Bay Area

[elt1]

The City of san Mateo has decided you make every home owner a potential criminal. Now every code violation can be now considered a criminal misdemeanor. http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=229106&title=San%20Mateo%20tweaks%20code%20enfo...

While the rest of us are working for a living our government is making up laws that will eventually make us all criminals.

If all the code violations were enforced, and all illegal units destroyed the price of local housing would double.

Codes are changed every 3 years. That means anyone owning an older home is a potential criminal.

[OneTreeHill]

The reason why housing is so expensive in the Bay Area is that buyers are insane and are willing to overpay ridiculous amounts of money for old, tiny, shacks that will become worthless heaps of rubble when The Big One hits. 

[TerriM]

Creepy.

[ptiemann]

Code violations.. can be great revenue, especially if it is a rental property.

I have such a rental. Received a letter about code violations:

- weeds in the front yard in excess of 6 inches

- an appliance is visibly stored in the driveway

- a car with expired tags is visible in the driveway

Each of these violations costs $500 per day, meaning $1500 per day since the date of this letter... which happened to be delivered to my PO Box which I check only every 3 days.. not to mention I had been on a trip.. by the way, the property is only worth $150k, monthly rent is less than the daily fine. [This was not in the Bay Area. I got around paying it.. had to give the tenant notice.].

And the next one is in Sunnyvale. Homeowner has a boat on the property, also triggered a code violation letter. City erroneously sends the letter to the neighbor, high five figures in fines accumulated until the owner finds out about it. They had to pay over $7k in attorney fees to negotiate the penalty down to $31k. Yes, $38k because an inspector did not like the boat. At least the property was worth it.

Sometimes I think it's better to leave the urban areas.

[VRW]

im not sure who is more of an idiot, the person that writes these rules or the person that pays $38k for a ridiculous code violation. I would do jail time before I ever paid that fine.

[El_Katz]

This is nothing more than another tax.  It has nothing to do with anything other than raising revenue in a declining property tax environment. 

[norcalnative]

I think you will find that codes like these do not get written till the city has a big issue that requires such codes to be created. LOL

People or cities generally do not spend time creating codes unless there is an obvious need for them. LOL - I've passed through some areas in that Town where I could see why this code was created.

[ptiemann]

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VRW wrote:

im not sure who is more of an idiot, the person that writes these rules or the person that pays $38k for a ridiculous code violation. I would do jail time before I ever paid that fine.

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in the boat case, it appears to have happened several years ago.

Like you, the homeowner did not want to pay.

The city got a judgement against the homeowner and it got recorded which is effectively a lien against all properties this person owns in the entire county.

Finally, the person wants to refinance or sell one of those properties.. and.. bam.. city collects $31k.. plus interest, I believe.

The sad part was, that owner never got properly notified.

And I had to give notice to an otherwise good tenant because his grass was too high and he was restoring some 60ies muscle car in the driveway.

The building department and code enforcement just have too much power.

[buyinghouse]

You want to see something funny? Go to the properties sold by the NSP program in San Jose. The one on June ave    . It has a converted garage and it says it on the description. Does that mean the inspectors were sleeping on the job or what?http://www.mlslistings.com/1692-JUNE-AV-San-Jose-CA~i19$1060068$RES

[elt1]

Government will take as much power as it is given. In the name of controlling everyone from doing things "we" don't like we have given fascist police power to our local governments. Every zoning restriction takes away rights from everyone.

I have been in the construction business for over 35 years. I have never seen a law or code written to give the individual more freedom... How much control do you want the state to have on what goes on in your own home?