of money for parking, they are sorely mistaken.
This isn't "be careful what you wish for, it might happen to poor people too." This is, "some rich people finally get the tiniest taste of what life is like when the entire system isn't rigged in your favor."
There are 40 homeowners who would rather drag that couple through legal hell out of spite than pay a $1 parking fee. And they have the wherewithal in spades to do it.
Even if the couple gets passed all that, the homeowners are going to complain about every little thing. Crack in street? Fix it. Curb crooked? Fix it. Someone illegally parked? Deal with it now. Trash on street? Clean it. Leaves on street? Sweep it now. Grass too long? Mow it immediately. Don't answers these calls immediately? Get accused of negligent landlord.
If the couple thought they could just kick their feet back and collect checks... I just don't know what to say...
Why pay lawyers here? Spite?
If I thought I could successfully "flip" it for, say $500K, which is pocket change for the affected people in that neighborhood, then sure, $190K would be a bargain. And if the 40 property owners could kick in $20K each to sue the investor, surely they'd rather kick in $10K each to buy the street back instead.
I agree, but it's hard to feel bad for the residents of that neighborhood. They're just getting taste of the type of crap that the lower and middle classes deal with every day.
I read that Feinstein owned a home there. They should set up a website taking donations: every dollar donated would increase Feinstein's annual parking costs by a dollar.
In case people don't know who Feinstein is: she co-sponsored PIPA, is a continuing supporter of the PATRIOT Act and SOPA, FISA, warrantless searches, and sponsored a bill that would have criminalized all forms of strong encryption.
[edit] I have a lot of friends with strong political views, from hardcore Hillary supporters to Communist/Socialists to the far right, and literally all of them strongly dislike Feinstein for various reasons. Meanwhile, she keeps getting elected easily and set a record for the largest amount of votes for a Senator. In the last election, she ran against a woman who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page, who got 37% of the vote.
I'd donate to that, as long as the money went to the ACLU and/or the EFF. She's also a notorious gun-grabber despite having been one of the few people in the city of San Francisco to have a concealed carry permit (I don't remember if she still has it or not)
I’m also not sure the sourcing of her armed bodyguards mentioned elsewhere. In DC, all senators are under protection of the Capitol Police, who are armed, but I can’t find details about what protection she has outside DC.
I wouldn't be surprised if she still does. I also wouldn't be surprised if she still employs armed bodyguards.
Except this describes at least 80% of Congress and 95% of the GOP congress. Not sure what you're expecting here, she isn't exceptionally liberal if that's your criticism. Replacing her with a GOP politician will only make the things you complain about worse and it'll add ending Net Neutrality, questionable anti-Immigration policies, gutting the EPA, Muslim bans, and Climate Denial to the mix.
Also the warrant-less search criticism is a little unfair, perhaps not terribly so, but she's one of the few that has called out the CIA for this:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/dianne-feinstein-...
That said, she's too old to run for re-election and this is her last term. Hopefully, you'll get the unicorn politician you want, but I think we're destined for a Californian Republican that'll just make matters worse.
Look, I'm politically active. I go out and have worked for two Presidential campaigns. I'm not going to vote for someone that wants to gut the EPA, stop immigration, or ban Muslims. (I'm also not a CA resident.) But not _all_ Republicans are bad, and one that would win California of all places probably wouldn't be very hard-right.
California is huge and the "California liberal" mythos only applies to certain areas. You can absolutely have a pretty conservative person win the state. Feinstein is arguably the lessor of two evils. She leans right enough to pick up moderates and conservatives but is still socially liberal and liberal-moderate on most issues. Her seat absolutely is at risk of being picked up by someone who will align himself with Trump.
The same way Hillary was a moderate liberal who lost out to people who wouldn't vote for a non-unicorn (Bernie or Bust) candidate while the other side marched lockstep to the voting booth for Trump and won.
There'll be an apology for "accidentally" doing the paperwork wrong, which a judge will say nullifies the sale.
Alternatively, the couple will just be sued for lots of random things, and will run out of cash defending themselves, forcing them to declare bankruptcy and sell the property.
And the city's own incentive is to be as harsh as possible toward unpaid property taxes. The quotes in the story from Jose Cisneros are consistent with this.
So even though the residents are wealthy, they are up against powerful institutional forces.
And while it's absolutely true that the legal system favors the wealthy, there are diminishing returns to being still wealthier. Beyond some point you can afford to have a competent lawyer on retainer and it's much harder to simply bury you in trivial stuff. It's not obvious that these real estate investors will be easy to push around.
I predict that unless an obvious loophole appears very soon, it will be cheaper for the homeowners to just buy the investors off.
So I kind of hope the new street owners let people go for a walk in there...
I once owned a flat where the leasehold was sold off (without my knowledge) for just £500. Unfortunately the new owner of the ground started charging me for ridiculous fees, each one hundreds of pounds for nonsense things. (This is entirely legal). I was very lucky that in the crazy go-go London housing bubble of the 2000s I was able to sell the flat to a less discerning buyer (or someone prepared to ignore his solicitor). But not owning the land under or around your home can be terrible.
Leasehold is something that has been in the news lately. Leasehold is a legal apparatus that makes some types of property management work, somewhat akin to stratifying a property in American and Canadian terms.
Freeholders owns the underlying land, with the leaseholder owning a right of access of sorts. Freeholders generally charge the leaseholders service charges, but like anything, this can and has been abused. Like the current controversy with Leaseholds being sold to unsuspecting home buyers.
What makes such a system "feudal"? It sounds like the normal organization of a condo building, for instance.
May be different for townhouses, but in my area, someone other than owner of condo owning the land would be unusual.
Residential leaseholds are less common in the United States than in Common Wealth countries because of the different political, legal, and housing development histories. But they certainly exist in the U.S.
By contrast, each condominium in a building is usually held in fee simple--perpetual, absolute ownership--except that there are always a common set easements and servitudes related to the obvious fact that each condominium is intrinsically and substantially reliant on the other condominiums--access to supporting structures, plumbing and electrical risers, etc. Shared spaces are held in common by all the condominiums, and title in those shared spaces can't (for obvious reasons) be severed from the title in your condominium. In other words, you can't sell your condominium but keep your title to the swimming pool, even though both titles are fundamentally distinct. Furthermore, on top of all of this are contracts that mediate how the interdependent obligations are to be carried out. Basically, a condominium is a pre-packaged set of titles and contracts that both legislation and courts recognize as a holistic, interdependent set of property rights when mediating disputes. Leaseholds, by contrast, are far simpler.
Sometimes you can have a situation where a condominium is constructed on leased land. There's a huge residential condominium in San Francisco's Chinatown like this. These condominiums sell for substantially less than market prices because, once the lease is up, there's no telling how much the land rent will increase or if there might be a forced sale of the condominium to the land owner. I imagine there are lots of condominiums like this across the country. It seems like a good way for a developer to continue to extract rent while maximizing an upfront return on investment.
OTOH, buyers are especially wary of purchasing homes utilizing unfamiliar legal instruments; cities are likewise wary of permitting such developments; and banks often won't finance the purchase of such units. So these kinds of properties sell at more of a discount than you would theoretically expect, especially in the United States.
There's another kind of shared ownership of residential buildings called tenancy in common (TIC). Usually you only see this happen when a deceased landlord's estate is passed to multiple heirs. Because San Francisco restricts the number of condominium conversions that can occur each year while simultaneously restricting new developments, developers began doing TIC conversions as an end-run around city planners. As these became more common and more marketable, some local banks began to finance the purchase of these units. AFAIK, San Francisco is the only housing market in the country where you can get a mortgage from a bank to purchase a TIC unit without any other form of security. They're a good option for home ownership in the city. There's some additional legal risk, but my guess is that compared to the typical hassles you see with small condominiums, worth it given the discount.
I'm sure the majority of them earned their money by giving away free stuff too. Yeah, right...
People have had land sold out from under them with much less notice. In Colorado, there is a recent get-rich-quick scheme of buying deeds to trailers when the owners fail to pay their taxes. The tax bill is often less than $1000, accrued over 5 years or so. The trailers' owners have the same excuses: they didn't get the tax bill. Many people come out to defend this system because "the law is the law."
Before we spend too much energy being outraged about this street serving the upper crust, I think we should fix this problem for people at the margins of society.
If your taxes are not being paid correctly, you should be notified. Your home street shouldn't just be put up for sale and sold to the highest bidder without your knowledge.
Either its okay for everyone, or okay for no one. It's hypocritical otherwise, and gives us little moral footing to stand on.
Sure, maybe its true rich people usually do this to poor people. But it's different rich people. Being happy because some rich people are getting screwed over because other rich people are assholes is incredibly stupid.
It seems like the residents of this neighborhood are old money NIMBYs and either [ex-]Democrat politicians or donate quite a bit to Democratic politicians.
There are certainly libertarian arguments to be made for honoring the sale.
But I think it's going a little far to claim that overturning a process in which the government assesses a tax on the ownership of your property, doesn't inform you that you owe it, and later sells that property on your behalf without notifying you, "would completely defy the idea of property rights". You're talking about a contract transferring ownership of property, to which the owner of the property is not a party.
You could make a much stronger libertarian argument that the existence of a property tax in the first place "completely defies the idea of property rights".
What the city should have done is physically approached the landowners and done a large public outreach to raise the very small public tax due... before seizing it and selling it to anyone. And now the person who has purchased it wants to seek rent, as if their action is somehow beneficial to anyone but themselves. And the city's argument is that arbitrarily selling community property despite poor serving of papers is how business should continue? Yikes.
When the road owner is the same as the person that lives on the road, e.g. a driveway, yes. But that is about the only circumstance I would endorse. Alternatively, if roads were owned by the people that live on them, I could endorse that too. Privatization of residential roads otherwise makes no sense.
https://secure.bid4assets.com/mvc/auction/647729
It'd be interesting to see if there are any restrictions or covenants attached to the deed.
Leverage solar and teals pattents... I want to take a single tesla drive motor, attach a propeller to it and have a tesla battery pack as the primary source of power for the residence.
Patri Friedman is the guy who wants to make the Raft.
I chuckled at the thought of buying that street and charging for access rights (maybe even setting up a little guard shack and a gate), but then moved on to more productive ventures. Fun to know that I wasn't the only one thinking along those lines.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2094740884_zpid/?fullpage...
I love the suggestion of ripping out the concrete and selling bits of it as souvenirs to fund the pouring of fresh concrete. I'd personally extend it into a monthly farming operation.
See there is the problem ... we are talking about the other 1%
Sure, maybe its true its usually rich people that do this to poor people. But it's different rich people. Being happy because some random rich people are getting screwed over because other rich people are assholes is incredibly stupid.
That should make the other residents happy.
But maybe that would take a zoning change.
I think OP is basically suggesting turning the street into a tunnel by building units _above_ the street.
Although I think this is useful form of property, I also think there needs to be a way to value, recognize or sell the view or open space that people think they are getting when they buy a property. A beautiful view is worth something and somebody shouldn't be able to take it away arbitrarily. But you should also be able to sell your right to it so someone can build. And the same should apply to the expectation that a 100 story building will not be constructed next to your one story house.
It's inevitable that a city will get denser as time goes on. If I had to choose between developers convincing city officials to let them build or their having to buy the rights to do so from property owners, I'd go with the latter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/realestate/the-great-race-...
Wow.
181?
Note: it seems just Street View displays just a section of the street.
Sure, maybe its true rich people usually do this to poor people. But it's different rich people. We know nothing about the people that live on this street. Being happy because some random rich people are getting screwed over because other rich people are assholes is incredibly stupid.
I am sick and tired of those in power wanting "fairness" that always balances in their favor.
They will in slightly inconvenienced at most. They will be pissed because they are getting screwed in way that reminds them of being on the receiving end of power. I can guarantee you that everyone of those rich people have disproportionally screwed someone. Directly or indirectly. If they want their street back, buy it back! Their power comes from their money, wield it.