Rich SF Street Bought Up By Chinks After Owners Dodged Taxes

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Tina Lam and Michael Cheng of San Jose said that in 2015 they were look at parcels being auctioned online by San Francisco’s tax office when they saw a description of “this odd property in a great location.”

“Part of Pacific Heights, the right location, land in a good neighborhood. We took a chance,” Cheng told the San Jose Mercury News. He said they bought the land sight-unseen, beating out 73 other bidders and dropped $90,000 for the street and its common areas.

Lam and Cheng are now the owners of the common space of Presidio Terrace, which includes its sidewalks, garden islands, leafy palm trees and other lush greenery beautifying the homes of 35 mega-mansions after the association that manages the common areas failed to pay property taxes going back decades, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

“We just got lucky,” Cheng, a real estate investor, told the Chronicle about the April 2015 sale.

The homeowners on the street are looking to challenge that luck and win it back, according to court filings.

The Presidio Homeowners Association, which has maintained the space since 1905, blames a wrong address for the misdirected tax bills at $14 a year, bound for an accountant who had not worked for the association since the 1980s. The debt grew to $994, and the street was sold to recoup additional fees and penalties.

“There is nothing that our office can do” about the sale, she said, adding that to her knowledge the San Francisco Board of Supervisors “has never done a hearing of rescission.”

Lam and Cheng could rent out the 120 parking spaces to residents to start making their investment back, an idea suggested by others, the Mercury News reported.

“As legal owners of this property, we have a lot of options,” Cheng said, adding that nothing has been decided yet.