Filed Under: “It’s NOT FAIR!!!”
I offer up THIS little gem about a couple of young, on-the-ball San Franciscans who jumped on a good deal when they saw it.
Rich SF residents get a shock: Someone bought their street
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.
Now they’re looking to cash in — maybe by charging the residents of those mansions to park on their own private street.
Those residents value their privacy — and their exclusivity. Past homeowners have included Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her financier husband, Richard Blum; House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi; and the late Mayor Joseph Alioto. A guard is stationed round the clock at the stone-gate entrance to the street to keep the curious away.
So imagine the residents’ surprise when San Jose residents Cheng and Lam wound up with the street, its sidewalks and every other bit of “common ground” in the private development that has been managed by the homeowners since at least 1905. That includes a string of well-coiffed garden islands, palm trees and other greenery that enhance the gated and guarded community at the end of Washington Street, just off Arguello Boulevard and down the hill from the Presidio.
“We just got lucky,”said Cheng, a real estate investor.
Of course, once said bazillionaires realized their paltry, neglected tax bill had suddenly become someone else’s taxable property, it was TWO. YEARS. LATER.
Nothing like being on-the-ball.
So they’re suing. Of course. The city to vacate the sale, the kids to stop them from reselling to another buyer (it might “complicate” them getting the tax case dismissed), etc. ad nauseum.
Do you think for two seconds you could sue one of them TWO YEARS LATER if they bought your property because of an unsatisfied tax lien? Oh, HAY-YULL no. You’d be laughed out of court, if they even let you file.
So. Smile while you read this.
Life, Morality, People | tree hugging sister | 
August 7, 2017 6:28 pm
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I think it is naive to think wealthy people with the highest political connections are powerless to change laws. They can exact revenge on this guy so easily.
Maybe this little couple is the biblical David, eh? Not saying that the moneyed set isn’t planning their demise in any event, but here’s to chutzpah. And being legally on terra firma.
Smile? I’ve got a grin so wide I’m danged near splitting my face in half.
I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning.