Palm Springs Owners Rage at $100K Tribal ‘Ransom’ Demand

Palm Springs has long cemented its reputation as California’s premier desert playground for the rich and famous, from Marilyn Monroe to Leonardo DiCaprio. But within the midcentury glamour a community of condo owners—mostly retirees on fixed incomes—finds itself locked in an unprecedented battle with a landowner demanding a six-figure fee to let them stay in their homes.

Like many properties throughout Palm Springs, twin condo developments Saddlerock Estates and Saddlerock Gardens are sitting on leased land belonging to a member of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians—the city’s largest collective landowner.

This long-standing arrangement means that condo buyers purchase their actual physical units, but must lease the land on which they stand.

Designed by a noted midcentury architect, the two adjacent developments are made up of a combined total of 67 single-level units featuring two-car garages in a gated community with manicured grounds, pools, and spas. Both communities are subject to land leases that expire in spring 2042.

The crisis erupted last year, when tribal landowner William McGlamary, the original owner’s son, sent letters through his attorney to the condo owners demanding a $100,000 fee to sign a lease extension through 2077, plus a $15,000 attorney’s fee by the end of the year—a move that was greenlit by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The six-figure ultimatum

Historically, signing fees in Palm Springs range from $5,000 to $10,000, making McGlamary’s demand a massive outlier.

On top of the lump sum, unit owners will see their monthly lease payments surge from roughly $200 to $640, with 20% to 30% increases every five years, tied to the rate of overall inflation.

An estimated one-third of Saddlerock Estates’ residents accepted the offer by the December 2025 deadline.

Saddlerock Estates HOA President Scott Ross, 72, who purchased his condo with his wife five years ago, is among the owners who handed over what he calls the “ransom” money to keep his home.

Ross, who splits his time between Idaho and California, explains that from the start he was aware of the issues surrounding leased land but made the decision to buy into Saddlerock anyway because at least 40% of all similar developments in Palm Spring are tribal-owned.

The HOA president was also cleared-eyed about the lease renewal process, which often can entail contentious negotiations, but he says he was buoyed by the knowledge that in the end homeowners and landowners tend to come to a reasonable agreement.

“What’s happened here is simply unreasonable,” Ross tells Realtor.com®. “Nothing like has happened at any other community in Palm Springs. It is far beyond anything that any other residents have faced, and we simply don’t understand why. … It’s obviously punitive.”

Ross says he and the other homeowners were never offered an explanation for the staggering signing fee 10 times the local average. Instead, they were handed an ultimatum: Pay now, or lose your home, along with all accumulated equity, in 16 years.

Owners are facing eviction

That is the bleak future awaiting Ross’ neighbors who balked at the six-figure demand, either on point of principle or because they simply could not afford it.

“Those who did not sign a lease extension will have to hand over their homes to the landowner,” says Ross. “They will have to hand over the keys to their home and leave just as if they were renters being evicted.”

One of those neighbors is Ann Friday, who purchased what she thought would be her dream retirement haven at Saddlerock Gardens for $475,000 just last year.

Friday tells Realtor.com that while she was aware that the property was on tribal land, which could be problematic, she alleges that she never received a full disclousre of the potentially devastating implications of this arrangement.

“And I Pollyanna-ed and thought, ‘Well, half of the valley is on land lease. It’s going to have to work out,” she recalls thinking.

Friday, who currently rents in Los Angeles, received a harsh reality check just months into her tenure at Saddlerock Gardens when what she calls the “extortion letter” demanding the huge signing fee arrived.

“I was scared to give the money. I was scared not to. And I frankly didn’t have the money,” says Friday. “So it’s a mess.”

According to Friday, the strategy for many of the older condo owners is to do nothing and simply let time take its course.

“There are some homeowners that are so angry with the situation, and they’re in their 80s, so they plan on just passing away and letting the condo go back to the tribal owner,” she says.

Crucially, both Ross and Friday admit that while their predicament may be unfair and “repulsive,” the tribal owner’s actions are entirely legal.

“There’s no law that prevents this from happening,” concedes Ross.

Tribal owner’s perspective

Realtor.com made repeated attempts to contact McGlamary’s attorney, David E. Jacobs, to seek comment but received no response.

However, speaking in February to local station KESQ, which has been reporting on the controversy, Jacobs argued that the original lease negotiated more than half a century ago locked in a below-market rent for decades.

“If your rent was $100 back then, why shouldn’t it be $1,500 today? That’s just economic reality,” he said at the time, maintaining that the condo owners are not victims and are now “getting exactly what they bargained for.”

Friday strongly disagrees with the attorney’s claim, arguing that at least in her development, Saddlerock Gardens, homeowners have been paying market value comparable with similar properties.

“This is just plain financial extortion because you’re angry at the people who are not negotiating with you,” she alleges.

Greater Palm Springs Realtors® Government Affairs Director Jim Franklin points a finger at the landowner, suggesting that it is the allottees’ responsibility to enforce periodic cost-of-living increases.

“The homeowners aren’t gonna call up and say, ‘Gee, I should be paying more rent,'” Franklin tells Realtor.com. “So the argument is that he didn’t do it, so that’s his problem.”

Meanwhile, Ross points out that homeowners understand that market conditions influence what is reasonable to pay for a lease, but he argues that McGlamary’s demand was “just grossly beyond anything that’s related to market conditions.”

In an interview with Desert Sun last year, Jacobs also alleged that the condo owners have been dragging their feet on negotiating an extension for years and have walked away from more lenient offers.

However, according to the HOA president, during the talks, condo owners offered to pay more than they have been paying in the past to extend the lease, as long as it was a fair sum tied to market conditions.

The Palm Springs land ‘checkerboard’

The firestorm over the lease extensions goes back to the foundation layout of Palm Springs, where the federal government mapped the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians reservation as a “checkerboard” of alternating 1-square-mile sections.

Today, tribal property accounts for nearly half of the total land area within the city, amounting to roughly 32,000 acres. The remaining tracts are known as nontribal “fee land,” which buyers purchase outright without having to lease.

Franklin explains that until 1959, the maximum lease for individual tribal land allotments was only five years, but that changed to 99 years after the tribal council successfully petitioned Washington, DC.

Developers then became interested in working with the tribal owners on midcentury real estate projects, but many resulting leases were written for shorter periods like 55 or 65 years, as was the case with both Saddlerock developments.

Now these leases are expiring, setting the stage for a potential citywide real estate crisis.

“The big picture is this will snowball and what’ll happen, the value of Indian [land with] properties on it and lease land will drop … and continue to drop because nobody will want to buy into something like this,” he warns.

Franklin also highlights the shifting role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, claiming that instead of overseeing lease renewals to ensure fairness, officials now simply rubber-stamp leases as long as they are at or above market value, without considering whether fees are excessive.

With no legal recourse, condo owners at Saddlerock Estates and Gardens are trying to appeal to the public.

Left facing eventual evictions, residents like Friday have been rising awareness of the issue with the local media and writing letters to their congressman.

Friday says she is looking into funding a billboard in Coachella Valley as a warning to others living on leased land, or even making a documentary.

She fears that what happened in Saddlerock would set a dangerous precedent for other property owners in Palm Springs.

“If they start getting all these excessive hundreds of thousands of dollars from us, then every other lease that comes up in the Coachella Valley is going to start to have the same thing happen,” predicts Friday.