Owning the Land Under your House

bella

bella

New member
Hi,

I would like to know if anyone here can answer this about Woodbury/Stonegate, Potty Springs and Laguna Altura....if you purchase a home in one of these districts do you also own the land UNDER the house? Someone mentioned this to us recently and I think it is a very important detail. Does anyone know if you own the land underneath the following:

-Casera @ Potty Springs
-Cortona @ Laguna Altura

Thanks,

B
 
In my purchase contract, it says I own the land beneath my lot down to the center of the earth, and like 5 miles or something of air space above.  But if there are minerals, oil, 100.00 bills buried underneath me, they do not belong to me.  I'm in Stonegate, BTW.
 
as opposed to the HOA owning the land under your house? or are you asking in reference to one of those TIC 99 year lease things. 

i havent seen a sales agreement so i dont know exactly how these are structured, but my guess is you own the land - isnt cortona a traditional SFR (not on motorcourt, regular lot etc), if it is i dont see why you would not own the land.
 
Oh man... this is a World Chaos thread.

As far as I know, true SFR with a defined lot size, you own the land (which I believe what Cortona is).

Detached condo (as in Casero), I'm not sure if you own the land just beneath the footprint of the home, beneath the lot size (which is not defined as far as I remember for detached condos) or not at all.
 
my motor court in laguna altura (PA+HOA docs) i own the land for my lot from the surface to the center of the earth and 30,000 ft of airspace upwards...

do not own mineral/oil rights on my lot if any is discovered

but all this is pretty void because the CC&R's have a whole bunch of restrictions that tells me what kind of plants i may or may not plant in the lot and/or what kind of color i can paint the house and requires HOA approval... like i cannot build a moat around my home to keep out the flimflam

the above holds true for homes with driveways as well since the IP PA/HOA/CC+R is a one size fits all PA/HOA/CC+R

u have the right to obtain any PA/HOA/CC+R docs prior to u signing anything... if ur deciding on a home, u can ask the sales ppl to provide u with a physical blank PA/HOA doc for you to review before you actually make an appointment to sign it... this is just good practice with any type of legal document that requires ur signature regardless of how long or thick the legal doc is
 
no they didnt... that came later

i pointed this out to them and said this is unamerican, but they told me that i squatted for my lot the day of the release, so they did not have all the documents filed and ready for the annexation... i shrugged it off as a IP tactic so i just waited for a month and half... and only then did they emailed me the proper disclosure docs, lot sheet defining the size and surroundings of my lot/yard, and sewage system layout surrounding my lot to signature

in the mean time during the month i was waiting for them, they were trying to get me off their backs, so they just gave me the same documents for a similar lot to an earlier phase for me to review and compare with my own once i got it
 
also if u cannot wait for ur lot size to be determined, u can always get the job card number from IP and go tohttps://irvinepermits.org/to get a preliminary idea...

but please be warned, doing so will also display the actual appraised value of the lot and the amount IP paid for its permits, therefore providing u with a rough estimate of how much IP is marking up and profiting from u
 
Ok, thank you everyone for your responses.  I emailed the people at Cortona but they never responded to me (I guess we weren't noteworthy enough since we did not arrive to preview with suitcase of cash). 

So Casero is considered a detached condo due to the garage being in the back/motor court?



 
it depends on what is being "shared / common area"... if u do not have to pay out of pocket to maintain a specific shared/common area, rather HOA maintains it then it is not ur property... u dont own to the center of the earth/30,000 of airspace for these shared/common areas... typical motorcourts in irvine if found the closest thing that is "common" could be the driveway, the fence surrounding ur home and ur neighbors home, underground sewage pipes, etc... but could all vary depending on how the HOA is set up and from builder to builder...

figured ive answered this far, i might as well help all the way... in the IP purchase agreement, ur lot ownership is dictated in Addendum "O": Supplemental disclosure statement addendum under B: Association documents and Control... this is a generic section that says ur responsible for everything within ur lot/yard line... but its verbage gives u an idea of exactly what im talking about how detached condos differ from traditional condos and the resulting ownership rights

specific lot/yard line for info u can find under the HOA annex documents... this will specifically tell u exactly what area u own vs what the common areas are (private road/neighbors wall/sewage, etc)
 
i just looked at casero, sorry not familiar with the build, but from what i see, its a condo because of the shared driveway, NOT because the garage is in the back...

so in the previous post i described the "uncommon" areas of what u "own"... land to center of the earth/ 30,000 ft of airspace etc that you personally are responsible for to maintain...

the following will give u a better idea of what will happen in the "shared/common area" and what condo ownership signifies...

u see, condo treats ownership over driveways and other common areas that u dont "own" by giving u ONE share/vote per unit, regardless of how large ur unit is... so in a typical 10 unit condo HOA, lets say u own a 1000 sq/ft house and the other 9 ppl own 100 sq/ft homes surrounding urs, their vote counts just as equal to urs... u have no muscle/voting power over the other units even though u pretty much own half of the land there...

in newyork they have another way to deal with common area ownership called co-ops, where each unit is given a certain amount of shares, some depending on the size of that lot, so in the above case my 1000 sq/ft house would be issues 10 shares (1 per 100 sq/ft) instead of 1 (like in the above condo reference), while the 9 other ppl would be issued only 1 share... co-ops retains muscle/voting power... co-ops came when rich ppl like the astors decided to sell their mega mansions (land with lots of units on it and/or brownstone mansions which they decided to cut up into sections to make apartments out of) but want to limit the flim flam that could move in... so if P.Diddy wanted to buy a house/penthouse in nyc, co-ops can vote NO on the sale to stop him from buying into the unit regardless of how much money hes willing to throw down for it... condos have no such limiting power...

this is important because if the master HOA needs a vote to add maintain/fix or upgrade/downgrade a common area, sienna and san remo can easily outvote cartona and toscana just by flooding the votes for any such "shared/common area"...

so now u think oh, i own specific areas of the "uncommon" areas and i can do whatever i want in the "uncommon" areas since i own it?, this is not true... introduce CC+R's (scarey music que)... what CC+R's do is dictate what you can or cannot do within BOTH the common areas AND the uncommon areas... u say WHAT WHY? but i OWN the land in the uncommon areas!!!... ppl with driveways are going WHAT? screw that shit I am a SFR i should have NO common area!!... that is what is so scarey about irvine master plan communities... we dont just pay LOTS of money for our homes, but we waive a bunch of our rights on our land too... that said, i dunno if any HOA has actually escalated/sued ppl for CC+R violations, but its kind of scarey that if they choose to and strictly enforce certain things, they can... :-\
 
here is the verbage... it is the only section in the addendum that talks about the "uncommon" areas... the rest of the addendum talks about the common areas like pool, private roads, parks, HOA, master HOA, etc...

B. Association docs and control

3.) Detached condominiums - your condiminium is essentially equivalent to a tradtional detached single family home located on a seperate lot because each owner in the neighborhood will own a detached single family home (and the land upon which it is located) and be solely responsible for maintaining his or her home.  For a traditional condominium unit, the unit consists solely of airspace inside a building, and the boundaries of the airspace are the interior walls, floors and ceiling of a portion of the building (which building is maintained by a homeowners association).  For a detached condominium unit, the unit consists of an envelope of space that may include air, earth, and water.  The vertical boundaries of each detached condominium unit extend downard to the center of the earth and upward to a plane located at least fifty feet above the earths surface.  The lateral boundaries of each detached condominium unit are shown on the Condominium plan recorded for the phase of development in which the unit is located.  As a result, a detached condominium unit includes all improvements (including your residence) constructed inside the unit as well as the land located within the boundaries of the unit.  (You will not own any mineral, oil or water rights).  As noted above, each owner of a detached condominium unit is responsible for maintaining his/her own residence and all other improvements in the condominium unit.
 
Odd. Just yesterday someone was telling me about the 99 year leases on the land in Irvine if you buy a property. I imagine this is limited to certain areas and is not widely done now? I would think that would impact selling prices, no? I mean I looked at homes on Balboa that were "dirt cheap", relatively speaking, and realized it was the land lease there that was making it so.

As to mineral rights, is it possible to buy them in Irvine? I recently watched a few episodes of that oil boom going on in...the Dakotas???....and people who bought the mineral rights to their property were walking away millionaires, while the rest lost out. Not saying I anticipate oil gushing up out of a manhole cover in front of the Woodbury Starbucks, but still an interesting consideration for home buyers...to buy or not to buy. I am sure those in the oil boom states that lost out had wished they thought about it.
 
i remember bumping into the 99 year lease things near the UCI campus when i was home shopping, so i made sure i wasnt jumping into something like that when i signed... but after 3-4 months of home shopping in other areas that didnt border the campus, i began to think the 99 year lease is isolated to the campus area (didnt bump into it at any of the communities i looked in further away from the campus)

haha since u brought up oil, i remember watching a documentary on the history of orange county, it said something like the OC was a "has been" for oil... we already sucked up most of the oil in the OC area (although there are still some camouflaged homes that have wells inside it that are still drilling in irvine), but they made it so the oil rigs make minimal noise since most of the camouflaged homes with rigs in them are in the most prestigious irvine areas (bordering newport)... so i guess that answers a bit of ur question hahaha someone was already 10 steps and 3 generations ahead of us and already bought the oil rights to the land beneath our homes in all of irvine (thats why we cant have it)... i bet those bastards live in turtle rock... grumble grumble...
 
world chaos said:
i remember bumping into the 99 year lease things near the UCI campus when i was home shopping, so i made sure i wasnt jumping into something like that when i signed... but after 3-4 months of home shopping in other areas that didnt border the campus, i began to think the 99 year lease is isolated to the campus area (didnt bump into it at any of the communities i looked in further away from the campus)

haha since u brought up oil, i remember watching a documentary on the history of orange county, it said something like the OC was a "has been" for oil... we already sucked up most of the oil in the OC area (although there are still some camouflaged homes that have wells inside it that are still drilling in irvine), but they made it so the oil rigs make minimal noise since most of the camouflaged homes with rigs in them are in the most prestigious irvine areas (bordering newport)... so i guess that answers a bit of ur question hahaha someone was already 10 steps and 3 generations ahead of us and already bought the oil rights to the land beneath our homes in all of irvine (thats why we cant have it)... i bet those bastards live in turtle rock... grumble grumble...
Click to expand...

Just make sure that your property description says 'Fee Simple' and NOT 'Fee Lease'. 

Fee Simple = you own the land

Fee Lease = you are leasing the land.
 
gaogi said:
In my purchase contract, it says I own the land beneath my lot down to the center of the earth, and like 5 miles or something of air space above.  But if there are minerals, oil, 100.00 bills buried underneath me, they do not belong to me.  I'm in Stonegate, BTW.
Click to expand...

so who owns minerals, oil, etc, etc buried on YOUR land?
 
Most of the new homes exclude mineral/oil, etc rights. It is written in the purchase contract. In Columbus square I won the land but no rights to minerals, etc
 
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