Posted on 08/07/2017 2:06:52 PM PDT by BackRoads775
Thanks to a little-noticed auction sale, a South Bay couple are the proud owners of one of the most exclusive streets in San Francisco — and they’re looking for ways to make their purchase pay.
Tina Lam and Michael Cheng snatched up Presidio Terrace — the block-long, private oval street lined by 35 megamillion-dollar mansions — for $90,000 and change in a city-run auction stemming from an unpaid tax bill. They outlasted several other bidders.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfchronicle.com ...
“Somebody’s gotta go back and get a s&*^-load of dimes!”
Houses got built, city came along and wanted a right of way, making it a public accessible road.
These rich folks decided they wanted a private drive where they could limit access to only residents and install a security shack.
Okay, now its a private road and should’ve been included in the homes taxes, however, they went cheap, trying to save money, and kept it separate.( probably a backdoor deal).
Everything was going according to plan until the peeps bought the deed. Can you say Ruh Ro Raggy
There are 35 “multi-million” dollar homes on the raod. $100K per home = $3.5MM.
doesn’t common law say you can’t deny access?
It looks like the mansion owners got a sweetheart deal because they are the "wealthiest 1%" politically connected movers and shakers of San Francisco, and yet they still managed to foul it up.
They all assumed that someone else was on top of things, and all the while nobody was.
Now watch them move and shake to take their street back by any means necessary. The Chengs may be the only people in the Bay Area who won't have sanctuary.
-PJ
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The bidders are fools.
They bought nothing but a huge money hole.
They are now responsible for maintaining the road, but have no agreement with the land owners along the road, and no hope of getting one.
Prescriptive surface rights are the highest form of land ownership, and are rock solid. 300 years of case law!
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The home owners would be fools to do anything but sit back and grin!
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Go modern, and plaster the street with advertising. That's what young people do, leverage profits by selling advertising space.
Senator Dianne Feinstein has a mansion on that street. Our current mayor, Edwin Lee, lives in a regular house in a middle-class neighbor in the middle of the City.
I agree that the current residents might be able to argue successfully that they have a prescriptive easement to continue driving over the road to get to their houses. However, the new owners might be able to rent out the parking spaces. Or, just for kicks (and to get the Occupy Wall Streeters on their side), open up the street for the unwashed public to park there for free.
I do like the idea of moving the annual Folsom Street Fair there. I can picture 400,000 sweaty, mainly half- (or entirely-) naked BDSM men descending on Presidio Terrace every September.
Prescriptive surface rights are the highest form of land ownership, and are rock solid. 300 years of case law!
Perhaps those 300 hundred years will be defeated by California statutes that require a period of 5 years to establish prescriptive land rights. It appears the parcel has only been out of the original owner's hands for 2 years; i.e., they are 3 years short of any such rights.
There will almost certainly be a law suit (or quiet, but effective coercement) and one of the issue may be what obligations, if any, transferred with the title.
The other lawsuit may be in negligence by the investor against the several land use attorneys.
No, but we are all just fantasizing here. You and I both know that these people have connections and will make these two sorry they bought the street.
But something tells me that these wealthy, well-connected Rats will win in the end.
Agreed.
“Tina Lam and Michael Cheng snatched up Presidio Terrace...”
I know who I’ve got in the next Dead Pool.
LOL......great idea.
The street owner will be lucky to break even on this deal by having the city buy it back.
Outside of that she’ll be sued by the 35 homeowners who will claim adverse possession via the precedent of hostile use.
She’ll lose her land and have to pay attorney fees defending the suit.
I would think that this would make the new owners liable for all maintenance and upkeep....common areas, gardens etc. The article said perhaps parking could be made available to residents from OUTSIDE...that hardly makes sense.. Parking INSIDE the gates? I would say unlikely...
I wonder if this is the same place where Feinstein lived when she took over a parcel of land and claimed it as her own that had been a neighborhood garden area. It belonged to the city and she said, “tough.”
While that may be true, just think of the unlimited fun you could have on your own PRIVATE road until that ruling came down.
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