The chaotic real estate development of the last 20 years has led to the emergence of a new problem, namely access to property through private access roads. Due to the lack of firm and clear regulations, all kinds of legal problems have arisen over the years regarding rights to access roads. These problems have implicitly affected the value of real estate properties, respectively the ability of the owner to transfer ownership.
The appraiser, by the nature of his work, in addition to identifying the property, analyzing property rights, and conducting market analysis, must identify and analyze how to achieve access to the property as well as the related legal rights.
In order to understand and have a clear picture of access to the property, the appraiser must request a series of documents from the client: site and boundary plan (PAD) of the property and access road, land registry extracts for private access roads and for any other land parcels located between the property and the access road. This analysis is carried out starting from the property boundary of the subject of the appraisal to the nearest public road.
Buying a property through a bank loan implies the need for an appraisal of that property by an authorized appraiser. Carrying out an appraisal, with the implications it entails, can clarify and resolve this analysis of the access situation to the property. It is important to note that no banking institution will accept as collateral a property whose access road situation is not legally regulated.
When transferring ownership of a property to which access is via a private road, the buyer must ensure that the purchase contract provides for one of the following options:
– ownership rights for parts of the private access road are transferred;
– a vehicle and pedestrian easement is established in favor of the property they are buying;
– notarial promise of the developer regarding the transfer of property rights over the access road to the local administration.
Of course, there may be other options, but these are the most common. Failure by the buyer to ensure that he will benefit from legal rights to the private access road can have further implications, most frequently at the time of a resale of the property.
The problems generated by the analysis of rights over private access roads are extremely complex and require minimal legal and topographic knowledge to be understood.
Below are some examples of situations encountered in practice in over 17 years of activity:
– access from the property to the public road is achieved through a succession of 6-7 private roads with different owners (the buyer of such a property must ensure that at the time of purchase he receives usage rights over all these private roads);
– between the property and the road there is one or more strips of land with another owner (the buyer of such a property must ensure that at the time of purchase he receives rights of way over all these lands);
– the promise to cede the access road after the completion of the investments to the local administration should be legalized.
Therefore, our advice is that when you want to purchase real estate, you should treat the situation of access to the public road with great care, and ensure that along with the ownership of the property, rights to the access road are also transferred.
Buy responsibly!
