Our UK dating system is thoroughly thought through.
The city’s position seems reasonable:
“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.
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We don’t all live under the sea.
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IANAL, but no.
The taxpayers did not have their property taken from them. They don’t have the standing your question implies. The HOA has a case, not the individuals. They’re just neighbors.
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IANAL
I had to look that one up. It sounds like someone’s rather raunchy autobiography.
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Who is the victim here?
The wealthy landowners who are embarrassed by this, or the city who was shorted tax payments for decades and went through the expensive process of public auction?
Choose your own adventure.
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You mean ISO 8601? Depressingly little enthusiasm for it here, in my experience.
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90K is an amazing price, too. A single parking space in the best parts of Boston can go for north of 500K now.
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That’s actually really common. Just another reason I refused to even look at houses in neighborhoods with a HOA.
It’s just that their usual victims are the elderly poor, who are house rich but cash poor.
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If these sort of organisations are anything like they are in the UK, the property owners would be the HOA. Is that not the case in the US?
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Yes, exactly. The onus was on the HOA to pay the bill and stay current w/ the city government, and in this duty they failed. Which I’m sure is going to be the crux of the summation the judge will hand down when he tosses their lawsuits on their respective ears.
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Anyone who gets involved with an HOA is begging for abuse.
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I’m surprised that the adjoining properties don’t have easements giving them access to use that land as a road no matter who owns it. IANAL, but considering that the road looks like the only access to the houses, if the HOA fails to get the property reverted back, the individual homeowners could probably each get an easement by estoppel that would make the land essentially useless except as a road.
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Happens all the time in Baltimore City, senior citizens and poor people losing their homes to aggressive tax sale policies. $750 in unpaid water bills quickly turns into $5000 by the time penalties, interest, and auction and collection fees are assessed. Just this Spring the city sold a lien on the baseball and football stadiums downtown and now “everybody” talking about how this just isn’t “right.”
I have no sympathy for the San Francisco homeowners. They repeatedly failed to meet their obligations and are only raising this issue TWO YEARS after the property was sold. Good luck explaining that one to a judge. They’re only going to be inconvenienced by having to pay these real estate speculators some sort of profit on their investment. Boo fucking hoo. After all, turn about is fair play.
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Here is a copy of what appears to be the lawsuit filed by the Association:
I particularly like this bit:
14. The Association is managed by a professional property management firm. Neither that firm nor any member of the Association was aware that property taxes had not been paid relating to the Common Area.
Translation from lawyer-speak:
“We were paid a lot of money to manage this place and the billionaires we work for have just realised that we allowed their street to be sold and them to be a) inconvenienced and b) embarrassed, so we’re suing everyone we can in the hope that we can fix this relatively cheaply and avoid/minimise the massive law suit we’ll get from the residents.”
As for this bit:
22. Under the California Revenue Taxation Code, the City, though its Tax Collector, was required to make a reasonable effort to obtain the Association’s address and notify the Association of unpaid taxes and pendency of a tax sale.
23. The City made no such reasonable effort, instead sending a notice to an address he City knew or should have known was not a valid address for the Association.
If the Code does require that, why not spell out which provision says so?
As far as I can tell the Code actually has a fairly precise and lengthy set of rules spelling out exactly what the City is required to do before selling a property.
Either they followed those rules or they didn’t.
The Code does appear to envisage the possibility of mailing a copy of the delinquent items assessed to the assessee if the Board of Supervisors thinks that should happen (RTC para. 3384) but that has to be to the address on the Roll.
Which presumably was the old accountants address…
Message to take away - official addresses are important! Make sure they’re up to date.
If you’re a property manager, maybe think about the common taxes and payments you’d expect to be paying for your clients and if you’re not paying them, make some enquiries.
Also check the newspaper of record regularly. That’s your job.
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It seems like the City followed its process and I can’t imagine that this is the first time this sort of situation has ever come up. There are multiple backstops against the whole “lost in the mail” thing here. First off, the City didn’t do this overnight, it took 30 years! The homeowners (or their agents) should’ve known about their responsibilities over this period of time. Second off, this stuff is published in the paper and if the homeowners or their agents weren’t aware of it then I guarantee you that there is an army of lawyers reading this stuff and any of them could’ve taken notice and brought this to their attention for a fee (of course). Finally, TWO YEARS. TWO. YEARS. It took them two years to take action on this sale. Crazy.
My mother lives in a property under an HOA in nearby Marin County. It’s small and relatively uncomplicated and was managed for many years by one of the residents until they figured they could make do with some professional management. They hired a medium sized firm with a long history and good reputation and paid him A LOT of money (relative to their HOA dues) and the guy did almost nothing. They’re reverting back to handling things themselves because when it comes right down to it wouldn’t you like someone a little more involved making sure the place you sleep at night pays its bills on time?
The bottom line is that no one is going to lose access to their homes. This is a problem that will be solved with the generous application of money. The homeowners should be having a legal beef with their old agents and accountants, their current agents and accountants, their lawyers, anybody that they owed them some sort of professional responsibility over the years to avoid this sort of situation. Taking it out on this rather shrewd couple is barking up the wrong tree.
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Residents’ associations are always a problem.
If you do it yourselves it leaves everyone at the mercy of the few busybodies who like running that sort of thing. Either they’re great - until they die or move away; or they’re petty tyrants or incompetent but the only people willing to do it.
So you get professionals in. Except they’re either great but charge a fortune; incompetent but charge a fortune; or cheap but incompetent. In any case, you’re still on the hook for anything they mess up so you have to oversee them - which brings you back to the start.
Well, clearly the buyers knew about the sale and so did at least two other people they bid against. 
To be fair, they claim they only found about the sale recently when the buyers contacted them at the end of May this year.
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Oh you know it wasn’t even the owners it was some third party title company the owners had hired (I think) that made them aware of it by asking the residents if they were going to do anything about it (probably doing due diligence for a title insurance policy, LOL). I thought it was pretty shrewd of the couple to not make a peep about it so that it would be harder to undue the longer that they had ownership of the property.
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According to the law suit, it was when the buyers contacted them to ask if they wanted to buy it back.
That must have been a fun letter to write/phone call to make.
The buyers apparently waited until they had title insurance sorted.
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Not just ours, the rest of the world use DD/MM/YY as well, all except the Japanese who use YYYY/MM/DD (even more sensible as it goes from large to small, just like time [HH:MM:SS]).
Oh, and the yanks do their own utterly preposterous thing, as usual, but there’s no accounting for some people.
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