Paul in PA, post: 440826, member: 236 wrote: The home owners have a right to access.
Of course they do but NOT the public.
Paul in PA, post: 440826, member: 236 wrote: Also the new street owner my be restricted from recovering more than $14/year plus interest.
Then the streets and drainage will deteriorate which is not the responsibility of the new owner. If the residents want it repaired the HOA can force a special assessment to cover paving and drainage issues. Those who choose not to participate in a mandatory special assessment will be subject to a lien and then foreclosure. It would be in the best interest of the HOA to simply purchase the parcel.
Oh I'm sure there is a ton of Left Coast case law concerning access on or across private property. The existence of at least prescriptive rights is probably a foregone conclusion...or access by emergency vehicles. But the bottom line is all of those things are extraneous to the underlying fee.
Paul in PA, post: 440826, member: 236 wrote: The home owners have a right to access. Because the new street owners did not block access from day 1 of acquiring the street, they are estopped from doing it now.
If the fee is $14 per homeowner, the new street owner may have to maintain access at a loss. Also the new street owner my be restricted from recovering more than $14/year plus interest.
Paul in PA
From the photos it looks like there is a fence, gate, and guard shack. Getting stopped before entering could easily count as blocked access. Who knows what a Judge or Jury will decide if it goes to court.
I am sure the couple who brought the tract would be happy to sell at a price they like, and with no lawyers involved.
paden cash, post: 440844, member: 20 wrote: Oh I'm sure there is a ton of Left Coast case law concerning access on or across private property. The existence of at least prescriptive rights is probably a foregone conclusion...or access by emergency vehicles. But the bottom line is all of those things are extraneous to the underlying fee.
Assuming the HOA is/was the owner, all members would be joint owners... no prescriptive rights.
there must have been a trusted bean counter involved somewhere in those 14 years... collecting funds, etc.
Peter Ehlert, post: 440899, member: 60 wrote: there must have been a trusted bean counter involved somewhere in those 14 years... collecting funds, etc.
HOA officers are usually residents who are concerned enough and have or can make time to address and ensure that the regular business that the HOA is responsible for gets handled.
At one extreme, you get an HOA like the one for the neighborhood my family lived in when I was in HS. CC&Rs said that any outbuildings added could be no more than a certain size and had to be made of similar materials and painted the same general colors as the homes in the area. Somehow, the sheet metal garden sheds that you could buy at Sears or Monkey Wards must have fallen through some loophole as 2/3 of the homes had one in their back yard, yet no homes in the neighborhood had rusty sheet metal siding. One family just down the street decided they wanted a better shed than that, so they built a little red barn to the maximum allowed size (10x12). Apparently, somebody complained or maybe the HOA simply felt the need to flex their enforcement muscles. Because the walls of the shed were not made of the same type of rough-sawn wood siding and stucco that made up the majority of the rather generic upper middle class homes in the neighborhood (the barn actually had material that looked better), and because no homes were painted barn red with white trim, the HOA ruled that the homeowner either had to change the siding and repaint the shed, or tear it down. Thus the early demise of the best built and best looking outbuilding in the neighborhood - sacrificed to a group of neighborhood busybodies granted too much authority.
At the other extreme, everybody in the neighborhood, thinking themselves too busy or simply having no interest, just assume that some other neighbor with more time and nothing else of importance going on in their life will handle it, so after 2 or 3 years of the same 2 or 3 people being the only ones to ever attend HOA business meetings or respond to requests to serve on the HOA Board, they simply stop meeting and stop taking care of business, including ensuring that the contracts with the CPA and/or HOA management company are maintained.
The HOA bills to residents were probably issued from the CPA. It's one of those bills that comes along once per year, you pay it and then don't think about it again until you get the next year's bill. Kind of like a minor special assessment, or even a subscription of some kind. If you never get the bill, you don't miss it. That's quite possibly what happened there. The HOA ceased to exist except as a concept in the CC&Rs, the CPA's contract ran out and was not renewed because no homeowner saw themselves as the responsible person to renew it, nor did any know who was responsible. Bills probably stopped coming to the homeowners for dues and bills for services and taxes stopped being paid.
Some will think that certainly after 14 years, the road must have been in such poor shape that at least some of the homeowners should have gotten a clue.
Not necessarily. If it was a fairly well built road in a gated community, not getting much heavy use, and considering the mild climate, the road could very well have remained in pretty good shape for well beyond 14 years.
Peter Ehlert, post: 440899, member: 60 wrote: Assuming the HOA is/was the owner, all members would be joint owners... no prescriptive rights.
That's right. At least in CA, the right of use and access would not be automatic since the road was a separate private parcel owned collectively by the homeowners through the HOA and lost by tax delinquency. They almost certainly could get an easement by necessity, but that will require a court battle that would include a provision that the homeowners would be required to pay for regular road maintenance.
If the parties go that route, I expect that the new road owners might come out just about even, or possibly a bit ahead in that the homeowners' road maintenance fees will go to the new road owners, who will have essentially bought and litigated their way into a fixed income job of road maintenance for a neighborhood full of resentful homeowners. The only real winners will be the attorneys.
IMO, the best thing the homeowners could do at this point is realize they screwed up by having no one in the community willing to step up and ensure that the HOA business was being taken care of, negotiate to buy the street back for a sum that gives the Cheng's a decent but not exorbitant profit, and get their HOA back on track to ensure something like this does not happen again.
Best case scenario is that the Cheng's make a decent profit on what turns out to be a short term investment, the homeowners collectively pay enough that it remains a lasting lesson but not so much as to place an onerous and lasting debt burden on any individual homeowners, and the lawyers don't make a fortune, but still do alright.
