K
Katie Hester
Guest
What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? California
I am the president of my homeowners association and we are having problems with a grant deed/easement that incorporates the entrance to our small community. Back in the early 1970's a ranch that was owned by a single party was subdivided into several properties and sold to individual home owners and a corporation was formed in order to collect a yearly assessment for road and sign upkeep. At the entrance to the area, an existing archway and sign hanging from this archway was in place so that people would know where we were located. The entrance including the archway and existing sign were in place in the early 1970's when at that time a grant deed/easement was given to the association by the original owner/owners for ingress and egress of traffic including utility companies. A couple of years ago, the trash company that services our local area went to larger trucks and was hitting our sign causing damage to the sign and the archway, so we decided to move the sign down next to the archway to leave room for the trucks to pass under it. A property adjoining this entrance is not part of our community, but the owner is responsible for 1/2 of the grand deed/easement to the entry and the other half is owned by another property owner who is also not part of our community. The owner of the property on the side where we moved our sign, got very irate and told us to move the sign because it was tacky and people thought that he was part of our community and he did not want people to think that. He finally had a lawyer contact us and told us that we would have to remove the sign or the property owner could make us take down the archway that has been there for over 30 yrs if we did not. We of course removed the sign and decided to update the archway raising it to incorporate the sign on a higher level so the trash trucks wouldn't hit it any more. Shortly after the sign was removed and we were waiting for the workman to make these improvements, the trash truck went through and with it's "arm" in the up position, proceeded to tear down our entire archway. It was an accident of course, but now that we are dealing with the trash companies insurance company trying to replace the archway, we are again anticipating that this property owner will give us problems once the work has begun. Do we have any rights just in case this becomes a problem? Our association does all upkeep on the road, signs, etc and he does not contribute to this, even though he uses our roadway to enter and exit his property, we have also done weed abatement along the easement to keep fire hazards down and he does not contribute to this either. He has only owned the property for approx 11-12 yrs and the easement was in place long before he bought his property. As a final note, the person who owns the property on the other 1/2 of the road easement has not had any problems with our rebuilding the archway or moving the sign. We could just use some good advice to help us prepare for possible problems with this 1 property owner.
I am the president of my homeowners association and we are having problems with a grant deed/easement that incorporates the entrance to our small community. Back in the early 1970's a ranch that was owned by a single party was subdivided into several properties and sold to individual home owners and a corporation was formed in order to collect a yearly assessment for road and sign upkeep. At the entrance to the area, an existing archway and sign hanging from this archway was in place so that people would know where we were located. The entrance including the archway and existing sign were in place in the early 1970's when at that time a grant deed/easement was given to the association by the original owner/owners for ingress and egress of traffic including utility companies. A couple of years ago, the trash company that services our local area went to larger trucks and was hitting our sign causing damage to the sign and the archway, so we decided to move the sign down next to the archway to leave room for the trucks to pass under it. A property adjoining this entrance is not part of our community, but the owner is responsible for 1/2 of the grand deed/easement to the entry and the other half is owned by another property owner who is also not part of our community. The owner of the property on the side where we moved our sign, got very irate and told us to move the sign because it was tacky and people thought that he was part of our community and he did not want people to think that. He finally had a lawyer contact us and told us that we would have to remove the sign or the property owner could make us take down the archway that has been there for over 30 yrs if we did not. We of course removed the sign and decided to update the archway raising it to incorporate the sign on a higher level so the trash trucks wouldn't hit it any more. Shortly after the sign was removed and we were waiting for the workman to make these improvements, the trash truck went through and with it's "arm" in the up position, proceeded to tear down our entire archway. It was an accident of course, but now that we are dealing with the trash companies insurance company trying to replace the archway, we are again anticipating that this property owner will give us problems once the work has begun. Do we have any rights just in case this becomes a problem? Our association does all upkeep on the road, signs, etc and he does not contribute to this, even though he uses our roadway to enter and exit his property, we have also done weed abatement along the easement to keep fire hazards down and he does not contribute to this either. He has only owned the property for approx 11-12 yrs and the easement was in place long before he bought his property. As a final note, the person who owns the property on the other 1/2 of the road easement has not had any problems with our rebuilding the archway or moving the sign. We could just use some good advice to help us prepare for possible problems with this 1 property owner.