For homeowners, property taxes are a familiar, if not welcome, burden. If they are not paid, Ulster County is able to use Article 11 of the New York State Real Property Tax Law (RPTL) to conduct foreclosures and put delinquent properties up for auction. Property owners receive a formal notice and deadline to pay back the taxes and any other fees before the deadline. One problem for Stone Ridge resident Haris Silić, however, is that his notice was sent to the wrong address.

For Silić, who has lived in a Stone Ridge home with his husband and children since 2018, an unnoticed error on his deed led to a months-long dilemma where he almost lost the woods he and his family spent years enjoying.

“I'm not that interested in deeds and paperwork. But obviously, you pay the attorneys. You pay the title company. You pay everyone along the way to make sure that they're doing their due diligence,” Silić said. “I guess the first mistake in this saga was that whoever was responsible for filling out the deed information put an address onto the deed that seems to be from somewhere else.”

The address was a deli in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, hours away from Stone Ridge. Silić said he had never lived or owned property at this address. Amberly Campbell, the Ulster County communications chief, confirmed the deed listed a Brooklyn address which both buyers initialed next to, and on the property transfer form, the section for the buyer’s address was left blank. The alternative mailing address for tax bills was also left blank.

As a result, the Marbletown assessor sent tax bills to the Brooklyn address. After these tax bills were left unpaid for three years, the county initiated foreclosure proceedings. If it were not for a neighbor informing Silić of the situation while he made dinner for his family, he may have never learned that it happened; and by the time he did find out, a buyer had purchased the parcel for almost $40,000.

According to Silić, the “gotcha moment” of the situation, which made him feel unsafe, meant that if he could not find a resolution to this problem, he may have to move his family away from Stone Ridge. For Silić’s children, who did not understand how they could lose their land, it was especially confusing.

“It was very violating in many ways,” Silić said. “Like, you did not read your paperwork, and therefore now someone else owns half or three quarters of your land. This land is wooded, but we walk in it in the middle of the winter. We look for different trees there. We explore it. We walk all around it in the summertime to look at the creek that's flooding back there. This is part of our home.”

The night Silić learned about the issue, he and his husband did not sleep, instead looking at all of their documents to try and make sense of what was happening. The next morning, Silić went to the County Office Building in Kingston as early as possible prepared to pay to get his property back, but it was too late to even register to bid on the auction. Instead, he was told that he could get an attorney to write an order to stop the sale.

Next, Silić said he spent the day “running up and down Uptown Kingston begging attorneys” to no avail. Silić said three different attorneys he spoke to that day said they do not take on these types of cases because they already have the county as a client. Silić also called 11 attorneys in Ulster County who did not respond.

“This also doesn't mention the fact that, which I made the county aware, and I told this to [Ulster County Executive] Jen Metzger: what would have happened if I didn't have a job that allowed me to take off that day and go and fight for this in person?” Silić said. “When you think about affordable housing, the county needs to be a little bit more mindful. At the end of the day, the county is supposed to be advocating for me there, right?”

Whom Silić does credit for eventually being able to get his property back were two Ulster County legislators, who he called at the recommendation of his neighbor: Eric Stewart and Lindsey Grossman. Stewart, who has real estate experience, was able to give Silić frequent updates and the advice he needed to get his land back. Campbell also thanked Stewart in her statement to the Kingston Wire for “all his legwork and support.”

Silić was able to re-purchase his property for $40,000 through Ulster County’s Reacquisition Policy. Adopted in 2003, it allows a former owner to recover a foreclosed property after the auction before the legislator approved the sale by paying more than the highest bid — which Silić and his family were able to do by $1.

“I was standing at the Ulster County Department of Finance and all of them were, I think, just shocked by the whole situation. It felt like everyone was watching me get hit by a really slow-moving train,” Silić said. “The only people that moved the needle were Eric Stewart and Lindsey Grossman. As the legislators, they could deploy the legislature counsel to advocate on my behalf.”

Silić is still holding his breath. After going through “this really bizarre process where I am giving the county $40,000 and then eventually maybe getting most of it back,” he was told that he should hire an attorney. Silić could possibly recover the amount spent to re-purchase the property through a surplus-funds process related to the auction proceeds.

Silić, who has yet to find an attorney and believes that this is something he “as a citizen and resident taxpayer” should be able to do on his own, said that he will probably have to spend hours figuring out forms for the “convoluted and confusing” process.

The sale still requires legislative approval and new deeds might take months. Silić said he is waiting until January to see what happens. Campbell said the county is glad to have been able to assist by “connecting them with the County Attorney and Finance Department and guiding them through the county’s re-acquisition policy, which allowed them to regain their parcel.” She also encouraged property owners to review their tax documents thoroughly and contact their town tax assessor with any questions.

“At this point, I'm just trying to make everyone aware that voting in local elections really matters,” Silić said. “The bank that was supposed to own this land never even called me back. I'm just trying to raise awareness around these transactions. Living in a rural county like Ulster County, there's a lot of sales where there are multiple parcels of land, and people should be aware of how these function.”