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I own two rural parcels of raw land that are landlocked and which to my knowledge have no dedicated easements granting legal access to them. I have read that selling landlocked parcels of raw land is difficult and their value is significantly less (not sure specifically how much % less) than comparable parcels which have legal and physical access.
I am in the process of deterring the costs and process of obtaining easements to these two parcels, but am confused regarding the logistics and order of obtaining an easement. A prospective appraiser suggested that I hire a real estate attorney who could guide me through the legal process of creating a private way of necessity.
This lead me to think that a real estate attorney would probably request a survey before commencing on creating an easement. Is this true? I then emailed a surveyor who told me that the only way for him to determine for sure if there any easements would be if I supplied him with a title report. With a title report, the surveyor could perform a boundary survey and show any easements from the title report on the survey.
If a title report uncovers no easements, then I'm assuming a surveyor would not uncover easements, correct? So then if I go directly to a real estate attorney to obtain an easements, will the attorney want a survey and title report before he works on easements?
What is the correct order of the steps to take in obtaining an easement to landlocked parcels?
How do appraisers who conduct on-site visits and surveyors perform their jobs with they are working with landlocked parcels that don't have legal access?
I'm not positive, but I believe part of a surveyors job is to find easements. The surveys I have seen always have them and they were not supplied a title report. It possible those of just public easements and don't reflect private easements.
Very curious...how do you access the land now? You have to be getting to the land somehow. Those are the first people I would talk to to see if they would grant a legal easement.
I think a survey and a real estate attorney are most certainly in your future, but if you wanted to take a free look, you should be able to pull the records by yourself. Doing a title search is pretty easy at the register of deeds and can usually be done on line. To be sure you are looking in the right place, you can always go to the register of deeds, tell them what you are looking for and they will point you in the right direction.
Are you sure it's landlocked? I have found in searching that the land did indeed have not only an easement to get to it but an actual odd bit of property to it, part of the property, from a road. Say, through an odd little section later overgrown or or made into a rock and debris pile at the edge of the neighbor's property, a narrow long condemned road, etc. Even the neighbor might not realize this, may insist the records are wrong and outraged at the thought that either the don't own that strip of land you actually now own or that you actually always had an easement to your land. In other words, through the search, we found they were NOT always landlocked afterall. Often, landlocked property will not be allowed to be sold to someone not adjoining the property but who knows what happens over the decades.
I guess you have already approached the bordering property owners about purchasing your property to no avail.
Wherever your area's property records are kept....courthouse, city/county main offices anyway...is where you can trace back the history of the property/the title search. Let them know you are specifically looking for an easement access to your property or a small piece of land tailing off your property through what may appear to be the neighbor's property.
You can have a helpful person in that office direct you or look it up for you if they will do that.
Or title companies and real estate settlement offices will sometimes have a great person who does title searches who will charge to do this for the general public.
And we have had surveyors find our property line was off from what originally thought.
I'm not positive, but I believe part of a surveyors job is to find easements. The surveys I have seen always have them and they were not supplied a title report. It possible those of just public easements and don't reflect private easements.
Very curious...how do you access the land now? You have to be getting to the land somehow. Those are the first people I would talk to to see if they would grant a legal easement.
I think a survey and a real estate attorney are most certainly in your future, but if you wanted to take a free look, you should be able to pull the records by yourself. Doing a title search is pretty easy at the register of deeds and can usually be done on line. To be sure you are looking in the right place, you can always go to the register of deeds, tell them what you are looking for and they will point you in the right direction.
I have never been on the properties physically, and maps on the Assessors office (a 2 hour drive away) do indeed show the properties are landlocked. What type of a title search would I need to obtain information of easements and is there an online company that would provide this service for less than a brick and mortar title agency?
I have never been on the properties physically, and maps on the Assessors office (a 2 hour drive away) do indeed show the properties are landlocked. What type of a title search would I need to obtain information of easements and is there an online company that would provide this service for less than a brick and mortar title agency?
Then you need to physically go, that's #1 on your list. I say this from long experience of dealing with people who have bought lots at tax sale without seeing them and discovering they're marsh and unbuildable.
The second thing, and this will hurt your feelings, is that if you're considering buying this property and a 2 hour drive to take a look and go to research some records is too much of a hassle then you shouldn't buy it.
Easements are funny, in MD an adjoining property owner can't landlock a property, it's a pain but an easement can be obtained legally. I don't know about where you are.
Then you need to physically go, that's #1 on your list. I say this from long experience of dealing with people who have bought lots at tax sale without seeing them and discovering they're marsh and unbuildable.
The second thing, and this will hurt your feelings, is that if you're considering buying this property and a 2 hour drive to take a look and go to research some records is too much of a hassle then you shouldn't buy it.
My family dealt with this on the death of a family member. That's what I kind of think this is. There was indeed an easement, and upon visiting the property it was pretty clear where it was (basically a dirt track on the edge of the property that locked it in.
You really need to retain a qualified attorney AND have a survey done. The attorney should be able to perform the title search for you and determine any and all easements, not just ingress/egress, but utility, flood and patent easements (like mining, logging, trails, etc).
If you finally determine you are truly landlocked you will then need to determine how to get ingress/egress. You may be able to negotiate with your neighbor or depending on your state laws file for an easement. The attorney will know how to do that.
I once had a property that was in a mostly developed area and found old mining easements that were never removed (although they were abandoned) and we had to go to the Bureau of Land Management to get them removed.
And sometimes if you find there is no long hidden but muni access and instead there is an easement through the neighbor's property....good luck getting them to clean it up or allow entry. Just had one that took months of talks with a sound minded uncle who schmoozed his less than sound minded niece and eventually convinced her this is what grandma would want.
Good replies so far...but how and when did you acquire these parcels? Those factors may have a bearing upon what you can legally do to try to force access (assuming they are landlocked, which you'll need to check first). Otherwise, you may be stuck simply trying to negotiate access with one of the neighboring landowners. How large are these parcels and how many abutting landowners are there? Does the local community have online GIS? That may be a good place to start.
If you're just looking to sell, have you contacted the neighboring landowners to see if they might have an interest in buying your property? In the end, that may be the easiest thing for you to do.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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You want more than an easement, which depending on how it was written, can be revoked or not go with the sale of the grantor's property. What you need in order to get it sold or to build on it is a deeded (gross) easement or right-of-way,
that will apply to any future owners so you can never be stopped from entering your property through theirs. The grantor
will no doubt require reimbursement, and I would indeed hire an attorney for that process.
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