All Forum Posts by: Brendan Hayne

Thank you Lynnette.  So far I've gone down the same path.  I've sent her the survey findings from my surveyor and right now her title insurance company is conducting their own survey work to see if they agree.  I am fairly certain they will see exactly what we see.  

If I wanted to fight I think I think I could win but really I'm not interested in a fight.  She though, is very interested in a fight.  She is frankly too stupid to see the benefit of a resolution to her personally and thinks the adverse possession laws in California won't apply to her and that I have no right to access my own land since she has been using the road to it.

My thought since this is not my primary residence is just to get the results of her survey work and then two surveyors will have confirmed that my rights are clear. Then I sell it to someone and give them all that information. I'll give them a small discount for the difficult neighbor but I walk away with good ROI and no hassles as long as I fully disclose to the new buyer. I'm hoping that her title insurance will pay for a non exclusive easement to share usage but if its going to require going to court it cant possible be worth it.

Does that logic track?

Thanks Jonathan,  certainly that's what she's hoping for but not much hope for an adverse possession on somebody else's property in California without paying the taxes for 5 years.  And exclusive easements that block the owner's access are extremely rare as well.  

Thanks Matt. It's in the Palomar Mountain area. Good advice on checking for easements. I checked and none exist. She's simply been using it for a long time and now wants it to be hers. I know that fighting is just going to cost me money and that if she has been using it for a long time it will just end up with both of us using the road (most likely). My surveyor hasn't set monuments yet. He just located all existing monuments as well as the control monuments for the neighborhood. I don't think I want to pay to have him set them. Again, ROI sucker. Just the fact that we have confirmed previous work from all recorded surveys and have located the neighborhood monuments is enough to sell it. As far a the fight goes, I reached out several times to try to resolve it in a neighborly way and she just refuses. I've spent money already on legal fees to rattle sabers a bit and she won't budge. I think she wants to try to burn down my finances so ill give up. She knows she won't win but wants mutually assured destruction. So It might not be horrible but it still will take my time and at least 15-20k in additional attorney fees.

It has a fantastic view. I wonder if I can find a nice young attorney couple to sell it to.  :)

Hoping to get some thoughts from the investor community.  I purchased a remote property with a cabin last year at auction in San Diego, California. It was very cheap but had some known issues.  My intention was, and still is, to resolve the issues and then sell it.  The first issue was just typical deferred maintenance and that is all taken care of.  The second issue was an access issue.  The property is remote and the bank said it didn't have any legal access.  They disclosed that the road to my property went through someone else's land.  The neighbor told them that it was hers and they took her word with no documentation. Prior to purchase, I did my research and it turned out the bank was just lazy and didn't do their research. The road actually is on my land by 15ft as shown in a county survey conducted years ago. Since buying the property I have also paid another surveyor to confirm the findings. Now the neighbor has placed a bunch of stuff on the road to block my access.

So my basic thought is:

1. I don't want to get into a fight with her by removing her things from my land.  Again, it just about the money for me.

2. I don't want to chase her into court. Too much money for attorneys cutting into my ROI.

3. Now that I have confirmed that it's on my land I can just sell it full market value with "legal" access and then just disclose that it has a difficult neighbor that wants to claim part of the land as her own.  The new owner will accept that and give her the fight she seems to want.

Any strategic thoughts or alternative strategies would be much appreciated.  Thanks

Follow up:  After looking at both Tellus and Stessa I decided that Stessa was more in line with my needs.  Very strait forward free business app for property owners with ability to connect to banks and property manager software.  Haven't seen a single advertisement either.  :)

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.  

Great ideas.  Thank you for the feedback!  :) 

 I will research these and tell you what I come up with.  

Trying to evaluate software for my property business. I have 14 properties (54 Units) with a mixture Multi family and SFR, long term and short term and all in different locations. To make it more complicated I have 5 different management companies. I am tracking all their reports using spreadsheets right now. I would love to centralize it all into an app or online portal that has all my property info and connects to bank accounts to log income and expenses per property. Is there a solution that makes sense for me or are all the software tools primarily for the management companies? I feel like there must be other non-managing owners out there that also need to keep track. Any ideas or solutions are appreciated. :)

Good point.  It may be impractical to assume that my kids will want to run this business.  I hope they will but they can work that out.    But I still need to divide assets with a business partner at some point.  So for the sake of discussion- Let's say partners have 10 properties that all have a brick and mortar value of 100k each.  There are some that have higher rents and lower costs to maintain. That certainly makes them more desirable and from my experience in my day job I believe it also makes them more valuable.  Is there any equation that the real estate industry uses to equitably divide assets taking these factors into consideration?  

I learn a lot from reading the posts on this forum and I would appreciate the expertise of the community.  My business partner and I are thinking about how to pass along the properties in our portfolio to our children.  Our kids don't really know each other and probably wont want to be forced into business together.  So how do we equitably divide the portfolio?  If it were just current market value it would be easy but some properties have higher rents or lower costs to maintain that have to be considered.  

So is there a common formula that people use to valuate a property considering all these factors? Market value, value of rents annually, costs to own, etc...?

Yeah. I just called and asked about that. They don't allow it. Very frustrating to have my money held hostage. But if there are truly no other good options then so be it. Its not a terrible ROI but not nearly as good as my rentals.

Thank you for your replies.