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. For Stone Ridge resident Haris Silić, however, the notice was sent to the wrong address.

Silić, who has lived in a Stone Ridge home with his husband and children since 2018, faced a months-long dilemma after an unnoticed error on his deed nearly cost him the woods that he and his family had 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 belonged to a deli in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, hours away from Stone Ridge. Silić said he had never lived at or owned property at that address. Amberly Campbell, Ulster County's chief of communications, confirmed that the deed listed a Brooklyn address, which both buyers had initialed next to. The buyer's address section on the property transfer form was left blank, as was the section for an alternative mailing address for tax bills.

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. Had a neighbor not informed Silić of the situation while he was making dinner for his family, he might never have learned what was happening. By the time he found out, a buyer had purchased the parcel for nearly $40,000.

Silić described the situation as a “gotcha moment”. If he could not find a resolution, he feared he might have to move his family away. For his children, who struggled to understand how they could lose their land, the situation was particularly 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, they went through their documents, trying to 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 already too late to register to bid at the auction. Instead, he was told that he could hire an attorney to seek a court order stopping the sale.

Silić said he spent the rest of the day “running up and down Uptown Kingston begging attorneys,” but to no avail. Three attorneys he spoke with that day told him they did not take on these types of cases because they already represented the county. Silić also called 11 other 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?”

Silić credits two Ulster County legislators, Eric Stewart and Lindsey Grossman, with helping him eventually recover his property. He contacted them at his neighbor's recommendation. Stewart, who has experience in real estate, provided frequent updates and the advice Silić needed to pursue the property's recovery. Campbell also thanked Stewart in a 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 legislature approved the sale by paying more than the highest bid — which Silić and his family were able to do by offering $1 more..

“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 waiting for the situation to be fully resolved. 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 advised to hire an attorney. He may be able to recover the money spent to repurchase the property through a surplus-funds process involving the auction proceeds.

Silić has yet to find an attorney. He believes that, as a “citizen and resident taxpayer,” he should be able to navigate the process himself. However, he expects to spend hours working through the forms required for what he described as a “convoluted and confusing” process.

The sale still requires legislative approval, and new deeds could take months to be issued. Silić said he is waiting until January to see what happens. Campbell said the county was glad to have helped 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 carefully 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.”