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SF residents get a shock: Someone bought their street
- xfour 9y agoThis is hilarious but there's no way in hell they'll be able to extract rent. They'll get their 90K back and a note from the mayor or something and the Presidio Hieghts owners will have to pay up in donations to Ed Lees campaign or the local district supervisor.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cylinder 9y ago... this is very basic and fundamental property law. They now own title to the common areas. No mayor is going to be able to overturn property laws which have developed over hundreds / thousands of years.
- londons_explore 9y agoRich and powerful people have a way... 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.
- nugget 9y agoA handful of "rich and powerful" people lost out here. Orders of magnitude greater numbers of "rich and powerful" people rely upon unassailable precedents of property law to "take advantage" of less sophisticated people every day. Nobody is going to risk overturning or weakening those precedents so that the first handful can save a couple million dollars. Just like most ballot initiatives in California, these battles are rarely "rich versus poor" but rather "rich versus rich".
- ef4 9y agoThe thing is, those people stay rich and powerful precisely because of the sanctity of property titles. 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.
- otp124 9y agoSan Francisco & California's property laws are certainly not thousands of years old.
- cylinder 9y agoCalifornia didn't invent a new property system. It was developed over centuries in the common law which goes back to England.
- raldi 9y agoBoth are term-limited out.
- madengr 9y ago"Dianne Feinstein and her financier husband, Richard Blum; House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi;" I'd buy it and set up a shooting range.
- sctb 9y agoWe've asked you before not to break the guidelines by posting uncivilly. Please stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- raldi 9y agoBuried lede: All those very valuable privately-owned parking spaces weren't even being assessed for anything close to their fair share of property tax. 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.
- muzz 9y agoLikely due to state law, ie Prop 13
- stouset 9y agoPresumably, this is also why they want to reverse the sale rather than buy it back from the new owners for — realistically — next to nothing. 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.
- raldi 9y agoYep: "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-proposition-13-change-20140514-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-michael-dell...
- hmahncke 9y agoThis street is immediately to the west, as you come out of the Presidio (Masonic Gate). It looks exactly like an ordinary public street - there's no gate or anything (although there is a sign posted). I once tried to walk in there, to gawk at the houses. Right at the entrance, where the private street meets the public street, I was stopped by a guard who told me this was a private street, and I wasn't permitted to enter. So I kind of hope the new street owners let people go for a walk in there...
- pm24601 9y agoMaybe allow tour buses for a fee.. :-)
- stretchwithme 9y agoMaybe they should put housing on it. Keep the streets as they are (free for residents) but sell the air rights to a developer. That should make the other residents happy. But maybe that would take a zoning change.
- toast0 9y agoHousing is very unlikely to fly, the adjacent property owners almost certainly have access rights through the common areas, and the shape of the common areas isn't likely to accommodate any new residential structures with proper setbacks and what not. Zoning changes to allow for new structures would be adversarial to say the least.
- Veratyr 9y ago> Keep the streets as they are (free for residents) but sell the air rights to a developer. I think OP is basically suggesting turning the street into a tunnel by building units _above_ the street.
- stretchwithme 9y agoExactly. 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-for-manhattan-air-rights.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/realestate/the-great-race-...
- hprotagonist 9y agoIf London and Amsterdam can have houseboats, surely San Francisco can have tiny houses on trailers listed on AirBnB.
- samstave 9y agoActually this is a pipe dream of mine - is to buy a barge and built a tiny house with years and garden on it. Allow for other barges to link up like a tiled map with standard interconnects. 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.
- billmalarky 9y agoMy god man.... you want to create The Raft from Snowcrash?
- hprotagonist 9y agono no. I'm down for driving a zode through it hunting pirates, though! Patri Friedman is the guy who wants to make the Raft.
- soared 9y agoYou should read New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson, this comment fits in perfectly in many ways!
- bdamm 9y agoIn this case, the street is quite steep.
- hprotagonist 9y agoI think you mean "quaint, with the opportunity for an authentic SF experience".
- mikeyouse 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- whipoodle 9y agoResidents' reaction as eye-rolling as it is predictable.
- ritchiea 9y agoI wonder if any of the people objecting to the sale or the possibility of paying the new owners for parking spaces describe themselves as "libertarians."
- rm_-rf_ 9y agohuh? I would not imagine any libertarians would want to overturn the sale as it would completely defy the idea of property rights. 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.
- ritchiea 9y agoI'm suggesting that people often don't act in line with their proclaimed political beliefs when those beliefs don't benefit them in the immediate.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago> I would not imagine any libertarians would want to overturn the sale as it would completely defy the idea of property rights. 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".
- quuquuquu 9y agoI do think most libertarians would agree that the city agents, who have sold the street's rights to someone else due to an arbitrary breech of contract, have acted completely in bad faith and have thus nullified their contract with the new buyer 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.
- owenversteeg 9y agoOh man, every part of this story is great. The Asian couple buying a street that was only salable to whites for most of SF's history, the fact that the fancy gated community didn't pay $900 in taxes, and the $90k price. 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.
- jff 9y ago> 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. 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)
- yellowapple 9y ago"I don't remember if she still has it or not" I wouldn't be surprised if she still does. I also wouldn't be surprised if she still employs armed bodyguards.
- batbomb 9y agoShe does, but most those homes are empty 80% of the time. They have security guards that go around to the homes just to look for people who break into those homes to squat, which is an actual problem. I knew a guy living in one of the homes on that block for free just so that somebody would be around.
- sitkack 9y agoI have such a schadenfreude grin right now! If the gate is on their property, charge rent for that at least! Or by the car passing through it.
- randyrand 9y agoI really don't understand this sentiment. 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.
- sitkack 9y ago> 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.
- rwmj 9y agoThis sounds familiar. In the UK we have a feudal ownership system for some flats/houses called ‘leasehold’, where someone other than the owner of the flat owns the ground. 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.
- TACIXAT 9y agoWe call those ground leases in the US. It's usually a longer term lease for decades, where the lessee builds some property and uses it over that time.
- giobox 9y agoBy UK do you perhaps mean "England"? Scotland's separate legal system abolished feudal tenure some time ago, I can't speak for the other nations within the UK.
- hackbinary 9y agoLeasehold, freehold, and feudal tenure are all separate things. You can have leaseholds in Scotland, but it is not that common. Leaseholds are much more common in England. 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.
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- mortenjorck 9y agoThis is incredible because this is exactly the same pattern of private-infrastructure rent-seeking whose costs are normally borne principally by the working poor: A highway becomes privatized and now you have to spend more money commuting to your minimum-wage job. Your city's parking meters become privatized and now you net less from your gig-economy housekeeping work. 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!
- kbenson 9y ago> 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.
- anindha 9y agoIn FiDi/SoMA single parking spots can sell for $150k. I would be expecting $50-100k per resident.
- kbenson 9y agoThe question isn't about market value, it's about whether the homeowners should have been contacted about the problem and given a chance to remedy it (e.g. First right of sale) 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.
- revelation 9y ago120 parking spaces, rent for each at $100/month (which is still too cheap for the space they cover), sounds like a good deal.
- batbomb 9y agomore like $400/mo. Going price for a parking spot in SF (generally, across the city) is about $200/mo.
- CalRobert 9y agoDonald Shoup would be proud. Free parking is generally a menace to cities.
- ImSkeptical 9y agoI'm not sure that holds true for all streets, especially a private street in a residential area. Suppose there were no problems with parking before - what do you get by introducing a charge suddenly?
- calbear81 9y agoParking spaces go closer to $200+ so that would yield $24,000 a month. Not a bad ROI from this real estate investment! Time for me to go check out this city auction business.
- resu_nimda 9y agoUnsurprisingly neither side in this story seems deserving of much sympathy. Old-money NIMBYs vs. new-money opportunists. "I just love SF so I wanted to buy a part of it." The potential extortion of wealthy homeowners via legal technicality just happened to be a bonus of this great piece of real estate!
- mikeash 9y agoYou see extortion, I see charging a fair market rent for use of their land. 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."
- lemoncucumber 9y agoSee also: http://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/07/26/if-americans-paid-for-the-parking-we-consume-wed-drive-500-billion-fewer-miles-each-year/ http://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/07/26/if-americans-paid-for-... 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.
- mikeash 9y agoExactly. I'm a surburban car user, but I still think the expectation of free parking is harmful to all of us. Why do we get to park for free on government land?
- dawnerd 9y ago> Why do we get to park for free on government land? Because presumably, your tax money is already paying for it.
- pm24601 9y agoThey could allow the homeless trailers to park on the street. That way the homeowners could understand the true impact of the high cost of bay area living.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- iokevins 9y agoGoogle Street View: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7887836,-122.4607777,3a,75y,106.62h,86.25t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sMLoMuNRqIX7-GMjlzrzpng!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DMLoMuNRqIX7-GMjlzrzpng%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D108.895676%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i3328!8i1664 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7887836,-122.4607777,3a,75y,... Note: it seems just Street View displays just a section of the street.
- yellowapple 9y agoI recall seeing such a street right in the heart of SF (I don't think it was that exact street, though) on Zillow when I was scoping out the feasibility of actually living in the Bay Area. No building rights (because it's a street), yet it was somehow for sale independent of the other properties on that street. 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.
- jobead 9y agoHeh, saw this too, my whole office got a kick out of it: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2094740884_zpid/?fullpage=true https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2094740884_zpid/?fullpage...
- yellowapple 9y agoHaha, yep, that's the one. 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.
- hmahncke 9y agoAnother buried lead: >> It’s something that the owners of all 181 private streets in San Francisco are obliged to do. >> 181?
- Xoros 9y agoSo a bunch of really wealthy people are grinding because someone might charge them for something they add for free for years ? I'm sure the majority of them earned their money by giving away free stuff too. Yeah, right...
- randyrand 9y agoI think the issue is that someone can by the street you live on with no notice from the government
- blackguardx 9y agoThey didn't pay property taxes for 30 years. 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.
- randyrand 9y agoWhy not fix this issue for everyone? And stop being over-the-moon because this happened to rich people? 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.
- politician 9y agoIt's a private street that's blocked by a security guard, right? Sell tours.
- randyrand 9y agoThe amount of glee in this comment thread because this is happening to rich people is interesting. I had no idea there was so much classism on hacker news 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.
- maxerickson 9y agoHere's the auction record (it lists the parcel number and other information) https://secure.bid4assets.com/mvc/auction/647729 https://secure.bid4assets.com/mvc/auction/647729 It'd be interesting to see if there are any restrictions or covenants attached to the deed.
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- tnhaoe7843ntdnt 9y agoI love how most comments here are debating the merits of public vs. private parking. Only in California. In other parts of the world, people with $35M mansion park in their fucking garages!
- ww520 9y agoThey have garages, for sure. The street parking are extra spaces. Still they can be rented out to non-residents.
- justboxing 9y ago> Until a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court ruling banning the enforcement of racial covenants, homes in Presidio Terrace could be purchased only by whites. Wow.
- pm24601 9y ago> “Ninety-nine percent of property owners in San Francisco know what they need to do, and they pay their taxes on time — and they keep their mailing address up to date,” said spokeswoman Amanda Fried. See there is the problem ... we are talking about the other 1%
- sachamps 9y agoNews from the United States lead to immediate head-shaking === Probability 30%