These days, the price of a San Francisco home can easily top a million dollars. However, one savvy investor has bought up a whole street in the city’s most exclusive neighborhood for a mere US$90,000.
Trouble is, some of the extremely wealthy residents of Presidio Terrace were not aware their street was up for sale and are not pleased it has been sold.
Presidio Terrace is an oval-shaped street sealed off by a gate from the tony Presidio Heights neighborhood.
Lined with towering palm trees and multimillion-dollar mansions, the street has been home, over the years, to famous residents including US Senator Dianne Feinstein and US House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.
Thanks to a city auction stemming from an unpaid tax bill, Bay Area real-estate investor Michael Cheng, and his wife, Tina Lam, bought the street and now own the sidewalks, the street itself and other areas of “common ground” in the private development that, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, has been managed by the homeowners association since at least 1905.
Cheng says reaction to the sale has been less than neighborly.
“I thought they would reach out to us and invite us in as new neighbors,” Cheng said. “This has certainly blown up a lot more than we expected.”
It turns out the homeowners association for Presidio Terrace failed to pay a US$14-a-year property tax, something that owners of all 181 private streets in San Francisco must do, the Chronicle reported.
So the city’s tax office put the property up for sale at the cost of US$994 in an online auction to regain unpaid back taxes, penalties and interest.
The couple eventually won the street with a US$90,100 bid in an April 2015 auction.
Scott Emblidge, the attorney for the Presidio Homeowners Association, said in a letter to the city that the owners failed to pay because the tax bill was mistakenly being sent to the address of an accountant who had not worked for the homeowners association since the 1980s, the Chronicle reported.
Emblidge said the residents did not know their street was put on the auction block, let alone sold, until May when a title search company hired by Cheng and Lam reached out to ask if any residents had interest in buying back the property.
That was one of several options Cheng and Lam have considered for making the investment pay off.
Another option is to charge residents to park on their street — and rent out the 120 parking spaces that line the grand circular road.
“As legal owners of this property, we have a lot of options,” Cheng said, adding that nothing has been decided.
The matter could be headed for court.
Last month, the homeowners petitioned the Board of Supervisors for a hearing to rescind the tax sale.
The board has scheduled a hearing for October.
The homeowners association has also sued the couple and the city, seeking to block Cheng and Lam from selling the street to anyone while the city appeal is pending.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in