Property Access
One day Sandra and Mark decided on a house. It was just the right house for them, however there was some complication when it came to the property access. As they found out from Claude there are many different kinds of property access – the easiest kind is when a country house is next to the public road and there are no properties between the road and the country house. No problem there, the road is quite straightforward since it leads right to the house.
Most country houses are located near public roads or the roads with prescriptive access. One thing to remember before you start fulfilling your country living dream is to try to figure out first how much road access you will need. Chances are you will have to make it to the city once in a while and if there’s an emergency you’ll need to get to a health care center. Unlike living in the city you are more – less on your own when it comes to maintaining the property access as well so make sure you consider what your needs are before you move to the country.
An Example
Take Sandra and Mark, for example. What happened, with the country house that the couple was interested in, was that it was located in a little valley with a pond and it was more than a couple hundred feet away from the public road. Claude wasn’t sure but it looked as if the access to their future property would be across other surrounding properties. They needed to verify that their country house had something called deeded access. Deed , in Real estate terms means that there are or aren’t certain limitations to a property that specify certain uses that may or may not be made of the property.
Deeded access means that the owners of properties surrounding Mark and Sandra’s future country house and its land have signed and recorded an access grant to their property.
If there is no current deeded access recorded or if it’s for some reason invalid – the real estate office should be able to provide them with such information -- Sandra and Mark will have to apply for a deed restriction document which will, hopefully, grant them legal access to their property.
In order to fulfill all the deed restriction conditions the country house owner has to follow the number of steps:
They have to obtain a copy of any existing deed either from the county. If the names of the owners’ of the property they need access to are printed they have to be recorded in the exact same manner on the deed restriction form. The deed restriction form should be available in the county’s planning office under the property information / land development. Once the form is obtained they will have to fill out the mailing address, their country house site address, the other property owners’ information as printed on the original deed for notary public. The copy of the original deed should be attached to the form. The document has to be signed by all the parties and be notarized by a notary public. It has to be signed by the owners’ of the neighboring property as well. Once the document is notarized the copies of this document should be mad for the future reference as well for the country house owners’ own records. The original and photocopies have to be taken to the County’s recorder’s office and be reviewed and stamped by the recording clerk. The document should have a stamp that says that the copy has been conformed. There is usually a small recording fee. Once stamped, the conformed copy has to be taken to the Planning office and submitted as evidence that the deed restriction was recorded. The deeded access can’t be awarded until the document copy is received.
Deed Restriction
Renewing and applying for deed restriction form is one option of gaining access to the property. In most cases, however if there is no deeded access the country home owners may still have access if the road to their property has been in an on-going use for a long period of time. This is known as prescriptive access and it differs according to state’s laws. This sort of access is somewhat unreliable because it is not always technically legal. It happens rarely, but it does happen that the owners of the neighboring properties decide that they don’t want the new country house owners to be stomping around and crossing their property and they do have a legal right to restrict the access.
The legal way to obtain a prescriptive access is to prove that the use of the property is not secret, not notorious and hostile, open and observable, has to be with the neighboring property owners’ approval. A prescriptive easement arises if there was a prescriptive agreement for quite some time and its conditions are violated. This often happens with new home owners, for example when you move into an old house which shares access with a neighbor and you decide to erect a tall fence or build a garage that blocks your neighbor’s access. The neighbor may then go to a real estate lawyer to obtain an injunction that will force you to remove the garage or the fence.
But if you suspect that the neighbor is using the land that belongs to you – this is sometimes dubbed a “hostile user” -- you can simply grant them permission thus preventing a permanent prescriptive easement from arising. Permission should be documented by a letter to the hostile user.
Maintain Roads
One thing that future country house owners tend to forget is that they need to maintain the roads. In best case, if the road is public, it is maintained by the county. For example, if the country house is located anywhere on the school bus route there’s a guarantee that the snow will be cleaned in the winter and the cracks will get repaired after the water erosion.
If the road is not a party of the county’s maintenance obligation the neighbors usually share the road maintenance expenses with each other. However, since you can never rely on verbal agreements on those sorts of obligations there should be some sort of a written road maintenance agreement signed by all the parties that use the road.
Some country house property owners like to get together on their own and share all of the costs and physical labor of road maintenance. If you’re new to the neighborhood don’t be afraid to ask if there’s a copy of a contract specifying this and if your neighbors would like you to sign it.
Lots of people, like Mark and Sandra, have this dream about getting away to the country because they want to be away from the stressors of life in the city as well as away from other people. The neighbors can be a real drag, especially if they live right next to you and there’s little isolation between the walls. Consider this. A friend of Sandra’s lived in a shared house with an opera singer next door. It was quite pleasant to listen to the piano and singing rehearsals but once the woman decided to run a training program for the future opera singers the noise and the level of it became unbearable. Another friend who lived in a basement suffered from a case of a screaming toddler with thudding step and a dog with clicking nails. So there are lots of reasons why people may start to resent their neighbors and hope to get away from them as far as possible.
However, imagine another scenario. An elderly couple had no food for a few days during one of the heavy fall winters because their phone lines were cut off and they lived far away from a road that was maintained by the county. Fortunately their relatives realized that help may be needed and after hiring a quite expensive plowing truck they got to the country house and rescued the couple.
Bumps, potholes, ruts, washboard and dust make the sometimes unpaved country roads really uncomfortable and sometimes impassable for the car. The washouts are perhaps the biggest problem in the country. Yes, it’s true that only certain country roads provide access to lakes and ponds but the runoff from all other roads will find itself to the country road.
You will always need a car if you live in a country house, no doubt about it. Unless your country house is located in one of the warmer states and you have supreme gardening skills you do need access to a grocery store and / or general store to survive in the country. Also, it is very important that you have access to a health facility – before you buy your country house make sure you know where the nearest hospital is and the easiest way to get there.
