Vacant land is Land-Locked

[Lynn Henley]

I have an opportunity to purchase some acreage for just the back taxes. It's presently owned by 4 siblings, scattered all over the country. The property is local to me.

Here's the kicker ... the property is land-locked.

With that in mind, should I (1) purchase the property for the amount of the back taxes - about 25% of county tax assesed value; (2) option the property; or (3) forget about it, and move on. The exit strategy would be to try to resale it to one of the owners who's property joins this parcel.

Thanks.

[David Krulac]

@Lynn Henley & @Karen M.

I can't tell you how many landlocked properties that i have bought but it has been a whole bunch.

In many states legally there is no land locked land. But if you can't get a friendly agreement with a neighbor, you would end up having to go to court to get the right of way access. The court will order an appraisal of the property or properties that are to be crossed with the value of the property before the crossing and what diminished value there would be after the crossing. then the crosser would have to pay that amount as a fee for the easement.

1. One exit strategy that we have used is to sell the land to a neighbor who has road frontage or access. This works fairly well except as the seller you must sell but the buyer doesn't have to buy.

2. Second exit strategy would be to buy an easement from a neighbor. One time I paid $1,500 for a 15 foot easement, but i really had no choice. Another time I paid $8,000 for a 600 foot easement.

3. Third exit strategy is buy the property that landlocks you. Done that also. Had 22 acres, that technically wasn't landlocked but had bad access. In front of me was 3 acres with 450 feet of paved public road frontage. I ended up buying the 3 acres for $150,000, but it made 22 acres I already owed much more valuable. btw I paid $15,000 for the 22 acres!

4. Fourth exit strategy, and a last alternative in my mind is to go to court. The $8,000 easement mentioned above was the result of filing a lawsuit action and negotiating a settlement before actually going to court.

5. There are legal grounds for easement such as implication, prescription and necessity, which I won't go into here, refer to your law school texts. But in one case I needed an easement that was over 6,000 feet long, fortunately I only crosses one owner's property and had legal grounds. We ended up after getting lawyers involved and going back and forth reaching a mutual agreement that was recorded in the courthouse as a permanent easement. Later when I did sell the property, an adjoiner on the other side bought it an didn't need the easement. But having the easement increased the interest of other buyers and increased the eventual selling price.