Originally published at: Gentleman sells his house but won't move out, while new owners have been paying mortgage for 14 months | Boing Boing
…
9 Likes
Is this an eviction, though? The property changed hands and there does not seem to be a rental agreement, so it would appear that the former owner is trespassing?
If I were the owners, I would sue the squatter for rent, as they are now in a property they don’t own. I don’t know California’s laws, but I would think the courts would agree that there is an implied contract for rental services, even if they do not agree to eviction.
35 Likes
I’d imagine that they’ll sue him for a lot more than rent, and probably win (collecting will be another matter). Their main obstacle at the moment is that Covid has created a backlog in the courts. They’ll keep losing money and keep being denied access to the property until that changes.
I feel terrible for these people, caught up in a frustrating situation. The fact that the name “Hossam Boktor” will forever be associated with the terms “arsehole”, “squatter”, “trespasser” and “fraudster” on Google is of only limited comfort to them.
27 Likes
Is there more to this story? If I bought a house in January and they were supposed to move on X date, I would give them X+1 to move and then call the sheriff. January was pre-covid, so why wouldn’t they have been removed then?
10 Likes
The Sheriff will tell you to file a complaint in court.
18 Likes
That’s what I don’t understand. They said the Sheriff told them they were trespassing by being on the lawn, but the Sheriff doesn’t adjudicate situations like this, just enforces them. Sounds like it’s enough of a legal grey area that no LEOs want to get their hands dirty and the courts are too backed up to act.
I hope that the Boktors are just assholes and aren’t clinging to their last thread of housing security. It wouldn’t surprise me, though.
12 Likes
Is that when you call “Two Guys and a Truck and Another Guy with a Taser and Zip Ties”?
(Two Guys and a Truck is a local moving company.)
17 Likes
The Sheriff or local PD will not try to sort out who has legal residence in a property. The court has to do that.
In Sausalito a local FINE PERSON (who was recently in the news for trying to throw black people off the beach) was my neighbor. My home had a 110 year old easement over that guys property as our primary ingress and egress point. The easement is the approach for all city services and just getting to the street. He would block it. I would clear it and my lawyer would send him a letter. Jerk would call the Sausalito Police and report me as a vandal. PD would come by and say “Keep that pathway clear” and file a report that they responded to a neighbor dispute and recommended we seek remedy in the courts plus a note recommending the pathway be kept clear so they would have access to my home.
45 Likes
There must have been some kind of rent-back agreement to the sale that isn’t being mentioned, because property law doesn’t work like this.
6 Likes
AKA “man with a van (and a taser)”.
1 Like
I’d be checking out the local laws regarding noise, investing in speakers, and planning an operation to convince them to get out.
7 Likes
In CA it is possible tho HIGHLY risky to clear escrow and record the transaction before a final walkthrough and handing over the keys. You better be real sure there are no surprises however or you end up where these guys are.
This whole thing seems. like a scam. They apparently were getting a “great deal” and jumped into the transaction without paying enough attention. The bad actor is getting away with it for now but eventually it’ll catch up with him. Real estate fraud is financial fraud and in California that may be the biggest of all no nos. CA’s entire retired old white people who paid off their mortgage populace is HIGHLY invested in staying real rich. “Fuck around and find out”
26 Likes
Yeah, which is why I don’t understand why they’re taking their advice on the matter. I don’t have all the details, but I’d be inclined to be a little more aggressive… shut off utilities, change the locks, maybe even start some highly disruptive construction projects. But it does seem like there’s some missing info here.
8 Likes
He’s probably just fibbing to avoid some later incident that involves the word “multiple” in the report.
4 Likes
Same question I have: seems like the bank/title company has something to answer for here, by allowing them to purchase a property they can’t take possession of. He’s trespassing, from where I sit, if he agreed to sell and vacate the property on a specified date.
6 Likes
A couple years ago my ex-wife’s father sold his house to move to a smaller property.
My ex-wife’s meth addict brother had been squatting in the heated barn on the property for 10ish years.
He didn’t pay rent and there wasn’t any type of contract.
He promised to be out before the sale closed. He wasn’t.
Multiple times the sheriff was called. Deadlines were given. They were missed.
I guess they finally coaxed him to leave on his own after a month a half.
I was no longer part of the family so I only got high level details.
The one thing I know is that even when the buyer and seller both wanted the sheriff to drag him away, that didn’t happen.
11 Likes
This. When we moved to CA, we very nearly got stung by being kind–the folks we bought our place from 10y ago were in the position where they needed to sell the house to have money to move. Our real estate agent thought it was an ok risk to give them 3 days after close to leave, since we wouldn’t be ready to occupy until then anyway (we were moving from out of state). We agreed in order to make things easy on them.
Of course, then when close + 3 days came, they weren’t out. Our real estate agent (and theirs, actually) turned on the pressure, and pointed out that if our moving truck arrived and had to be sent back to the warehouse, it would cost us several thousand $ which we were likely to sue them for. In the end, on the day our moving truck arrived (close + 9 days), we were bringing our boxes in the front door while they were taking their boxes out the back door.
Worked out in the end, but it was a nail-biter. And these guys made us much less likely to be flexible in the future, which is the part that really sucks.
25 Likes
In real estate, every time. At least, it seems that way, so that’s how I operate. The stakes are too high.
5 Likes
“What would you say to him if he came to the door now?”
“Die screaming!”
2 Likes
I realize that it may be blaming the victim here, but I have a habit of only buying empty houses.
2 Likes
