Any day now, worried the residents of the luxury Metropolis towers in Los Angeles, the building’s power and water could be shut off.
The residential towers, located near the Crypto.com Arena and the L.A. Convention Center in downtown L.A., had been heralded as the best in upscale living, with luxury amenities and access to all the city had to offer.
But somehow, the condo towers had racked up thousands in unpaid utility bills, and residents were concerned they might lose electricity.
And that wasn’t the only problem. Maintenance on the buildings had slipped. The elevators in Tower II were constantly out of service, and the gym’s HVAC unit hadn’t worked in months.
First Service, the property management company in charge of the buildings, warned developer Greenland USA in June 2019 that the development’s homeowners associations were “now officially out of money,” vendors would “not perform services,” and utilities were “at risk of being shut off,” according to an email included in court filings.
That was how Oleg Pariser, a long-time resident of Tower I in Metropolis, discovered that the developer had given itself an abatement that exempted it from paying thousands of dollars in HOA dues each month on the roughly 300 unsold units it still owned.
Pariser said he was shocked to learn that Tower I, with an operating budget of around $4 million, had less than $200,000 in reserves, and that Greenland hadn’t paid any HOA dues since 2018. The developer’s total unpaid tab with the HOAs now totals $6.8 million, residents have claimed in court filings.
The discovery set off a chain of events that led to multiple lawsuits, HOA liens, and ultimately a “desist and refrain” order from California‘s Department of Real Estate preventing Greenland from selling any additional units. That order may be why so many Metropolis units remain empty today, as Realtor.com® reported earlier this month.
At the heart of the conflict between Metropolis homeowners and Greenland is whether the developer improperly used its control of the complex’s HOAs to avoid paying assessments and other fees.
“The directors—even though they’re representing the developer—have a legal fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the homeowners,” says Chad Cummings, an attorney and CPA with experience handling HOA cases, who is not connected with the Metropolis case. “The people that are serving on that board are actually exposing themselves to personal legal liability because they’re putting the interest of the developer ahead of the homeowners.”
A luxury condo complex running short on funds
Greenland USA, an American subsidiary of the Chinese state-backed real estate developer Greenland Holding Group, broke ground on Metropolis in 2014, and began selling units in 2017. Construction on the complex, which includes two condo towers, an apartment building, and a hotel, was completed in 2019.
Oleg Pariser was among the first to buy in the complex. He bought a one-bedroom in Tower I on an upper floor for more than $800,000.
Pariser, a senior software developer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says he wanted to try out high-rise living in downtown L.A.
“The whole area was going away from being just basically a commercial center, to also being a residential community,” he tells Realtor.com.
He watched as the building slowly filled up, and noted that many of the other owners actually lived in mainland China and subleased the units out to local students and professionals.
Condo owners in the development contributed to two homeowners association funds: the Met Master Association, which covered the overall complex, and their individual building’s subassociation.
Pariser joined the board of Met I—the HOA of Tower I—in 2019. Tower I is smaller than Tower II, with around 308 units, 50 of which Greenland still owns, while Tower II has 514 units, around 250 of which Greenland owns, according to public records reviewed by Realtor.com.
Early on, Pariser says he raised issues on the board about the lack of reserve funds in the Met Master Association account, but says he found it difficult to make headway.
“I was seeing that a big component is still that this foreign corporation is owning a big portion of the development, and they are just not paying” HOA dues on those units, he says.
In 2023, Pariser filed a complaint against the Metropolis Master Association, the governing HOA of both Metropolis Towers, in small claims court. In it, he asked that the previous year’s board elections be voided because “Greenland maintained wrongful control of the Met Master Board in reliance on illegal abatement agreements, offsets, and credits that were the product of unfair and unreasonable self-dealing transactions.”
In essence, the complaint argued, because Greenland had given itself an assessment exemption on the units it owned, it was not in good financial standing with the association. And under the Metropolis Master Declaration of Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions, board members had to be in good standing to be elected. Because of this, Pariser argued, the “association must disqualify all candidates or directors who are delinquent in the payment of assessments absent compliance with an agreed-upon payment plan.”
How delinquent were they? In 2020 alone, the board granted Greenland more than $1.2 million in abatements, according to the lawsuit.
“On at least one occasion, the entire Metropolis I high-rise tower was within hours of losing water and electricity, because Master HOA had no funds to pay the utility bills,” Pariser’s lawsuit noted. “Also, Metropolis I has on multiple occasions experienced utility disconnections such as inoperable elevator emergency phone lines, phone lines in the common area, and intercom at the garage entrance due to Master HOA’s repeated failure to timely pay its vendors’ invoices.”
Pariser won his small claims case in 2024, and the 2022 election of Greenland representatives to the Met Master Association board was voided. But that wasn’t the end of developer control at Metropolis.
Then in 2025, David Nealy, a resident of Tower II, challenged the Master HOA’s 2024 election, in which three representatives of the development company were elected to the board. He argued it violated association election rules and guidelines. In April 2026, a Los Angeles County judge agreed, and told the developers they would need to hold a new election within 90 days of the order. That election has yet to happen, though the Master HOA now says it will take place in December.
Also in 2025, Nealy and fellow Tower II resident Nitin Bhatnager filed a separate lawsuit in the Superior Court of the State of California against the Metropolis Master Association, property management company FirstService, and several current and former board members who represented Greenland on the Master HOA board. The suit argued that Greenland-backed board members were in breach of fiduciary duty and in breach of contract by failing to collect assessments from developer-owned units.
To make up for the lack of income from the Greenland units, the lawsuit argued, “it is reasonably certain that Master HOA will have to specially assess the non-Greenland owners in Metropolis I and II millions of dollars just to catch up financially.”
Nealy says that process has already begun. In 2025, homeowners were required to vote on an increase in assessment fees of more than 20%.
Nealy and Bhatnager’s suit estimates that Greenland owes more than $6.8 million in unpaid assessment fees. They are asking for damages to be paid, and asking that any agreements made to abate the assessments are voided.
The Department of Real Estate steps in
When Nealy and Pariser took on Greenland, the California Department of Real Estate took notice. In 2023, the regulator issued a rarely used “desist and refrain” order against Greenland USA, ordering them to stop selling units in both 889 Francisco St. and 877 Francisco St.
The DRE took issue with amendments Greenland had requested to its Final Subdivision Public Report. A Final Subdivision Public Report is a disclosure document for prospective buyers that the DRE issues and that legally authorizes a developer to sell in the state.
It wasn’t what was in the amendments, but what was left out, which set off alarm bells for the DRE.
Greenland’s amendment requests included an updated budget and provisions for a reciprocal easement agreement, but they failed to mention its developer-owned condo assessment abatements. Thanks to Pariser’s lawsuit, the DRE learned about everything the amendment requests allegedly left out.
The DRE was not happy. Per its ruling, “Respondents entered into an assessment abatement agreement with the Metropolis I Condominium Owner’s Association (“Association”) to lower the expenses it was to pay on unsold units, which constitute material changes in the setup of the offering of interests in the subdivision” and failed to notify the DRE of the changes.
Greenland USA resubmitted its public report filings, and in December 2025 the DRE issued a new public report—but only for Tower II. This unblocked the sale of properties in that building. However, sales of properties in Tower I are still prohibited. Nealy and Bhatnager’s case is still moving through the courts. The next hearing is in March 2027.
HOA liens and tax delinquencies continue to plague the towers
Even as Greenland has once again been granted the right to sell units in Tower II, it hasn’t aggressively moved to do so.
One possible reason may be that, until recently, all 300 or so units owned by Greenland USA were delinquent on their property taxes. All of the units reviewed by Realtor.com received delinquency notices in 2024 and 2025.
The units are listed as “current” and paid up in full as of today, though a review of property tax records only showed payments for 2025 and not 2024.
“Certainly, if I were representing a buyer, I would want to see proof from the seller that property taxes were actually paid that year and would not allow a client to close on the purchase until we had independently validated whatever documentation was provided,” said the attorney Cummings.
Similarly, all 50 developer-owned units in Tower I currently have HOA liens against them—because the developer is no longer in control of the sub-HOA for that building. Tower II doesn’t have liens, but only because the developer still controls Tower II’s HOA.
Holding on to the units in Tower II prevents a full turnover of the building to non-homeowner developer control, according to the HOA’s governing documents. And that’s sort of the point.
“Placement of liens requires board’s approval,” explains Pariser. “Greenland employees sitting on these boards routinely approve placement of liens for regular homeowners, but Greenland-controlled boards do absolutely nothing with regards to non-payment of assessments on Greenland’s unsold condos. Not only are liens not placed, but late fees and interest are not assessed.”
The liens matter, because when a lien is attached to the property, any past debts must be cleared before a property can be sold or refinanced.
Which is why, Cummings says, any real estate agent that sees an HOA lien or a delinquent property tax bill will tell a buyer, “you need to run, not walk, in the other direction.”
If Metropolis homeowners really want to push the issue, he recommends they file a foreclosure action to enforce the HOA liens. “If there’s not a lien, liens need to be placed, but that’s not going to magically happen. Somebody has to hire an attorney, pay a retainer, and start placing liens on the units.” Cummings acknowledges that it could cost millions for that type of action to wind its way through court.
Until then, he says, Greenland “has every incentive to just sit still and do nothing. They probably know that these units are going to be foreclosed at some point, so they have every incentive to sit still, do nothing, and just drag things out.”
“I’m sure they’d love to sell these units if they didn’t have to bring a whole crap load of money to the table to do it, but there’s no way around that,” says Cummings.
In the meantime, Pariser says the impact on the units’ value has been catastrophic. He purchased his one-bedroom apartment in Tower I in 2017 for more than $800,000. Now, similar units are selling for less than $600,000. Many units in Tower II for sale have been on the market for more than a hundred days and have undergone multiple price cuts.
Nealy says he’s less concerned about the money. His goal is for homeowners to have a genuine voice, for the building to be well managed, and for the community to thrive. He admits rising dues and largely unsold inventory are suppressing values, but says his main aim is to make the area a good place to live.
“I’m hoping that doing everything I can do gets to the point where people love where they live,” he says. “And we have a lot of promise here. We have some beautiful amenities, but we just kinda need it to be a situation where homeowners have a voice, and we can manage things in a responsible way.”
