California Lien Laws One Year Later: Fill & Download for Free

I did sue one client for fees, in about 1980, and obtained a judgment for about 30k. I recorded the judgment in the County where the client had property but did nothing else to collect. About 10 years later the client passed away and my lien had to be paid for the estate to sell the property. With legal interest at 10% a year it had doubled in size. I felt sorry for the family and waived the interest. I have not sued a client for fees in nearly 40 years. I no longer allow clients to accumulate past due amounts to the point that it is worth suing over. If it comes to that I will just discharge the client and move on. By contract I invite my clients to challenge a bill and I do my best to resolve the difference with respect for how they see it. If done within 60 days I allow a client to cancel any part of a bill that we can’t resolve. I can discharge them but will only do that if I regard their position as wholly unreasonable.In California the law requires attorneys, before suing a client, to invite the client to submit a fee dispute to the non-binding arbitration, conducted by the county bar association. Many fee disputes are resolved by this method.[1]Footnotes[1] The State Bar of California

It is clear you have never been to an auction. The same buyers show up month after month, buying properties. In Texas, they have either cash or cashier checks made out to themselves in $1,000.00 increments that they endorse on the back. They buy, hold, rent, when the time to sell comes, they sell, and buy more.Each state is different and my experience relates to Texas only.Any property not sold goes to the county or legal authority who ordered the auction. The property then can be sold without auction to any buyer. Or it is auctioned again at a later date.In cases where the owner is a defendant from a suit rather than taxes, then only the equity held by the defendant is being auctioned off, and the buyer then has to pay any additional liens.If Sheriff sells an HOA lien there may be right of redemption for a period of time meaning you just might get only your investment back and no property.Know this is not a game for a beginner, the applicable laws have an impact on your ability to make money. If you know them then they will work to your benefit, if not, they will very likely work against you.Can it be profitable? Damn straight it can be. I have made over 500% return in 2 years on one property. (Redemption period was 2 years) Is it likely to be in a low income area? Yes. There was a time in Texas when an HOA foreclosure had no redemption period. A California lender who didn’t pay dues, lost an entire condo development for literally a few pennies on the dollar. Texas law was different from California law.One regular guy purchased a condo, for a few grand, opened the door and found it very nicely and fully furnished including nice clothes. The defendant was in prison and not coming back any time soon.The highest return I ever saw was from a company that left about 4 acres of buildings abandoned in an industrial area of Dallas County. It contained hazardous materials on the site. The buyer was standing next to me got the property for $3,000. I asked him what the hell did he just do? Turns out the company was still active in another state, was solvent, so if there was any hazardous issues, the company had to clear the site and had the ability to clear it. You cannot get a mortgage on a property with hazardous material on the site so there was no mortgage involved. He took over the site, contacted the owner of the property next door, asked him if he wanted to buy it. The neighbors reply was he has been trying to buy it for years. The equipment left on site sold for a multiple of the $3,000 investment. No idea as to the value of the land and buildings, but it was well into the 6 figures. I’m pretty sure the next door neighbor was pleased with his purchase as no agents would have been involved and pretty sure he got a nice discount from market.Learn the laws of your state before you try anything like this. The market is very unforgiving.

Unlike others, I’ll not fault you for living in an HOA. You might have inherited the house or such. I just hope you didn’t purposely buy in an HOA neighborhood to “karen” other neighbors and now you are the one being SWAT’ed, though that could be fitting. Read the HOA paperwork closely, and don’t ignore their letters. I think some can be like condos and townhomes where the HOA owns and maintains the front yard and you maintain the house and backyard. In one near me which we looked at, the HOA maintains the front yards and even decides what curtains you can install. I said “not for me”.If in California, the courts can be very strict. One case widely reported in the newspapers was a vacation home where the HOA got ownership of a house because the owner didn’t pay a <$100 assessment. They said they never even got the letter. The judge ruled that the HOA did not have to prove they informed them. That was considered too burdensome (simpler to just take their house?).Counties can be similarly unforgiving. When I lived in Fulton County, GA, the county sold a tax lien on my home without even informing me. They said they didn’t have to send a letter to my home, but just publish it in the Country Register which the law presumes every citizen reads daily. The dispute was over claiming the homestead exemption while at an out-of-state job for 3 years. They only knew because I told them to mail the bill there. This came up 3 years after I returned and they said they reversed those year’s exemption too because I didn’t re-apply for the exemption. Apparently, I should have known then that they would decide 3 years later that I wasn’t eligible (ex post facto protection of U.S. Constitution?). I took them to court and showed that my exact situation came to Court in the 1930’s where they ruled the homeowner got the exemption since they intended to eventually return to their home. I had returned before this issue even arose. The judge, who worked for the county, basically said “shut up white boy, the law is whatever the tax assessor says” (no, the legislature passes laws). Yes, there was a racial angle, which came out later in the Atlanta Constitution. They were trying to steal houses from people all over the northern half of Fulton County, perhaps following Zimbabwe’s example.