Three years ago I bought a NEW TO ME house. Directly in front were two street lights that seemed to be burning 24 hours a day. When I got the electric bill it was unusually high. I came to find out the lights were on my electric line. I contacted the electric company and complained. I started to disconnect the line running to it. The company tried to have me arrested for destruction of property and something to do with knowingly causing a safety hazzard because of no light over the road. Long story short I won the case and sued them for stealing MY electric and also won. Instead of getting money back we worked out an agreement to not pay for electric until the amount they owe me is recovered. Good thing is my rates will not go up if the market price does. They have to honor the rate of the market price at the time of the theft. I will not be paying a bill for several years to come.
I was renting an apartment with roommates and the electric was in my name. It seemed really high and I started searching out the things that were on my meter. Come to find out, there was a shared water heater and my neighbors were (unknowingly) getting free hot water. The landlord used to use the neighboring apartment as a showroom for his cabinetry, and it had been unoccupied. He connected the hot water in that unit to the same water heater that my apartment used, and nobody noticed that because the use was so minimal. (This all happened well before we moved in there.) When he retired from making cabinets, he decided to rent that extra apartment out. Never bothered to give it its own water heater.
Internet service providers here in the UK have been going onto people property to lay cable for next door or whoever. I’ve read that you’re allowed to remove it if they don’t.
i bought a house where the deadbeats before me never paid any of their bills, the low class low income scumbags that eventually were forclosured on. so the utilities company just sent me a bill for $7k. $2500 of that was a water bill where they told me "i have a leak on my property that's why my bill is so high" despite having my meter read 1-2 units of water per month, every month. dealing with this level of turbo incompetence makes me want to live off grid permanently
@@CharlieBoy360 This event actually took a little over 2 1/2 years to discover. At the time the electric bills would come in between 3 - $400.00 a month. I was doing everything I could to keep it as low as possible thinking wow I must really be a hog with the power. During that period I laid out close to $12,000. After consulting with others I discovered the lights would go off if tripped my MAIN breaker. Normally when a storm knocks power out everything goes off anyway if it's on your circuit with the power company. I've seen my area dark and one street over be lit up - strange. Anyway, after cutting the BURRIED line to my panel (my power is supplied overhead from the main), my electric bills dropped drastically to around $90 monthly. After 2 cycles of bills the power Co. was there to inspect because my bill was lower than normal (they were losing money). The street lights are like 4 - 500 watt bulbs burning (old school bulbs mercury vapor). I did some research and discovered my home was once a Doctors office and he had requested the lights be installed in front so people could find his place. Originally there were no lights on the road. After the street department decided to put more in they just left the original configuration instead of tapping the main line. It was just a cluster f*^$. The power co had to credit me all that past paid money back and I chose to not get power bills until it was all correct again. It's been almost13 years and I have sold the house. The new owners will not have that problem.
Here's one for you in Washington State they pulled up all the railroad tracks and put in a Trail but they sold the trail to a third party but in all the landowners Deeds stated if they ever pulled the track up the land would default back to the original owners so they legally sold land that didn't belong them got themselves in a pickle
I was laughing my ass off when that happened. The heavy-handed tactics that King County has employed against landowners to force through bike paths on their property deserved some karmic retribution.
To make it potentially far worse states don't customarily own RR right of ways. Most if they date back to the 1800's were given by the federal government to encourage RR growth. If the real owner comes along they can shut down all access to the right of way. These right of ways exist whether there are tracks or not and pre-empt state laws.
@@duanesamuelson2256 They are railbanked the right of way through a Surface Transportation Board in DC. It happened to our business, the RR was turned in to a trail. We sued the county over the nonsense and it cost the county half a million due to the added transportation costs to my business. IF ANYONE can show they have the financial means to open a new rail line the TRAIL will have rails laid back down and NO MORE TRAIL. I wrote many letters and sent exhibits to the STB through the late 90's and early 2000's.
I live on a private road with 9 others. Each of us owns several acres. The developer held onto the road for about 25 years, then wanted out. The county (in our case) didn't want it and we didn't particularly want them to have it. We formed an LLC so that all of the homeowners own an undivided 1/10th share of the road and we pay a modest fee twice a year for liability insurance with the rest being saved until it needs to be paved. This is, more or less, a rural area and several of us has either a plow truck or tractor with plow, so between the neighbors, the snow always gets taken care of. There are no lights, so no electric bill. Works great.
Honestly this is the way suburbs should work. The fact that developers can build suburbs and then hand responsibly for the infrastructure off to the city/county has incentivized all the urban sprawl we have.
The issue will only arise in a hundred yrs time when yalls property has been passed thru many more hands and somewhere along the way this unique road situation gets forgot; bcuz its not common practice by then.
I am in the Hospital right now, I brought a very old laptop with me, finally get it running watching this video, Nurse comes in and says cool, I watch Steve everday. Talk about a small world.
As a planning commissioner, many people came to our meetings demanding the city turn their subdivision into a gated community. They were shocked when I said sure, as soon as they get every property owner to agree, post a multi-million dollar bond and agree to pay for all street, sidewalk, sewer etc. maintenance. These pricks thought they were entitled to gates on their streets to stop poor people from driving through their neighborhood.
We had a situation locally where a similar thing happened to a small development. The county refused to pay until it was pointed out that the area was included in an MSU(municipal service unit) that had been collecting taxes from the residents for the past twenty five years. The court told them “either return the money plus interest or take over the cost". Taking over was cheaper.
This happened to me once. I was in an apartment and they sent me a bill for every vacant apartment in the complex. When I called to argue, dude says “what makes you think this isn’t accurate”. I said this is a 1000 sq ft 2 br apartment. I can run ac 24/7 and open every door window and the fridge and it won’t even be 10% of this bill….
A guy I used to work with once got a water bill so high that it was a physical impossibility to run up that fee even if he sealed his house and filled the entire volume of space with water. Turned out the local utility had "helpfully streamlined" the billing process by billing him for every house on his block plus the next one over.
@@nairbvel We read our own water meter when I was a kid, sending in the reading on a postcard; they'd send someone around to read the meters once a year in case anyone was cheating on their self-reported numbers. My dad was out of town one time, so mom read the meter and sent it in; they called a few days later and said "DaddyBeansMom, either you've used 2.1 million gallons of water in the last 30 days, or you wrote down the serial number off of your meter instrad of the numbers from the dials." 🤣
On the opposite end of things, I have a client that bought a huge piece of commercial property with multiple addresses, multiple power meters, etc. Once you hit that level of buying property, you lose a bunch of buyer protections because it is assumed if you’re spending that much money, you know what you’re doing and will do your due diligence in purchasing the property. My client did not know what he was doing, did not do his due diligence, had no idea what all his property addresses were, did not properly transfer all power/gas/water bills into his company’s name properly, and 18 months after buying the property, the various utility companies tracked him down and informed him of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills. Came as a rather unfortunate surprise in the middle of Covid lockdowns when his cash flow was super low
@@nairbvel worked with a chick that lives in New Orleans. There was a water leak that the city is responsible for fixing but its after the meter so she gets a $1000 water bill every month. Every month they bill her, then she has to go to court, then she wins, and the cycle just repeats. She keeps them in court because the city refuses to pay or fix it and they can't collect as long as litigation is ongoing. Gotta love the city.
If the electric company had no intention of collecting past charges, why did they send a bill? Once it became part of a news story they decided it wasn't worth collecting.
Probably to get attention on it. Having it spread in the news is a good way to have the politicians or whom ever to actually take action otherwise they just ignore it.
My wife worked for Puget Sound Energy several years ago as a temporary employee to locate lost accounts and development maps. When PSE merged with Washington Natural Gas several project managers got told to leave. When her crew started opening these lost accounts they found customers that never got billed for several years. In one case they found a check for over $250000 that was never cashed that was for utilities installation.
After my parents bought the house we lived in since 1977. A year after purchase the surrounding apt development decided it was going to impose HOA fees 2500 a year per house, for plowing and road maintenance. But our development formed a HOA and counter sued won and now the apt complex own the roads but can’t charge us fees, since we were never informed prior to the purchase ☺️thankfully they still plow our street eventually, and after 40yrs they finally resurfaced the streets and laid a proper top coat. Finally making our 15” tall curbs only 8” tall 😳 I can’t tell you how many times my mom back the car/van over the edge of curb and hooked the bumper/undercarriage and ripped it off 😳
Here in the UK it is very common for there to be small strips of property which impede development or people walking or driving to a home. We have a name for it, they are called ransom strips.
That's why some governments have laws that you must allow easements that allow access to neighboring property if your property is blocking access to a public road. Because there's always that one person who buys all the land right along side the road and then waits for for someone to buy a plot of land behind theirs and then tells them they can't access it but for an exorbitant price they'll sell them a plot by the road that'll connect them to the public road network.
@@Strideo1 That's great, so is the government going to pay any liability suits filed for an accident that happens on that property and someone gets hurt? Are they going to pay for the insurance on that land they are forcing the owner to allow people access to? If not, they can take a hike. You can't force someone to allow people on their property and then also hold them accountable when someone gets hurt on said property. The people forcing the owner to allow people on his property should be liable.
@@fictitiousnightmares If you bought all the land facing a public road in one of these jurisdictions then you probably knew or ought to have known a right or way easement would be needed for others to access their land behind yours. If you don't want to be liable for the easement you could always sell the easement. Generally though unless you're shown to be negligent in some way you're not automatically liable for all accidents on your easement.
"Ransom strips" is a great term. It's up there with "spite fences" and "nail houses." Also reminds me of the incident in Granby, CO where a guy built an armored bulldozer and used it to take out the property of his enemies. One of the things that tipped him over the edge was a dispute with a neighbor where they cut off access to his property.
I've never seen one in the UK that impeded accessibility but have seen them in between properties to prevent redevelopment keeping the amount of houses the same in the area.
As a real estate agent in Missouri, I always take note of the legal description and any recorded easements and make sure those line up with expectations of my buyers. I deal with private roads all the time, normally as an easement or part of an HOA but never have I seen 1 person own the road for a whole neighborhood!
As a contractor and builder I've seen this many times sometimes the people like it and dont mind but I met others who minded and worked to get there town to take it since plowing snow in my state is a killer.
My "street" here in a rural area only has three houses on it and is maybe 300 yards long. The county has no interest in maintaining it. The three of us pitch in for gravel every couple years, and we alternate mowing the common areas. We have the nicest street in our little town. The county also doesn't plow snow in our town. We have some farmers that use their tractors instead. ... I basically live in Mayberry.
In my hometown, there was one road that used to go to several frarms. All of the properties were abandoned, so the town legally abandoned the road. Except that there was still one farm at the near end of the road. So the town couldn't legally abandon that portion of the road. So ever since the town plow goes up their wide, well maintained driveway (the town road), past their tenant house and the farmhouse, and turns around in their barnyard. And yes, the road is named after the family, who've been there for generations.
In 1955 my parents bought a farm in rural Alabama (it was rural then). 30 years later they decided to sell a few acres in order to pay off the $16,500.00 mortgage and retire. So, the realtor put up a for sale sign. A few days later, the guy who owned the adjacent property came by and he and my father walked down the hill to the property lines. AND, my folks hadn’t bought quite as much land as they thought they had. The neighbor showed dad the corner markers, small concrete ‘stumps’, and dad realized that our fence was 3 feet over on his property. Now, my parents didn’t build that fence. It had been there long before they bought the land. Bad news, right? Not really. Neighbor just didn’t want dad ‘selling’ those 3 feet to a stranger. A simple handshake solved the problem.
Some years ago I was working on clean up operation after a wildfire in California. The program was government funded, but was voluntary. People could sign up to get their properties cleaned up for free. One area was a mountain that had originally belonged to one family, but had been subdivided and parcels sold off some 50 years before, with the original family retaining the top. Well it turned out they had also retained ownership of the roads. Several of the homeowners signed up to get their properties cleaned, but the original family were opposed to the program, and denied access to the crews and equipment. They said they owned the roads, and the program vehicles were not allowed in. The program had to go to court to establish that yes, they could in fact use the roads to access the participating properties. The family continued some harassment after operations started, and the sheriff had to speak with them a couple times.
In 2019 my wife and I thought about building a house. Unfortunately where we wanted to live vacant lots are few and far between. When one does come on the market it's not cheap. One day I got a notification about a lot in a neighborhood we liked and it was reasonably priced. It was a flag lot behind another house. I went over to look at it and I knew something was off. It was way too close to a dedicated, township maintained walking trail. The lot existed before the trail and before the trail it was a good sized building lot, but the trail cut through it making it impossible to build on. Because we made some inquiries the person that owned the lot found out that the township should have bought the lot before they built the trail. He had inherited the lot, didn't live locally and didn't know much about it. He just found an agent and told them to list it. I believe he's still in court with the township.
In most cases, the city would have an easement through the property without having to actually own it. They would be able to build a path through the lot without having to compensate the property owner.
@@dannylim3318 in this case an easement wouldn't have worked. The trail cuts the back 2/3 of the lot off from the front. The lot is unusable. If a house had existed before the trail was built the trail would have made a very wide turn around the house. The trail paved and is fenced on both sides and it's at least 12 feet wide, fence to fence.
I knew a family growing up who owned a small local retail store. There was a small locally owned bank across the street. There was a parking lot adjacent to each, but owned, for some unknown reason, by the other. So the lot adjacent to the bank was the store parking lot and the lot adjacent to the store was the bank parking lot. Every single customer of both had to cross the street, which really fucked with traffic and just wasn't safe. Went on for decades until in the 90s they decided to trade. The bank deeded their lot to the store and the store deeded theirs to the bank.
@@demonteddybear3510 every business will have cars towed when their lot is full of non-customers. They can't tell people "If our lot is full, park in that other place's lot." Bank customers don't stay long, whereas store customers do. The bank's gotta keep it's lot available to customers.
Because of how often residents want a local government to take over the private road once they realize how expensive it is to repair or replace when it's badly damaged or worn out. 😂
> In many areas, a road must be up to a certain standard before a city, county, or the state will agree to take it over. This is why, sometimes when a developer doesn't build his roads to state DOT code (such as being big enough for school busses to trucks to get past), the local community must create an HOA to own the road. Many times the developer does this on purpose so he can build more houses and fewer smaller roads on a particular tract of land.
the problem is worse then you think Steve. Their are literally companies that look for property's that are up for tax sale, buy them, then extort the homeowners to sell the property or easement rights back to the people who had been using it and/or need it to access their property.
Never thought I’d hear the road story. This might not be my father and I, but if it happened in Southwestern Michigan, we are the ones who purchased the road at a tax auction. Going to leave out a lot of details because this saga is long and some of the details are fuzzy as this happened a long time ago. In the beginning, we offered the property to the four homeowners who didn’t want to buy it as they viewed it as unfair and said the township should have to buy it. Each homeowner would have had to pay like $500 for it. We were offering the property to them at a steep discount as we sympathized with their predicament and just wanted to wash our hands of it. The township, who realized they should have never allowed the property to go up to auction, decided to be the biggest POSes you can imagine. All we wanted for the property was $10k. Why the increase? Well, we didn’t want to screw over the property owners; the property was worth more than they were asked to pay. It is the only one with road access, so if the road were ground up and developed, it would be the sole property to have a fair market value among the five properties. Que a corrupt judge constantly making rulings against us, delaying hearings if the township’s lawyer didn’t show up while not notifying us of hearings and ruling against us since we didn’t show up to something we didn’t know we had to. One of the times they attempted this, some clerk called for clarification on something, so my father had to rush to the courthouse and explain why he was dressed casually. How did this saga end? Well, the corrupt judge retired, and the new judge wasn’t corrupt. Last I heard, this was years ago, he is the only judge around here who is liked. He immediately shot down the township’s bs, and they bought the road for way less than we wanted. They spent over $20,000 on legal expenses to have to buy the road anyway. I believe it might have been more than $25k. It was over double what we wanted for the road.
3:15 It's also possible that the person living in that house WAS the developer. My mom bought a house in Florida and the person living at the end of the short street along the beach had parceled out the land they owned between them and the highway. Then they built and sold homes on them. And of course, they named the subidvision after themselves, which honestly I probably would too.
I wud so not name such a thing after myself xD Id rather either A: Make a memey/shitposty name for it or B, more likely, id name it after someone i admire like Terry Pratchett, or possibly even name it after somethin of his work. I mean, Id love to live in the AnkhMorpork subdivision.
I couldn't help but notice the shirt you are wearing! From August 1963 to September 1965, I was an ASA ditty-bopper in Rothweesten, Germany. Your ASA patch made me smile.
I knew someone who bought several odd shaped pieces of property at a tax auction. The property was originally intended to be part of a street expansion for a new development. The development never happened but there were several homes already built. The guy that bought the property went to each home owner and told them they would have to pay him every month for access to their homes or find new ways to get their cars to their driveways. He then put dumpsters across each driveway. Some complained to the county, some paid. I never found out what happened because I stopped hanging around the guy. He turned out to be too much of a butt hole for me.
His plan wouldnt work. For him to get to his property he would need to access the property of others, likewise for the others to access their property they would need to access his. This would end up in court.
@@jeli3953 no an easment does not have to be granted. That is why owners will wright in a easement before a sale of property. Or the new owner could be a dick.
Courts do not get involved with land locked property. If that were the case landlocked property wouldn't be so cheap. The easiest way is to get other land owners to agree to an easement. But if they dont you have to go to the county then there is a hearing. If the county agrees to it. Then they make a road that you have to pay for. It is not as easy as going to court. Besides if you go to court. Land owner will say why my property. Why not someone else's property. It is a huge headache.
Where I live, subdivision roads have to be built to meet or exceed township standards, as far as width, drainage, paving materials, etc, before the township will take ownership. There's an older subdivision where the developer didn't build the streets to those standards, so it has remained a private road owned by the HOA ever since. Now the pavement is crumbling, insufficient drainage is often overwhelmed, etc, and the HOA asked the township to take ownership and rebuild the streets. One of the township supervisors (aka councilmen, selectmen, etc) said "Your developer chose to save money by not building those streets correctly, and the HOA chose to save money by not maintaining them correctly, and now the HOA wants the taxpayers to foot the bill for correcting those mistakes? That's not how that works." And called the question - it was voted down, unanimously.
Tree stands should be illegal without permission. I have a neighbor who lost a couple of 300 year old oak trees because of tree stands put up with huge numbers of nails. Putting up no hunting signs or no trespassing signs causes a change in the tax status of the land.
You put up a tree stand in my woods and I'll use you as target practice. Legal on an Indiana farm. We had 4 boys come down from Anderson to poach our woods. After 3 years someone shot up their green station wagon. I don't know who did it but thanks.
Hi Steve, there was a case similar to this in Australia were the shire /municipality claimed not to own or controversial the road but had been charging very high municipal land rates based on road frontage and when asked said this was to maintain the roads and foot paths that didn't exist so the land owners class actioned for 50 years back rates and won the municipality acquired thr road soon after and challenged the Clame saying the process was started 50 years prior and now only completed so the past charges were valid , road is still not repaired or passable except by tractor or 4x4 in summer and impassable in winter the land owner have been prevented from even repairing any part of the road to access there .and case is ongoing ,
I had a good experience when I bought my house on a 1/4 acre of land. The price I paid was well bellow the market price, in the area. It turns out that the bank that owned the home, did not know the home was actually sitting on 1.25 acre. Which instantly increased the value of the property.
Wouldn't work...utilities aren't run until they have a legal easement and part of that easement allows access to equipment...the electric meter is electric company equipment so...
My parents lived on a private road in rural Missouri but they knew about it when they bought their house. All of the homeowners along the road chipped in for road maintenance. It was gravel when they first moved in but after a couple of years the residents put up the money to have it paved with asphalt. No streetlights, though. Most people just had some type of lights or reflectors at the end of their driveway.
You may ask yourself, "What is that beautiful house?" You may ask yourself, "Where does that highway go to?" And you may ask yourself, "Am I right? Am I wrong?" And you may say to yourself, "My God! What have I done?"
My grandparents farm was established 1967. One of there neighbors moved in around 1985 and made friends with the family for 25 years, my grandparents were so friendly that they let the guy use an extra half an acre in a strip along the south and east side of his land. He's on 3/4 of an acre his driveway was half on the farms land so they gave up a little and let him use (They didnt give it to him or deed it) meadow land to be friendly. Anyway guy has a business where he restores cars sandblasting and spraying and generally making a mess that isnt allowed on agricultural zoned land and they never cared. One day after 25 years my uncle was sick of a tree on the corner of that property that got massive and was hitting him forcing him to lose less and less land he bales so he trimmed it. That was the start of the end. Guy lawyers up serves my uncle claiming that was his tree on his land (wild thorn apple on the farms property) so my uncle calls guys lawyer and explains, lawyer says you know he took care of it for all these years blah blah blah (he didn't he just dumped his chemicals and sandblasted there) and hes entitled to it. He found out NY doesnt do that bs law about taking care until its yours and all the photos I got of the clown doing illegal crap helped my uncle but guys nephew was the codes guy so that didnt matter to much. The neighbor went on to become a member of the town board and started a town law claiming a farmer cant spread cow poo on his fields in that town because the smell is a nuisance. This is on ag zoned land and thats getting into federally protected areas so my uncle writes to the department of agriculture they sent their lawyer to the town board meeting and threatened a very hefty fine against the town and harassment suit against them for my uncle then that died off quick. Guy eventually asks my uncle one day if he would sell him the land my uncle says to him ya $17,000. Lol. He says he would have signed it all over for nothing had the guy not started all that. He didnt buy it and actually passed away from a stroke not long after and my uncle made sure to cut that tree to the ground while the dude was on his deathbead watching out the window. I'm skimming over tons of stuff that the town did once the neighbor became a board member since I already wrote a short story.
The thing I would worry about most is potential liability if someone was injured. Municipalities often benefit from laws that limit the ability of someone to sue. That might not apply to a privately owned road.
Yeah. My family owns a summer camp on a private road. We got add on insurance because we couldn't convince any of the other camp owners that we had a shared liability problem. We also could not convince a couple of them to pay a hundred bucks a year to pay the local Road Agent to maintain the road. They said their camps were near the beginning of the road, so why should they help pay for the entire road. My brother and I bought quarter loads of rock dust, sand and gravel and we fill in the potholes. But we don't touch the road until it passes the holdouts. It is getting pretty bad in front of the first camp, almost as if people are deliberately damaging the road there. He DEMANDED that we fix it too, we laughed his his face.
@@crsv7armhl Not likely after so many years, there would have been an "easement" created by those neighbors all using it without action by former property owners.
@@coop5329 "Like adverse possession, a prescriptive easement requires proving open and hostile, and continuous use for a statutory period (7 years). It also requires proof of the width of the easement (20 feet), and that the width and use of the easement has not changed over time." So no
@@crsv7armhl Probably not. In most states you have a right to be able to access your own property. Most likely one of the other owners can sue for a right of way, if they can't arrive at a friendly agreement.
In Jersey City NJ a subdivision of conds town houses. It's now been 20 years it's a private community and alternative side. I wonder the workings of that.
I live in rural Western Australia. We bought a property here and the former owner requested a reading and final bill. We had not received a bill for 3 or 4 months, so I called the power company, provided our info, etc, and received a bill. The customer service rep thanked me and told me that sometimes it takes 3 or 4 YEARS for the company to contact the new owner about unpaid bills. So 19+ years is definitely excessive! In fact, it's insane!
Except as others have pointed out, street lights typically don't have meters. They just charge a flat rate based on what they expect. Someone failed to notice the added lights weren't added to anyone's bill.
Here in Western Washington State, the wife and I live at the end of a mile-long private road. The 'neighborhood' we live in is very rural former timber company land sold off in 5+ acre lots in the 1980s. Our road is actually a series of easements that originally served as property lines (I'll get back to this in a bit). So, care and maintenance of the road is by a Road Association of which each homeowner is a member with dues, rights and responsibilities. It works fairly well, and while it looks like an HOA, it decidedly is not and never will be and HOA (we baked that into the Road Agreement). We even recently got together and paved the road as a group. Where the rub comes is with the property lines. When the original survey was done for the first platting in our county, for our section the surveyor was off 3 degrees clockwise. This was not discovered until a re-survey was undertaken about 10 years ago. Turns out, no one's property lines are right, and the degree you're off is dependent on how far you are from the origin point! Our 'property line' road now lays fully on some people's properties and not at all on others. It's a mess. We've all agree do just adhere to the understood property lines and leave sleeping dogs lay. But, the county has just thrown it's hands up. They tried to re-survey 10 years ago and when the surveyors discovered how far they were off, all the markers they laid out disappeared overnight. I'm guessing the county does not want to open up decades worth of adverse possession cases...
That sounds like a ticking time bomb. You and your neighbors should work out something before a piece of land falls into someone else's hands and you discover you can't access your property without paying a toll or something.
You can basically get an agreement made with the long and short being "we all agree to accept these new different lines that line up with where they were thought to be". Would be more troublesome now that the markers all disappeared, though. But the further you go on with understood property lines there's no reason to not write it down and set new markers where you want the property lines to be. You'd either want to contact your county government, a surveyor, or a property lawyer for that depending on expertise and legislation in the state. But they should be able to point you in the right direction. I picked up a saying from surveyors i like to use; "cheap surveys are the most expensive surveys", and in this case, the current survey is at least cheap in spirit.
It may well have been in the paperwork, but not verbally mentioned. In which case the new homeowners would be unlikely to have known, as reading paperwork is a pain. So I need to sign here, here and here. Okay thanks. BTW what did I just sign? oh okay.
@@lunaticbz3594 My real estate lawyer summarizes each section first, prior to having me sign it. Anything out of the ordinary, he points it out and advises whether or not to sign off.
@@ScubaSteveCanada That's totally acceptable. But when people just rely on the other side to explain the contract and sign. That's when you can get bad deals or big surprises. Especially if you ask after you sign it :p
@@lunaticbz3594 Reading paperwork is a pain, but a deadly important necessity. Some years back my folks were about to sign the papers on an apartment for my grandparents when Mom got the feeling things were moving just a tad too fast, so she & Dad read through the papers while the developer's guy sat there fuming.... and two pages in they found a clause stating that if the bank or the developer needed money, they could claim the entire outstanding balance of the mortgage within 90 days or foreclose on the property.
Live on a mountain in NWA. A county road cuts through my property, it was originally a two rut. Mark my property with purple paint and signs. Have proximity intrusion sensors and cameras. Tweekers and other rural criminals are a problem. Armed 24/7.
Interesting old Army Security Patch on your shirt. ASA was melded into Inscom back in the 70's. The HQ was at Arlington Hall Station on Glebe Road back in the day. The station was given to the DIA and then to the State Dept.
I had this happen to a neighbor! They bought a place that they thought was 20 acres, but surveyed after the fact and found they only had 12. The judge told them that because it had 20+\- that it was legal! … not exactly the same, but still messed up.
And the moral of that story is that you NEVER, NEVER buy property until you have had it surveyed yourself. The cost of a survey is very cheap in the long run. This practice saved me a ton of trouble on both the properties I have owned.
Good people see 20+/- and interpret that as something like 19-21 (as in a fraction of one unit), not 12-28. Bad ruling for sure. Buyer failed to get it surveyed (at least do a land record check), so, little sympathy. Seller was deceptive/fraudulent (again, owner should know what they actually have to sell). See so much of this everyone should get their land surveyed unless they can dig up documentation to the same effect, and certainly before building anything adjacent to the edges. Same with commercial real estate "it's not fraud to lie in the advert". Nothing like losing part of your land to someone else because a fence was built on your side of the line. In that situation I wonder if you could sue the city to get your tax money back for the 'not your land' you were taxed on. Worth a shot, though I expect once they have your money its done, if you owed money then maybe you could negotiate a correction.
Here in our area of North Carolina our HOA owns our roads, and several parks which have improvements on them (pool, tennis courts, pavilions, trails, etc.). At least it was disclosed to us when we bought our house who owns what. Around here privately owned streets are a common thing. The street signs have a special marker on them "Private Street" so that city service vehicles don't bother with servicing our streets. Of course that means that our HOA has to contract for services like street lights, trash pickup, surface & ditch maintenance, ice treatment & snow removal, and even a fee to the school system to have the buses come down the streets.
Hunting stands on your property, in PA it use to be go out the Sunday afternoon before the season and take the tree stands out. Me and another guy both did that one year to 6 stands and the next morning that entire hill side was full of people swearing at 615 AM for opening day. With posted signs on the tree with the former stand removed.
I live at the end of a cul-de-sac on a private street where each of the property owners also own half of the street in front of their houses and are responsible for maintenance of their portion of the roadway. Accordingly, your driving experience varies along the road. The nice thing is that because it is both a cul-de-sac and a posted private drive we have very little traffic. The taxes for our portion of the road are included in the total property tax bill. It is all laid out very clearly on the property plot. Because we are in unincorporated San Diego county and just outside of the boundary of the nearest city, we don't pay their tax. But as noted in the video, we also don't get any city services on the road, but also as noted, it doesn't snow much here ;-)
@@CreepyUncleIdjit No, we are in North County. Not that far from Palomar Airport and the old Carlsbad raceway, which is now a business park. I ran one of my vehicles on the drag strip the last weekend of operation before it was shut down.
I lived across the street from our neighbors who were inside the city limits and paid city tax for a library they didn't use. I lived across the street, after moving in we went to the library to get cards for the kids use. Vecause you live on the other side of the street you're in the county your property is not paying city tax so you can't use to the city library. If you'd like to pay the city taxes we'll be happy to lend you our books, (with a possiblity of late fees.) Never mind. Kids can use the library at private school.
Way back in the late Fifties there was a report of a man who owned one square foot of prime Florida property and held up construction of a hotel. The settlement was he got a room for life.
Heh, though only slightly related, the property law discussion reminded me of a situation when I was growing up. Lived out in a sizable rural county. So the public roads made for very large 'blocks' of properties. Which means, there are often some lots in the middle not connected to the road in any way. (IE when a farmer sells off back acreage they no longer use). Well there was one such lot in the middle of the block we lived on. Now we are talking well over a mile on each side of this block. And this lot, was dead in the middle. Somebody bought it blind and then got upset when they found out it was completely enclosed. Now, Dad and the neighbors, all a nice friendly bunch said basically. "No problem. Lets find a nice border between properties here, you can have a few feet on each side to put in a driveway." Weren't even going to charge them for it. Just that if they picked a direction that had a fence, they needed to pay for moving the fence. And there were several borders that didn't even have that problem. So the unfortunate buyer was given a full free way out of the problem, at the expense and kindness of their new neighbors. However.... The new owner got it in their head that the access they wanted went right straight through the middle of one of the neighbors property. Not on the edge... Through The MIDDLE. Don't know why they got pigheaded about it. But they did. Of course it went to court. And the judge, once they got all the details told the buyer that: One, you had NO rights to take access through the middle of someone elses property when there are alternatives. Two, they would have to either, buy the property edges that the access would be allowed on, or lease it since the free use was taken off the table when they sued. Needless to say, they didn't like that. Fortunately for them. one of the neighbors took pity on them, and bought the property from them, even though they didn't need it.
They still presumably want to use the road, and even if they were willing to deal with it that would be pretty unfair to their neighbors. I'd imagine if it got to a point where the power company was actually pushing that might be an option though.
My home town of Red Wing Minnesota has some weird property splits. If you look what used to be the mall the building is split up and owned by like 7 different people, and portions of the parking lot are owned by different people. I was also surprised while looking at the tax survey map by some parcels that are privately owned that I'd have put money on being either city, state, or county property.
I'm obviously not a lawyer but it is my understanding that if you own a piece of property and you allow people to use your property for access to their property for X amount of time then it becomes grandfathered in ...as a kid I remember that we had a private driveway bordering the driveway for four other houses with a fence in between... the neighbors asked if they could tear down the fence making the driveway wider for all and my parents agreed to it. Years later my parents wanted to fence in their driveway again and the neighbors sued and won because the driveway had not been blocked off for 1 day each year to show that my parents retained ownership
> if you own a piece of property and you allow people to use your property for access to their property for X amount of time then it becomes grandfathered in Nope. That's not a thing. You' are confused. You might thinking about unpermitted use. Use that's allowed is not "adverse possession." In another comment I mentioned that my brother has a farmer encroaching on his land. As long as he says "hey, you're encroaching on my land, stop that" once every like 19 years the farmer can never claim "adverse " on that land.
County closed the road in front of my business for a year. During the construction of the new road they poured a curb and cut off my parking lot. Had to fight with the county commissioner and they finally cut a 10' access not enough for cars to enter and exit at the same time. His reasoning was that own the 2 properties behind it on the side street.
I'm curious about the business with the parking lot separated by a 3-ft strip the business and parking lot owner didn't own. It seems to me that the simple answer to the new owner of the 3-ft strip building a wall would be that it's probably impossible to build that wall on a 3 ft wide property without trespassing on the two properties it separated. I would be very interested in hearing what the resolution to that situation was.
There was a case in South Florida where a man thought he was buying a house valued at $177,000 at a tax auction. He won it for $9,100. Turns out it wasn't the house shown in the pictures but rather a 1 foot wide strip of land between the two houses valued at $50. Don't know what the final outcome was but the buyer was pissed and felt like he had been scammed by the city...which he pretty much was.
I was going to say the same thing. The guy wanting to build a wall would need an easement to build and maintain it. But I'm not sure as he could force the other owner to grant it. Still, at 3' wide, it might be possible to build a wall, (I'm thinking cinderblock/CMU) but pretty much impossible to maintain it if a door-sized hole were to be punched though.
@@DjResR Good luck proving who did it. And you'd end up having to go before a judge who would probably be interested in why you constructed a wall on a 3' wide property. IOW, the complainant wouldn't have "clean hands".
One of the branches of the bank I work at has an entrance on a private alley. No one wants to maintain the alley, so occasionally I get calls from the branch about members who want us to pay for damage to their vehicles from the alley. Yes, the alley is so bad it damages cars driving down it. No, we don't pay for repairs; not our alley.
They can charge people for the use of the road then, if it's theirs. Nice 'Ransom Strip' for all the other properties on the road to gain access to their homes.
I wonder whether an easement specifying usage by the other property owners was included in the records. If not, the road owner could charge his neighbors a toll until the bill was paid in the event that the city was unwilling to accept the debt.
Recent years, in Britten, people have tracked down ancient examples of similar, parcels of land lost to ownership even centuries ago. These are expensive.
We live on a rural road. There's a street light at the end of our driveway. If we want it turned on, we'd have to pay for the electricity. We don't want to fund the public light and we don't want the light on, so it's not lit.
I used to be on an HOA board. Tried to work with the county on correcting some GIS info on where the pool was, I also discovered there was some land on a city golf course that was owned by the HOA. I just wanted to get things squared away but nobody seemed interested in pursuing getting things corrected...
The couple's title insurance company messed up big time! They should have noticed that the street was attached to the property and notified the couple.
Maybe. Title companies are more interesting is making sure there's a solid chain of ownership and no one is going to pop up and say "hey, that's my property". (Never sold, illegally taken, whatever)
Something kind of similar happened to me. Our new house sits on the Very Edge of the city and the Previous owner had the house hooked up to municipal water. Due to a fire a few months after we bought it we had the water shut off. Next month we get a bill and its higher than expected. When we asked for the payoff amount it was 13k$+. The owner had structrued the loan out across payments for the water and if you discontinued water service the loan balance was due. Long story short this is not the first thing the title company messed up. Part of the purchase and title agreement and insurance was that ALL liens, loans, etc were resolved before we closed. Our realtor heard through the grapevine that their title companies insurance turned down their claim because this is one of those things that is on babies first title checklist so the title company was out 13k$ to pay it off.
I have a neighbor with a fence 3 ft onto my property, they've had it for 25 years. The original land survey was off and residents over the years pulled out the rebar and stuff for the land markers. I had to get the entire block surveyed to find out where my actual property line was.
Yup. The house I live in right now originally owned the road it is upon, which is a looped dog-leg. So any time anyone in the neighborhood gets a survey done they have to come to my house to start it. I've occasionally been billed for these surveys because of the records BUT I'm also "double homestead" meaning only home and federal homestead. So I don't have to pay these bills because the city actually took the road when they widened it back in the late 1980s. My house is literally the oldest one in most of a half by one and a half mile stretch and was built in the 1970s. Good thing I like sliding doors... The GC of the neighborhood "owned" the house at first and stayed here so he'd be able to do work at will and watch over the development. Your wall story.. no, he couldn't just build a wall without city planning permission... which likely would have resulted in the tiny strip being granted to the parking lot and a refund of the auction money.
In the UK this bit of land is called a "Ransom Strip". It often happens where someone sells a chunk of land but wants to prevent access to it from a road. The new landowners are unable to cross the ransom strip.
My house was over 90 years old. My next door neighbor's was built in the 1960s. The street behind us had been an old Interurban line. The houses on that street were built the same time as my neighbor. For some reason, the electric line ran from the street, between my house and my neighbor's, from our street. Anything happened to that line, both streets lost power. Like the day, snow bent treelimbs onto the line, causing a fire and we were without power, most of the day. Then it was extended out across a field to the houses behind. My neighbor had installed a chainlink fence. It sat back about 10 feet from the road. His other front corner of the fence, was a gas meter, Not for my neighbor, but the house, about 300 feet behind him. Add to the problem, 3 pipelines ran through the field and my yard. If I ever won the lottery and wanted to build a better house, couldn't do it. Really sucked as the location as fantastic.
No Trespassing signs have only been legal since the 1890s. In the 1890s states passed laws making it a crime to enter property posted with "No Trespassing" signs. The purpose of the laws was to make it a crime for union organizers to enter mines and factories to recruit for the union. The laws were written to sound not anti union but the main aim of those laws was to be able to fine and jail union organizers. Prior to the passage of those Anti Union laws, unless you "Broke into" a building, merely walking on someone's else's property was NOT CRIMINAL. Now a trespasser could be held liable for any damage done to the property, but was a civil action only and limited by what damage was actually done to the property (and in most cases no damages thus no liability). Burguary was a seperate crime that require some sort of breaking and entering and if you broke into a house you were quilty of burguary but if you just opened a barn door and made sure no animals went in or out of the barn, that was a civil trespass and you were only liable for any damage you did while in the barn. Thus came out of the English rural tradition of farmers living in a village and then walking to they fields which could be 10 to 20 miles away. In case of a sudden rain strom it was not uncommon for farmers going to or from their fields to duck into a barn or shed on the way to or from their village in such a strom. In many ways those rural traditions were killed off by the 1890s No Trespassing laws but it took several decades and the adoption of the automobile for that to occur. Just a comment on "No Trespassing" laws and that they have only been criminal since the 1890s.
My county just had their tax foreclosure sale. Being nosy...oh um I mean curious, I browsed through them. There were 5 pieces up for auction that were very irregularly shaped and completely landlocked with no street access or easements. I thought to myself, why would anyone who does not own adjacent property buy these?
You can often get them dirt cheap. If you have a good lawyer handy, you can find a historic easement, or you think you can smooth talk the neighbors (asking or buying an easement from them) then getting access rights would theoretically be easy.
Our city refuses to sell those. There’s a 1/4 acre behind my dads house that’s all fenced off and full of neck high weeds that nobody can maintain because there’s no entrance. They refuse to sell it.
The people who live next might not even know, but buying it can be hard, as unless you have a separate loan for it, and wait till your land is freehold, amalgamating the 2 properties gets expensive, as you have to get a new home loan to cover both properties, and pay off your original one.
These pieces are so small and irregular in shape that even if you did get an easement you couldn't do much with it. Like 1/2 acre or less. If the county were smart they would contact the adjacent properties and let them know about the sale. Otherwise I can't see Joe or Jill Smith finding any use for it.
Yeah, "orphan" pieces of property create weird situations. I heard of one where building lots were originally zoned at 50 feet wide, then the zoning law was changed, and a lot that wide could not be built on. Meanwhile, both lots on either side of one particular parcel, had been built, leaving the owner of the middle lot with a piece of land he couldn't build on. Don't remember how that was resolved, if it was. Three feet, though?? That is weird!
I used to live in a house that was built at the back edge of the property. The city put an alley behind it and would not allow me to build a garage anywhere on the property because it would technically be in front of the line of the house. I asked for variances several times when potential buyers talked about putting up garages and I was turned down. Finally, I let it foreclose and got the hell out of that city. The tax bill for the foreclosure was much cheaper than what it would have been to make that property attractive to buyers.
How can they owe money for a power bill when they never initiated service with the power company for the property? I'm sure the lights aren't powered from the meter coming from their house so who started service with the power company? I know this, I wouldn't pay a bill for a service that I didn't ask for. Maybe the power company should go after whoever started the service like probably the shady people who conveyed the remainder of the properties to that last house and probably started service so nobody would notice. Or if not then the power company has been running those lights for free and too bad for them they didn't catch their own mistake 🤷
I too got a bill for the street light by my house that they refuse to move and a bunch of elves came late at night by with a BB Gun and shot the light out.. so no more bill I guess
That was going to be my suggested solution. I wonder if they could remove the light, since they are paying the bill? Then if someone pushes back, then they must be the one who should be paying the bill, right?
A new subdivision was proposed near me. Some neighbors and I attended some of the planning commission meetings. Initially developer wanted it to be gated. Some commissioners were concerned about distance of the gate to the public road including backup of cars. The gate got scrapped from the plans. With a private road the developer can request gated road and may also be able to have narrower road and may not have to install curbs and dig dig rather than pipes for storm drainage. The developer may be able to get by with lower cost of road but then the homeowners may then be responsible for road repair and snow removal. Cities and townships won't just let any road be conveyed to them--it has to meet their construction requirements for public roads. Some older subdivisions in my state may have private gravel roads. The local government may not just accept a gravel road or a narrow road without storm drains to be conveyed to them. Even with public roads a subdivisions may need to pay 1/2 of cost of resurfacing in my area. My township has offered to cover 1/2 of the cost of resurfacing while the other 1/2 is covered by special property tax assessment by those living in the subdivision. Something like 60% or more of the residents must sign agreeing to the assessment in order for it to be applied to all in the subdivision. I don't recall the exact percentage required.
I had something different happen.. One day I get a letter from the city saying that they abandoned a strip of land behind my house and that I'd be responsible for it in the future.
Solution: 1. Install parking meters or sell parking passes to park on the street. Put in a toll booth for access or sell access passes to the residents & guests. 2. Make profits. 3. Buy more roads...
I worked at a marina and the city of Seattle public works came to the marina in 2021 and informed them that the water supply backflow valve that was installed in 1970 is not in the correct location. After all this time they now say that it should never been approved on the original plans. They now had 90 days to fix ( $10,000+) the issue or receive a $500 fine and $25/day....
There was a piece of property in San Diego like that where it divided the owner 2 properties. The new owner constructed a wall which was promptly torn down and the court ruled with the owner of the two properties that he could not offer to sell the property by threatening to build a wall and then building a walk whose sole purpose was to obstruct business.
In my neck of the woods (SE PA), it's written into the notes of the subdivision plans that the roads are offered for dedication to the municipality upon completion of all construction. This is part of all the final releases of securities, bonds, etc. I f it wasn't a private shared access (written into all affected properties deeds), then it's up to the municipality and the owners/builders, in the end, to fulfill the initial approved agreement.
I have a similar story. My wife and i bought a house a year ago and while going thru the process we was told the neighbors driveway was a shared driveway and we have a driveway on the other side of the house. Now the driveway is as wide as a vehicle and we also owned the property on the other side of the driveway. Well the driveway was put in when the house was built well we go to closing and find out that the property the driveway is on cuts off the wall of our house and part of our pool and we did not own it some guy in another state dose and taxes has not been paid for 20 years. So we had to contact the city and they offered to sell it to us for $10
I bought my house in 2011. It's an old place built in 1930. Apparently at some point in the past when the house to the north side of my property was built, the people that owned my lot gave six feet of the north side of the lot that extends from the front to the back, approximately 150 feet. They did this so the new house would have room on the south side of their house, rather than it just being right up against the property line. I'm not sure what the legalities of property lines are, but that 6x150 feet is still part of my taxable property apparently. Oh, a side part of this story is that my neighbor who owns that house now, asked me if I would sell him half of my front yard that is on the other side of my driveway so he can park his tow trucks for his business.
We have a property term here in the uk called a ransom strip which is a piece of land retained by a seller when selling a larger piece of land who can then restrict access or demand payment to sell the strip (and access) back to the current owner. Entire parcels of land can be enclosed then access restricted completely. It may have origins before modern planning permissions became a thing to prevent the new owner for example building anything that may devalue or impact surrounding land or using the land if the new owners break an agreement not to use the land for certain purposes.
My father in law bought a piece of property in Wisconsin about 15 years ago. Fast forward to just a couple years ago and he found out developers built all around it and left no easement.
That street that was bought by a private person in at auction was in San Francisco in one of the high end neighborhoods in SF the neighborhood is presidio Terrace at the north end of the City near the Presidio
Depending on the amount of traffic and if it was viable, they should have put a toll booth in. Would probably have to factor in stuff like upkeep and liability insurance for the road.
Lot of roads in my town are private roads. The residents are always upset with the town for not maintaining it but it's not the towns road. Always check if the road is accepted by the town before you buy a house.
I purchased a house that was subdivided from a manufacturing company. They originally used my home as a sort of office/lobby. So it has some really beautiful architecture and looks really nice. But i also own the manufacturing companies parking lot and most of the road leading to it. Meanwhile because of the way they subdivided the property my neighbor owns the other driveway leading to my property as well as a small portion of my lawn and shrub wall. Luckily I get along with the manufacturing company and my neighbors.
Three years ago I bought a NEW TO ME house. Directly in front were two street lights that seemed to be burning 24 hours a day. When I got the electric bill it was unusually high. I came to find out the lights were on my electric line. I contacted the electric company and complained. I started to disconnect the line running to it. The company tried to have me arrested for destruction of property and something to do with knowingly causing a safety hazzard because of no light over the road. Long story short I won the case and sued them for stealing MY electric and also won. Instead of getting money back we worked out an agreement to not pay for electric until the amount they owe me is recovered. Good thing is my rates will not go up if the market price does. They have to honor the rate of the market price at the time of the theft. I will not be paying a bill for several years to come.
I was renting an apartment with roommates and the electric was in my name. It seemed really high and I started searching out the things that were on my meter. Come to find out, there was a shared water heater and my neighbors were (unknowingly) getting free hot water. The landlord used to use the neighboring apartment as a showroom for his cabinetry, and it had been unoccupied. He connected the hot water in that unit to the same water heater that my apartment used, and nobody noticed that because the use was so minimal. (This all happened well before we moved in there.) When he retired from making cabinets, he decided to rent that extra apartment out. Never bothered to give it its own water heater.
Internet service providers here in the UK have been going onto people property to lay cable for next door or whoever. I’ve read that you’re allowed to remove it if they don’t.
i bought a house where the deadbeats before me never paid any of their bills, the low class low income scumbags that eventually were forclosured on. so the utilities company just sent me a bill for $7k. $2500 of that was a water bill where they told me "i have a leak on my property that's why my bill is so high" despite having my meter read 1-2 units of water per month, every month. dealing with this level of turbo incompetence makes me want to live off grid permanently
How much was the bill and what should it have been? Just curious.
@@CharlieBoy360 This event actually took a little over 2 1/2 years to discover. At the time the electric bills would come in between 3 - $400.00 a month. I was doing everything I could to keep it as low as possible thinking wow I must really be a hog with the power. During that period I laid out close to $12,000. After consulting with others I discovered the lights would go off if tripped my MAIN breaker. Normally when a storm knocks power out everything goes off anyway if it's on your circuit with the power company. I've seen my area dark and one street over be lit up - strange. Anyway, after cutting the BURRIED line to my panel (my power is supplied overhead from the main), my electric bills dropped drastically to around $90 monthly. After 2 cycles of bills the power Co. was there to inspect because my bill was lower than normal (they were losing money). The street lights are like 4 - 500 watt bulbs burning (old school bulbs mercury vapor). I did some research and discovered my home was once a Doctors office and he had requested the lights be installed in front so people could find his place. Originally there were no lights on the road. After the street department decided to put more in they just left the original configuration instead of tapping the main line. It was just a cluster f*^$. The power co had to credit me all that past paid money back and I chose to not get power bills until it was all correct again. It's been almost13 years and I have sold the house. The new owners will not have that problem.
Here's one for you in Washington State they pulled up all the railroad tracks and put in a Trail but they sold the trail to a third party but in all the landowners Deeds stated if they ever pulled the track up the land would default back to the original owners so they legally sold land that didn't belong them got themselves in a pickle
I was laughing my ass off when that happened. The heavy-handed tactics that King County has employed against landowners to force through bike paths on their property deserved some karmic retribution.
Something similar happened in Atlanta along the Beltline trail.
Interurban bike trail?
To make it potentially far worse states don't customarily own RR right of ways. Most if they date back to the 1800's were given by the federal government to encourage RR growth. If the real owner comes along they can shut down all access to the right of way. These right of ways exist whether there are tracks or not and pre-empt state laws.
@@duanesamuelson2256 They are railbanked the right of way through a Surface Transportation Board in DC. It happened to our business, the RR was turned in to a trail. We sued the county over the nonsense and it cost the county half a million due to the added transportation costs to my business.
IF ANYONE can show they have the financial means to open a new rail line the TRAIL will have rails laid back down and NO MORE TRAIL.
I wrote many letters and sent exhibits to the STB through the late 90's and early 2000's.
I live on a private road with 9 others. Each of us owns several acres. The developer held onto the road for about 25 years, then wanted out. The county (in our case) didn't want it and we didn't particularly want them to have it. We formed an LLC so that all of the homeowners own an undivided 1/10th share of the road and we pay a modest fee twice a year for liability insurance with the rest being saved until it needs to be paved. This is, more or less, a rural area and several of us has either a plow truck or tractor with plow, so between the neighbors, the snow always gets taken care of. There are no lights, so no electric bill. Works great.
Honestly this is the way suburbs should work. The fact that developers can build suburbs and then hand responsibly for the infrastructure off to the city/county has incentivized all the urban sprawl we have.
The issue will only arise in a hundred yrs time when yalls property has been passed thru many more hands and somewhere along the way this unique road situation gets forgot; bcuz its not common practice by then.
Are you paying property tax?
As a libertarian this makes me happy. Volunteerism is the way
@@oldmech619 Yes, but it is minimal.
I am in the Hospital right now, I brought a very old laptop with me, finally get it running watching this video, Nurse comes in and says cool, I watch Steve everday. Talk about a small world.
Get well soon!
@@thistles X2!
As a planning commissioner, many people came to our meetings demanding the city turn their subdivision into a gated community. They were shocked when I said sure, as soon as they get every property owner to agree, post a multi-million dollar bond and agree to pay for all street, sidewalk, sewer etc. maintenance. These pricks thought they were entitled to gates on their streets to stop poor people from driving through their neighborhood.
I'd be tempted to create a pamphlet "So you want to be a gated community".
What's the bond for? Couldn't they just buy the road and make it private & maintain it on their own?
@@dannydaw59 I think that's the "buy the road" part.
@@dannydaw59 liability insurance
As someone who lived in Hawaii I can guarantee they were trying to get her to pay the bill and got caught the Hawaii electric company is very hated
All electric coumpanies deserve no sympathy or mercy.
We had a situation locally where a similar thing happened to a small development. The county refused to pay until it was pointed out that the area was included in an MSU(municipal service unit) that had been collecting taxes from the residents for the past twenty five years. The court told them “either return the money plus interest or take over the cost". Taking over was cheaper.
East Lake Sammamish Trail?
This happened to me once. I was in an apartment and they sent me a bill for every vacant apartment in the complex. When I called to argue, dude says “what makes you think this isn’t accurate”. I said this is a 1000 sq ft 2 br apartment. I can run ac 24/7 and open every door window and the fridge and it won’t even be 10% of this bill….
A guy I used to work with once got a water bill so high that it was a physical impossibility to run up that fee even if he sealed his house and filled the entire volume of space with water. Turned out the local utility had "helpfully streamlined" the billing process by billing him for every house on his block plus the next one over.
@@nairbvel We read our own water meter when I was a kid, sending in the reading on a postcard; they'd send someone around to read the meters once a year in case anyone was cheating on their self-reported numbers. My dad was out of town one time, so mom read the meter and sent it in; they called a few days later and said "DaddyBeansMom, either you've used 2.1 million gallons of water in the last 30 days, or you wrote down the serial number off of your meter instrad of the numbers from the dials." 🤣
On the opposite end of things, I have a client that bought a huge piece of commercial property with multiple addresses, multiple power meters, etc.
Once you hit that level of buying property, you lose a bunch of buyer protections because it is assumed if you’re spending that much money, you know what you’re doing and will do your due diligence in purchasing the property.
My client did not know what he was doing, did not do his due diligence, had no idea what all his property addresses were, did not properly transfer all power/gas/water bills into his company’s name properly, and 18 months after buying the property, the various utility companies tracked him down and informed him of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills. Came as a rather unfortunate surprise in the middle of Covid lockdowns when his cash flow was super low
@@nairbvel worked with a chick that lives in New Orleans. There was a water leak that the city is responsible for fixing but its after the meter so she gets a $1000 water bill every month. Every month they bill her, then she has to go to court, then she wins, and the cycle just repeats. She keeps them in court because the city refuses to pay or fix it and they can't collect as long as litigation is ongoing.
Gotta love the city.
If the electric company had no intention of collecting past charges, why did they send a bill? Once it became part of a news story they decided it wasn't worth collecting.
Probably to get attention on it. Having it spread in the news is a good way to have the politicians or whom ever to actually take action otherwise they just ignore it.
Isn't that always the way?
Nobody does anything until the media gets involved.
Yes, something does not add up. Usually, if you don't pay the bill, the power company just shuts off the power. Very fishy.
@@afriedrich1452 Most street lights are not meted
@@JoebDragon Do they then estimate wattage and "on hours"?
My wife worked for Puget Sound Energy several years ago as a temporary employee to locate lost accounts and development maps. When PSE merged with Washington Natural Gas several project managers got told to leave. When her crew started opening these lost accounts they found customers that never got billed for several years. In one case they found a check for over $250000 that was never cashed that was for utilities installation.
After my parents bought the house we lived in since 1977. A year after purchase the surrounding apt development decided it was going to impose HOA fees 2500 a year per house, for plowing and road maintenance. But our development formed a HOA and counter sued won and now the apt complex own the roads but can’t charge us fees, since we were never informed prior to the purchase ☺️thankfully they still plow our street eventually, and after 40yrs they finally resurfaced the streets and laid a proper top coat. Finally making our 15” tall curbs only 8” tall 😳 I can’t tell you how many times my mom back the car/van over the edge of curb and hooked the bumper/undercarriage and ripped it off 😳
Here in the UK it is very common for there to be small strips of property which impede development or people walking or driving to a home. We have a name for it, they are called ransom strips.
That's why some governments have laws that you must allow easements that allow access to neighboring property if your property is blocking access to a public road. Because there's always that one person who buys all the land right along side the road and then waits for for someone to buy a plot of land behind theirs and then tells them they can't access it but for an exorbitant price they'll sell them a plot by the road that'll connect them to the public road network.
@@Strideo1 That's great, so is the government going to pay any liability suits filed for an accident that happens on that property and someone gets hurt? Are they going to pay for the insurance on that land they are forcing the owner to allow people access to? If not, they can take a hike. You can't force someone to allow people on their property and then also hold them accountable when someone gets hurt on said property. The people forcing the owner to allow people on his property should be liable.
@@fictitiousnightmares If you bought all the land facing a public road in one of these jurisdictions then you probably knew or ought to have known a right or way easement would be needed for others to access their land behind yours.
If you don't want to be liable for the easement you could always sell the easement. Generally though unless you're shown to be negligent in some way you're not automatically liable for all accidents on your easement.
"Ransom strips" is a great term. It's up there with "spite fences" and "nail houses."
Also reminds me of the incident in Granby, CO where a guy built an armored bulldozer and used it to take out the property of his enemies. One of the things that tipped him over the edge was a dispute with a neighbor where they cut off access to his property.
I've never seen one in the UK that impeded accessibility but have seen them in between properties to prevent redevelopment keeping the amount of houses the same in the area.
As a real estate agent in Missouri, I always take note of the legal description and any recorded easements and make sure those line up with expectations of my buyers. I deal with private roads all the time, normally as an easement or part of an HOA but never have I seen 1 person own the road for a whole neighborhood!
Greater St. Louis or elsewhere?
@@zank_frappa Sorry no. Not much of a big city fan. I cover the lake up to the kc outskirts
As a contractor and builder I've seen this many times sometimes the people like it and dont mind but I met others who minded and worked to get there town to take it since plowing snow in my state is a killer.
Surprise!
Well bully for you! PAt yourself on the back! Omg
My "street" here in a rural area only has three houses on it and is maybe 300 yards long. The county has no interest in maintaining it. The three of us pitch in for gravel every couple years, and we alternate mowing the common areas. We have the nicest street in our little town. The county also doesn't plow snow in our town. We have some farmers that use their tractors instead. ... I basically live in Mayberry.
But I'm sure they're more than happy to tax you guys.
@@GeneralChangFromDanang Definitely. My property is two parcels so I have twice the paperwork. 😑
In my hometown, there was one road that used to go to several frarms. All of the properties were abandoned, so the town legally abandoned the road. Except that there was still one farm at the near end of the road. So the town couldn't legally abandon that portion of the road. So ever since the town plow goes up their wide, well maintained driveway (the town road), past their tenant house and the farmhouse, and turns around in their barnyard. And yes, the road is named after the family, who've been there for generations.
In 1955 my parents bought a farm in rural Alabama (it was rural then). 30 years later they decided to sell a few acres in order to pay off the $16,500.00 mortgage and retire. So, the realtor put up a for sale sign.
A few days later, the guy who owned the adjacent property came by and he and my father walked down the hill to the property lines.
AND, my folks hadn’t bought quite as much land as they thought they had.
The neighbor showed dad the corner markers, small concrete ‘stumps’, and dad realized that our fence was 3 feet over on his property. Now, my parents didn’t build that fence. It had been there long before they bought the land.
Bad news, right?
Not really. Neighbor just didn’t want dad ‘selling’ those 3 feet to a stranger. A simple handshake solved the problem.
Some years ago I was working on clean up operation after a wildfire in California. The program was government funded, but was voluntary. People could sign up to get their properties cleaned up for free. One area was a mountain that had originally belonged to one family, but had been subdivided and parcels sold off some 50 years before, with the original family retaining the top. Well it turned out they had also retained ownership of the roads.
Several of the homeowners signed up to get their properties cleaned, but the original family were opposed to the program, and denied access to the crews and equipment. They said they owned the roads, and the program vehicles were not allowed in. The program had to go to court to establish that yes, they could in fact use the roads to access the participating properties. The family continued some harassment after operations started, and the sheriff had to speak with them a couple times.
In 2019 my wife and I thought about building a house. Unfortunately where we wanted to live vacant lots are few and far between. When one does come on the market it's not cheap. One day I got a notification about a lot in a neighborhood we liked and it was reasonably priced. It was a flag lot behind another house. I went over to look at it and I knew something was off. It was way too close to a dedicated, township maintained walking trail. The lot existed before the trail and before the trail it was a good sized building lot, but the trail cut through it making it impossible to build on. Because we made some inquiries the person that owned the lot found out that the township should have bought the lot before they built the trail. He had inherited the lot, didn't live locally and didn't know much about it. He just found an agent and told them to list it. I believe he's still in court with the township.
The owner should have just built a house ON the trail. Its his property after all.
@@crsv7armhl Not a good idea, if he loses in court he might have to demolish the house at his expense.
@@crsv7armhl that would have meant breaking several laws and getting a contractor willing to break those laws.
In most cases, the city would have an easement through the property without having to actually own it. They would be able to build a path through the lot without having to compensate the property owner.
@@dannylim3318 in this case an easement wouldn't have worked. The trail cuts the back 2/3 of the lot off from the front. The lot is unusable. If a house had existed before the trail was built the trail would have made a very wide turn around the house. The trail paved and is fenced on both sides and it's at least 12 feet wide, fence to fence.
I knew a family growing up who owned a small local retail store. There was a small locally owned bank across the street. There was a parking lot adjacent to each, but owned, for some unknown reason, by the other. So the lot adjacent to the bank was the store parking lot and the lot adjacent to the store was the bank parking lot. Every single customer of both had to cross the street, which really fucked with traffic and just wasn't safe. Went on for decades until in the 90s they decided to trade. The bank deeded their lot to the store and the store deeded theirs to the bank.
Such an obvious solution begs the question, why did they wait decades to do so.
@Dan begs you've never had your car towed for being in the lot of a business you're not patronizing?
@@demonteddybear3510 every business will have cars towed when their lot is full of non-customers. They can't tell people "If our lot is full, park in that other place's lot." Bank customers don't stay long, whereas store customers do. The bank's gotta keep it's lot available to customers.
@@demonteddybear3510 You need to learn to read. I did not say they were parking on the lot "in front of" anything. That was your words not mine.
In many areas, a road must be up to a certain standard before a city, county, or the state will agree to take it over.
Because of how often residents want a local government to take over the private road once they realize how expensive it is to repair or replace when it's badly damaged or worn out. 😂
Which is always a better condition than the govt will ever keep it
> In many areas, a road must be up to a certain standard before a city, county, or the state will agree to take it over.
This is why, sometimes when a developer doesn't build his roads to state DOT code (such as being big enough for school busses to trucks to get past), the local community must create an HOA to own the road. Many times the developer does this on purpose so he can build more houses and fewer smaller roads on a particular tract of land.
@@Strideo1 ppppp
the problem is worse then you think Steve.
Their are literally companies that look for property's that are up for tax sale, buy them, then extort the homeowners to sell the property or easement rights back to the people who had been using it and/or need it to access their property.
Gives new meaning to "I own the whole damn street"
"I own your ass" come to mind.
Time to put in a toll gate and charge your neighbors two bits a pop to use the road to reach their houses.
@@machintelligence I’d charge a high five per 😂
Never thought I’d hear the road story. This might not be my father and I, but if it happened in Southwestern Michigan, we are the ones who purchased the road at a tax auction. Going to leave out a lot of details because this saga is long and some of the details are fuzzy as this happened a long time ago. In the beginning, we offered the property to the four homeowners who didn’t want to buy it as they viewed it as unfair and said the township should have to buy it. Each homeowner would have had to pay like $500 for it. We were offering the property to them at a steep discount as we sympathized with their predicament and just wanted to wash our hands of it.
The township, who realized they should have never allowed the property to go up to auction, decided to be the biggest POSes you can imagine. All we wanted for the property was $10k. Why the increase? Well, we didn’t want to screw over the property owners; the property was worth more than they were asked to pay. It is the only one with road access, so if the road were ground up and developed, it would be the sole property to have a fair market value among the five properties.
Que a corrupt judge constantly making rulings against us, delaying hearings if the township’s lawyer didn’t show up while not notifying us of hearings and ruling against us since we didn’t show up to something we didn’t know we had to. One of the times they attempted this, some clerk called for clarification on something, so my father had to rush to the courthouse and explain why he was dressed casually.
How did this saga end? Well, the corrupt judge retired, and the new judge wasn’t corrupt. Last I heard, this was years ago, he is the only judge around here who is liked. He immediately shot down the township’s bs, and they bought the road for way less than we wanted. They spent over $20,000 on legal expenses to have to buy the road anyway. I believe it might have been more than $25k. It was over double what we wanted for the road.
3:15 It's also possible that the person living in that house WAS the developer. My mom bought a house in Florida and the person living at the end of the short street along the beach had parceled out the land they owned between them and the highway. Then they built and sold homes on them. And of course, they named the subidvision after themselves, which honestly I probably would too.
I wud so not name such a thing after myself xD Id rather either A: Make a memey/shitposty name for it or B, more likely, id name it after someone i admire like Terry Pratchett, or possibly even name it after somethin of his work.
I mean, Id love to live in the AnkhMorpork subdivision.
Interesting theory 🤔 could be the case here indeed
@@SylviaRustyFae That's definitely an option too, though once you start selling properties a joke name might be problematic
@@joewilson3393 You think folks wud be less likely to buy Subby McSubdivisionface?
I couldn't help but notice the shirt you are wearing! From August 1963 to September 1965, I was an ASA ditty-bopper in Rothweesten, Germany. Your ASA patch made me smile.
I knew someone who bought several odd shaped pieces of property at a tax auction. The property was originally intended to be part of a street expansion for a new development. The development never happened but there were several homes already built. The guy that bought the property went to each home owner and told them they would have to pay him every month for access to their homes or find new ways to get their cars to their driveways. He then put dumpsters across each driveway. Some complained to the county, some paid. I never found out what happened because I stopped hanging around the guy. He turned out to be too much of a butt hole for me.
His plan wouldnt work. For him to get to his property he would need to access the property of others, likewise for the others to access their property they would need to access his. This would end up in court.
Doesn't he have to provide an easement?
@@jeli3953 no an easment does not have to be granted. That is why owners will wright in a easement before a sale of property. Or the new owner could be a dick.
@@patrickwetzel9576 - But anyone with a landlocked property has a right to access their property. Hence an easement. If it goes to court, he loses.
Courts do not get involved with land locked property. If that were the case landlocked property wouldn't be so cheap. The easiest way is to get other land owners to agree to an easement. But if they dont you have to go to the county then there is a hearing. If the county agrees to it. Then they make a road that you have to pay for. It is not as easy as going to court. Besides if you go to court. Land owner will say why my property. Why not someone else's property. It is a huge headache.
Where I live, subdivision roads have to be built to meet or exceed township standards, as far as width, drainage, paving materials, etc, before the township will take ownership. There's an older subdivision where the developer didn't build the streets to those standards, so it has remained a private road owned by the HOA ever since. Now the pavement is crumbling, insufficient drainage is often overwhelmed, etc, and the HOA asked the township to take ownership and rebuild the streets. One of the township supervisors (aka councilmen, selectmen, etc) said "Your developer chose to save money by not building those streets correctly, and the HOA chose to save money by not maintaining them correctly, and now the HOA wants the taxpayers to foot the bill for correcting those mistakes? That's not how that works." And called the question - it was voted down, unanimously.
Tree stands should be illegal without permission. I have a neighbor who lost a couple of 300 year old oak trees because of tree stands put up with huge numbers of nails. Putting up no hunting signs or no trespassing signs causes a change in the tax status of the land.
You put up a tree stand in my woods and I'll use you as target practice. Legal on an Indiana farm.
We had 4 boys come down from Anderson to poach our woods. After 3 years someone shot up their green station wagon. I don't know who did it but thanks.
Hi Steve, there was a case similar to this in Australia were the shire /municipality claimed not to own or controversial the road but had been charging very high municipal land rates based on road frontage and when asked said this was to maintain the roads and foot paths that didn't exist so the land owners class actioned for 50 years back rates and won the municipality acquired thr road soon after and challenged the Clame saying the process was started 50 years prior and now only completed so the past charges were valid , road is still not repaired or passable except by tractor or 4x4 in summer and impassable in winter the land owner have been prevented from even repairing any part of the road to access there .and case is ongoing ,
I had a good experience when I bought my house on a 1/4 acre of land. The price I paid was well bellow the market price, in the area. It turns out that the bank that owned the home, did not know the home was actually sitting on 1.25 acre. Which instantly increased the value of the property.
I like your "lightning fast chicken plucker" shirt.
I was in Berlin from '76 to '79.
They need to put a toll booth on the street 1$ for residents and 25k for city/power company vehicles lol
Wouldn't work...utilities aren't run until they have a legal easement and part of that easement allows access to equipment...the electric meter is electric company equipment so...
My parents lived on a private road in rural Missouri but they knew about it when they bought their house. All of the homeowners along the road chipped in for road maintenance. It was gravel when they first moved in but after a couple of years the residents put up the money to have it paved with asphalt. No streetlights, though. Most people just had some type of lights or reflectors at the end of their driveway.
You may ask yourself, "What is that beautiful house?"
You may ask yourself, "Where does that highway go to?"
And you may ask yourself, "Am I right? Am I wrong?"
And you may say to yourself, "My God! What have I done?"
Now I have that song stuck in my head.
And the days go by!
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Haha! Well played!
Now i need to go dig up that music video and watch it.
@@narrowgroundentertainment water flowing under ground
My grandparents farm was established 1967. One of there neighbors moved in around 1985 and made friends with the family for 25 years, my grandparents were so friendly that they let the guy use an extra half an acre in a strip along the south and east side of his land. He's on 3/4 of an acre his driveway was half on the farms land so they gave up a little and let him use (They didnt give it to him or deed it) meadow land to be friendly. Anyway guy has a business where he restores cars sandblasting and spraying and generally making a mess that isnt allowed on agricultural zoned land and they never cared. One day after 25 years my uncle was sick of a tree on the corner of that property that got massive and was hitting him forcing him to lose less and less land he bales so he trimmed it. That was the start of the end. Guy lawyers up serves my uncle claiming that was his tree on his land (wild thorn apple on the farms property) so my uncle calls guys lawyer and explains, lawyer says you know he took care of it for all these years blah blah blah (he didn't he just dumped his chemicals and sandblasted there) and hes entitled to it. He found out NY doesnt do that bs law about taking care until its yours and all the photos I got of the clown doing illegal crap helped my uncle but guys nephew was the codes guy so that didnt matter to much. The neighbor went on to become a member of the town board and started a town law claiming a farmer cant spread cow poo on his fields in that town because the smell is a nuisance. This is on ag zoned land and thats getting into federally protected areas so my uncle writes to the department of agriculture they sent their lawyer to the town board meeting and threatened a very hefty fine against the town and harassment suit against them for my uncle then that died off quick. Guy eventually asks my uncle one day if he would sell him the land my uncle says to him ya $17,000. Lol. He says he would have signed it all over for nothing had the guy not started all that. He didnt buy it and actually passed away from a stroke not long after and my uncle made sure to cut that tree to the ground while the dude was on his deathbead watching out the window. I'm skimming over tons of stuff that the town did once the neighbor became a board member since I already wrote a short story.
Made no sense whatsoever.
@@maxsdad538 obviously reading and comprehension are not your strong points.
The thing I would worry about most is potential liability if someone was injured. Municipalities often benefit from laws that limit the ability of someone to sue. That might not apply to a privately owned road.
Since the people own the road, they could legally charge everyone that lives on the street usage fees too.
Yeah. My family owns a summer camp on a private road. We got add on insurance because we couldn't convince any of the other camp owners that we had a shared liability problem. We also could not convince a couple of them to pay a hundred bucks a year to pay the local Road Agent to maintain the road. They said their camps were near the beginning of the road, so why should they help pay for the entire road. My brother and I bought quarter loads of rock dust, sand and gravel and we fill in the potholes. But we don't touch the road until it passes the holdouts. It is getting pretty bad in front of the first camp, almost as if people are deliberately damaging the road there. He DEMANDED that we fix it too, we laughed his his face.
@@crsv7armhl Not likely after so many years, there would have been an "easement" created by those neighbors all using it without action by former property owners.
@@coop5329 "Like adverse possession, a prescriptive easement requires proving open and hostile, and continuous use for a statutory period (7 years). It also requires proof of the width of the easement (20 feet), and that the width and use of the easement has not changed over time."
So no
@@crsv7armhl Probably not. In most states you have a right to be able to access your own property. Most likely one of the other owners can sue for a right of way, if they can't arrive at a friendly agreement.
In Jersey City NJ a subdivision of conds town houses. It's now been 20 years it's a private community and alternative side. I wonder the workings of that.
I live in rural Western Australia. We bought a property here and the former owner requested a reading and final bill. We had not received a bill for 3 or 4 months, so I called the power company, provided our info, etc, and received a bill. The customer service rep thanked me and told me that sometimes it takes 3 or 4 YEARS for the company to contact the new owner about unpaid bills. So 19+ years is definitely excessive! In fact, it's insane!
Except as others have pointed out, street lights typically don't have meters. They just charge a flat rate based on what they expect. Someone failed to notice the added lights weren't added to anyone's bill.
I like the story of the Hess Triangle in NYC. It is supposedly the smallest privately owned piece of property in the US.
Here in Western Washington State, the wife and I live at the end of a mile-long private road. The 'neighborhood' we live in is very rural former timber company land sold off in 5+ acre lots in the 1980s. Our road is actually a series of easements that originally served as property lines (I'll get back to this in a bit). So, care and maintenance of the road is by a Road Association of which each homeowner is a member with dues, rights and responsibilities. It works fairly well, and while it looks like an HOA, it decidedly is not and never will be and HOA (we baked that into the Road Agreement). We even recently got together and paved the road as a group.
Where the rub comes is with the property lines. When the original survey was done for the first platting in our county, for our section the surveyor was off 3 degrees clockwise. This was not discovered until a re-survey was undertaken about 10 years ago. Turns out, no one's property lines are right, and the degree you're off is dependent on how far you are from the origin point! Our 'property line' road now lays fully on some people's properties and not at all on others. It's a mess. We've all agree do just adhere to the understood property lines and leave sleeping dogs lay. But, the county has just thrown it's hands up. They tried to re-survey 10 years ago and when the surveyors discovered how far they were off, all the markers they laid out disappeared overnight. I'm guessing the county does not want to open up decades worth of adverse possession cases...
That sounds like a ticking time bomb. You and your neighbors should work out something before a piece of land falls into someone else's hands and you discover you can't access your property without paying a toll or something.
You can basically get an agreement made with the long and short being "we all agree to accept these new different lines that line up with where they were thought to be". Would be more troublesome now that the markers all disappeared, though. But the further you go on with understood property lines there's no reason to not write it down and set new markers where you want the property lines to be.
You'd either want to contact your county government, a surveyor, or a property lawyer for that depending on expertise and legislation in the state. But they should be able to point you in the right direction.
I picked up a saying from surveyors i like to use; "cheap surveys are the most expensive surveys", and in this case, the current survey is at least cheap in spirit.
*I was wondering why I never get an electric bill.* *Thank you neighbor for taking care of my electric bill.*
Wasn't the original homeowner legally required to tell the new homeowner the situation, or were they not aware either?
It may well have been in the paperwork, but not verbally mentioned. In which case the new homeowners would be unlikely to have known, as reading paperwork is a pain.
So I need to sign here, here and here. Okay thanks. BTW what did I just sign? oh okay.
@@lunaticbz3594 My real estate lawyer summarizes each section first, prior to having me sign it. Anything out of the ordinary, he points it out and advises whether or not to sign off.
@@ScubaSteveCanada That's totally acceptable.
But when people just rely on the other side to explain the contract and sign. That's when you can get bad deals or big surprises. Especially if you ask after you sign it :p
@@lunaticbz3594 Reading paperwork is a pain, but a deadly important necessity. Some years back my folks were about to sign the papers on an apartment for my grandparents when Mom got the feeling things were moving just a tad too fast, so she & Dad read through the papers while the developer's guy sat there fuming.... and two pages in they found a clause stating that if the bank or the developer needed money, they could claim the entire outstanding balance of the mortgage within 90 days or foreclose on the property.
Live on a mountain in NWA. A county road cuts through my property, it was originally a two rut. Mark my property with purple paint and signs. Have proximity intrusion sensors and cameras. Tweekers and other rural criminals are a problem. Armed 24/7.
If that happened to me I would simply put up a gate and charge everyone $100 to go through it each way problem solved
Sounds good, but that's how you'd get a brick to the side of your head. 😂
@@dannylim3318 like I wouldn’t be ready for something like that.
@@dannylim3318 And that is how you go to jail. Try to put a brick to the wrong person head, grave time is what you deserve and will get.
No legal, look up other cases where this had happend, the court will tell you to take it down because you cant keep people hostage
@@ztmackin 18K Electric bill isn’t that holding him hostage ?
Interesting old Army Security Patch on your shirt. ASA was melded into Inscom back in the 70's. The HQ was at Arlington Hall Station on Glebe Road back in the day. The station was given to the DIA and then to the State Dept.
I had this happen to a neighbor! They bought a place that they thought was 20 acres, but surveyed after the fact and found they only had 12. The judge told them that because it had 20+\- that it was legal!
… not exactly the same, but still messed up.
🤣🤣 how u gonna buy 20 acres and not get it surveyed. That was a dumb move. Sounds like a covid move.
@@Seasniffer69 Also sounds a bit like the judge (or a buddy) has the missing 8 acres...!
@@nairbvel 8 acres isn't like a little ditch or anything.
8 acres is 348,480 square feet.
Hellen Keller could see an 8 acre difference.
And the moral of that story is that you NEVER, NEVER buy property until you have had it surveyed yourself. The cost of a survey is very cheap in the long run. This practice saved me a ton of trouble on both the properties I have owned.
Good people see 20+/- and interpret that as something like 19-21 (as in a fraction of one unit), not 12-28. Bad ruling for sure. Buyer failed to get it surveyed (at least do a land record check), so, little sympathy. Seller was deceptive/fraudulent (again, owner should know what they actually have to sell). See so much of this everyone should get their land surveyed unless they can dig up documentation to the same effect, and certainly before building anything adjacent to the edges. Same with commercial real estate "it's not fraud to lie in the advert".
Nothing like losing part of your land to someone else because a fence was built on your side of the line. In that situation I wonder if you could sue the city to get your tax money back for the 'not your land' you were taxed on. Worth a shot, though I expect once they have your money its done, if you owed money then maybe you could negotiate a correction.
Here in our area of North Carolina our HOA owns our roads, and several parks which have improvements on them (pool, tennis courts, pavilions, trails, etc.). At least it was disclosed to us when we bought our house who owns what. Around here privately owned streets are a common thing. The street signs have a special marker on them "Private Street" so that city service vehicles don't bother with servicing our streets. Of course that means that our HOA has to contract for services like street lights, trash pickup, surface & ditch maintenance, ice treatment & snow removal, and even a fee to the school system to have the buses come down the streets.
Narrow pieces of property like that often served as a "spite strip" designed to prevent access to adjoining property.
Hunting stands on your property, in PA it use to be go out the Sunday afternoon before the season and take the tree stands out. Me and another guy both did that one year to 6 stands and the next morning that entire hill side was full of people swearing at 615 AM for opening day. With posted signs on the tree with the former stand removed.
I live at the end of a cul-de-sac on a private street where each of the property owners also own half of the street in front of their houses and are responsible for maintenance of their portion of the roadway. Accordingly, your driving experience varies along the road. The nice thing is that because it is both a cul-de-sac and a posted private drive we have very little traffic.
The taxes for our portion of the road are included in the total property tax bill. It is all laid out very clearly on the property plot.
Because we are in unincorporated San Diego county and just outside of the boundary of the nearest city, we don't pay their tax. But as noted in the video, we also don't get any city services on the road, but also as noted, it doesn't snow much here ;-)
That wouldn't happen to be near Rios Canyon Road by any chance, would it?
@@CreepyUncleIdjit No, we are in North County. Not that far from Palomar Airport and the old Carlsbad raceway, which is now a business park. I ran one of my vehicles on the drag strip the last weekend of operation before it was shut down.
So some property owners don't maintain their section of the road I take it.
@@dannydaw59 One in particular. Has a few potholes that could be filled.
I lived across the street from our neighbors who were inside the city limits and paid city tax for a library they didn't use.
I lived across the street, after moving in we went to the library to get cards for the kids use.
Vecause you live on the other side of the street you're in the county your property is not paying city tax so you can't use to the city library.
If you'd like to pay the city taxes we'll be happy to lend you our books,
(with a possiblity of late fees.)
Never mind.
Kids can use the library at private school.
Way back in the late Fifties there was a report of a man who owned one square foot of prime Florida property and held up construction of a hotel. The settlement was he got a room for life.
Heh, though only slightly related, the property law discussion reminded me of a situation when I was growing up. Lived out in a sizable rural county. So the public roads made for very large 'blocks' of properties. Which means, there are often some lots in the middle not connected to the road in any way. (IE when a farmer sells off back acreage they no longer use). Well there was one such lot in the middle of the block we lived on. Now we are talking well over a mile on each side of this block. And this lot, was dead in the middle. Somebody bought it blind and then got upset when they found out it was completely enclosed. Now, Dad and the neighbors, all a nice friendly bunch said basically. "No problem. Lets find a nice border between properties here, you can have a few feet on each side to put in a driveway." Weren't even going to charge them for it. Just that if they picked a direction that had a fence, they needed to pay for moving the fence. And there were several borders that didn't even have that problem. So the unfortunate buyer was given a full free way out of the problem, at the expense and kindness of their new neighbors.
However.... The new owner got it in their head that the access they wanted went right straight through the middle of one of the neighbors property. Not on the edge... Through The MIDDLE. Don't know why they got pigheaded about it. But they did. Of course it went to court. And the judge, once they got all the details told the buyer that: One, you had NO rights to take access through the middle of someone elses property when there are alternatives. Two, they would have to either, buy the property edges that the access would be allowed on, or lease it since the free use was taken off the table when they sued. Needless to say, they didn't like that. Fortunately for them. one of the neighbors took pity on them, and bought the property from them, even though they didn't need it.
The government AND a power company both DID THE RIGHT THING?! That's so rare that I'm astonished!
Wow! If they own the road, disconnect the lights. Have the power company turn them off
And charge a toll!
Plow it up and build more houses to pay the bills?
They still presumably want to use the road, and even if they were willing to deal with it that would be pretty unfair to their neighbors. I'd imagine if it got to a point where the power company was actually pushing that might be an option though.
My home town of Red Wing Minnesota has some weird property splits. If you look what used to be the mall the building is split up and owned by like 7 different people, and portions of the parking lot are owned by different people.
I was also surprised while looking at the tax survey map by some parcels that are privately owned that I'd have put money on being either city, state, or county property.
I'm obviously not a lawyer but it is my understanding that if you own a piece of property and you allow people to use your property for access to their property for X amount of time then it becomes grandfathered in ...as a kid I remember that we had a private driveway bordering the driveway for four other houses with a fence in between... the neighbors asked if they could tear down the fence making the driveway wider for all and my parents agreed to it. Years later my parents wanted to fence in their driveway again and the neighbors sued and won because the driveway had not been blocked off for 1 day each year to show that my parents retained ownership
> if you own a piece of property and you allow people to use your property for access to their property for X amount of time then it becomes grandfathered in
Nope. That's not a thing. You' are confused.
You might thinking about unpermitted use. Use that's allowed is not "adverse possession."
In another comment I mentioned that my brother has a farmer encroaching on his land. As long as he says "hey, you're encroaching on my land, stop that" once every like 19 years the farmer can never claim "adverse " on that land.
@@DonOblivious I sure do wish someone had told the judge that in my parents case
County closed the road in front of my business for a year. During the construction of the new road they poured a curb and cut off my parking lot. Had to fight with the county commissioner and they finally cut a 10' access not enough for cars to enter and exit at the same time. His reasoning was that own the 2 properties behind it on the side street.
I'm curious about the business with the parking lot separated by a 3-ft strip the business and parking lot owner didn't own. It seems to me that the simple answer to the new owner of the 3-ft strip building a wall would be that it's probably impossible to build that wall on a 3 ft wide property without trespassing on the two properties it separated. I would be very interested in hearing what the resolution to that situation was.
@@KameraShy great point. I had forgotten about that possibility.
There was a case in South Florida where a man thought he was buying a house valued at $177,000 at a tax auction. He won it for $9,100. Turns out it wasn't the house shown in the pictures but rather a 1 foot wide strip of land between the two houses valued at $50. Don't know what the final outcome was but the buyer was pissed and felt like he had been scammed by the city...which he pretty much was.
I was going to say the same thing. The guy wanting to build a wall would need an easement to build and maintain it. But I'm not sure as he could force the other owner to grant it. Still, at 3' wide, it might be possible to build a wall, (I'm thinking cinderblock/CMU) but pretty much impossible to maintain it if a door-sized hole were to be punched though.
@@russellhltn1396 Punching a hole may be considered as vandalism or destruction of property._
@@DjResR Good luck proving who did it. And you'd end up having to go before a judge who would probably be interested in why you constructed a wall on a 3' wide property. IOW, the complainant wouldn't have "clean hands".
One of the branches of the bank I work at has an entrance on a private alley. No one wants to maintain the alley, so occasionally I get calls from the branch about members who want us to pay for damage to their vehicles from the alley. Yes, the alley is so bad it damages cars driving down it. No, we don't pay for repairs; not our alley.
Homeowner looking at daughter after finding out he owns a street: "Congratulations Abby, you're now a toll booth attendant!"
They can charge people for the use of the road then, if it's theirs. Nice 'Ransom Strip' for all the other properties on the road to gain access to their homes.
I wonder whether an easement specifying usage by the other property owners was included in the records. If not, the road owner could charge his neighbors a toll until the bill was paid in the event that the city was unwilling to accept the debt.
Recent years, in Britten, people have tracked down ancient examples of similar, parcels of land lost to ownership even centuries ago. These are expensive.
Ben is located under the front tire of the 71 Daytona
We live on a rural road. There's a street light at the end of our driveway. If we want it turned on, we'd have to pay for the electricity. We don't want to fund the public light and we don't want the light on, so it's not lit.
I used to be on an HOA board. Tried to work with the county on correcting some GIS info on where the pool was, I also discovered there was some land on a city golf course that was owned by the HOA. I just wanted to get things squared away but nobody seemed interested in pursuing getting things corrected...
GIS=Get It Surveyed
@@DavidMyhill I had not heard that before. But I don't live there anymore and therefore am not on the HOA board so not my problem.
Incompetent,Inspectors, city supervisors, county commissioners allowing the shady developers to create this BS.
The couple's title insurance company messed up big time! They should have noticed that the street was attached to the property and notified the couple.
Maybe. Title companies are more interesting is making sure there's a solid chain of ownership and no one is going to pop up and say "hey, that's my property". (Never sold, illegally taken, whatever)
Something kind of similar happened to me.
Our new house sits on the Very Edge of the city and the Previous owner had the house hooked up to municipal water. Due to a fire a few months after we bought it we had the water shut off. Next month we get a bill and its higher than expected. When we asked for the payoff amount it was 13k$+. The owner had structrued the loan out across payments for the water and if you discontinued water service the loan balance was due.
Long story short this is not the first thing the title company messed up. Part of the purchase and title agreement and insurance was that ALL liens, loans, etc were resolved before we closed. Our realtor heard through the grapevine that their title companies insurance turned down their claim because this is one of those things that is on babies first title checklist so the title company was out 13k$ to pay it off.
I have a neighbor with a fence 3 ft onto my property, they've had it for 25 years. The original land survey was off and residents over the years pulled out the rebar and stuff for the land markers. I had to get the entire block surveyed to find out where my actual property line was.
In some states you can loose that strip of land after a number of years. I would remove that fence immediately. A new fence is optional.
the ORGINAL land survey not "off" unless it was fraudulent.
Yup. The house I live in right now originally owned the road it is upon, which is a looped dog-leg. So any time anyone in the neighborhood gets a survey done they have to come to my house to start it. I've occasionally been billed for these surveys because of the records BUT I'm also "double homestead" meaning only home and federal homestead. So I don't have to pay these bills because the city actually took the road when they widened it back in the late 1980s. My house is literally the oldest one in most of a half by one and a half mile stretch and was built in the 1970s. Good thing I like sliding doors... The GC of the neighborhood "owned" the house at first and stayed here so he'd be able to do work at will and watch over the development.
Your wall story.. no, he couldn't just build a wall without city planning permission... which likely would have resulted in the tiny strip being granted to the parking lot and a refund of the auction money.
In the UK this bit of land is called a "Ransom Strip". It often happens where someone sells a chunk of land but wants to prevent access to it from a road. The new landowners are unable to cross the ransom strip.
My house was over 90 years old. My next door neighbor's was built in the 1960s. The street behind us had been an old Interurban line. The houses on that street were built the same time as my neighbor. For some reason, the electric line ran from the street, between my house and my neighbor's, from our street. Anything happened to that line, both streets lost power. Like the day, snow bent treelimbs onto the line, causing a fire and we were without power, most of the day. Then it was extended out across a field to the houses behind. My neighbor had installed a chainlink fence. It sat back about 10 feet from the road. His other front corner of the fence, was a gas meter, Not for my neighbor, but the house, about 300 feet behind him. Add to the problem, 3 pipelines ran through the field and my yard. If I ever won the lottery and wanted to build a better house, couldn't do it. Really sucked as the location as fantastic.
own a road? set up a toll booth.
No Trespassing signs have only been legal since the 1890s. In the 1890s states passed laws making it a crime to enter property posted with "No Trespassing" signs. The purpose of the laws was to make it a crime for union organizers to enter mines and factories to recruit for the union. The laws were written to sound not anti union but the main aim of those laws was to be able to fine and jail union organizers.
Prior to the passage of those Anti Union laws, unless you "Broke into" a building, merely walking on someone's else's property was NOT CRIMINAL. Now a trespasser could be held liable for any damage done to the property, but was a civil action only and limited by what damage was actually done to the property (and in most cases no damages thus no liability).
Burguary was a seperate crime that require some sort of breaking and entering and if you broke into a house you were quilty of burguary but if you just opened a barn door and made sure no animals went in or out of the barn, that was a civil trespass and you were only liable for any damage you did while in the barn. Thus came out of the English rural tradition of farmers living in a village and then walking to they fields which could be 10 to 20 miles away. In case of a sudden rain strom it was not uncommon for farmers going to or from their fields to duck into a barn or shed on the way to or from their village in such a strom.
In many ways those rural traditions were killed off by the 1890s No Trespassing laws but it took several decades and the adoption of the automobile for that to occur.
Just a comment on "No Trespassing" laws and that they have only been criminal since the 1890s.
My county just had their tax foreclosure sale. Being nosy...oh um I mean curious, I browsed through them. There were 5 pieces up for auction that were very irregularly shaped and completely landlocked with no street access or easements. I thought to myself, why would anyone who does not own adjacent property buy these?
You can often get them dirt cheap. If you have a good lawyer handy, you can find a historic easement, or you think you can smooth talk the neighbors (asking or buying an easement from them) then getting access rights would theoretically be easy.
Our city refuses to sell those. There’s a 1/4 acre behind my dads house that’s all fenced off and full of neck high weeds that nobody can maintain because there’s no entrance. They refuse to sell it.
The people who live next might not even know, but buying it can be hard, as unless you have a separate loan for it, and wait till your land is freehold, amalgamating the 2 properties gets expensive, as you have to get a new home loan to cover both properties, and pay off your original one.
These pieces are so small and irregular in shape that even if you did get an easement you couldn't do much with it. Like 1/2 acre or less. If the county were smart they would contact the adjacent properties and let them know about the sale. Otherwise I can't see Joe or Jill Smith finding any use for it.
Area I grew up, a public road became private, and it all got fenced off.
Dude has a "driveway" that's 2 lanes and about 1/2 mile long.
Yeah, "orphan" pieces of property create weird situations. I heard of one where building lots were originally zoned at 50 feet wide, then the zoning law was changed, and a lot that wide could not be built on. Meanwhile, both lots on either side of one particular parcel, had been built, leaving the owner of the middle lot with a piece of land he couldn't build on. Don't remember how that was resolved, if it was. Three feet, though?? That is weird!
I used to live in a house that was built at the back edge of the property. The city put an alley behind it and would not allow me to build a garage anywhere on the property because it would technically be in front of the line of the house. I asked for variances several times when potential buyers talked about putting up garages and I was turned down. Finally, I let it foreclose and got the hell out of that city. The tax bill for the foreclosure was much cheaper than what it would have been to make that property attractive to buyers.
When zoning changes, the government should have to pay landowners who lose the ability to use their land the difference in value.
The tax sale story was out of San Francisco. I was actually thinking about it right before you brought it up as an example.
How can they owe money for a power bill when they never initiated service with the power company for the property? I'm sure the lights aren't powered from the meter coming from their house so who started service with the power company? I know this, I wouldn't pay a bill for a service that I didn't ask for. Maybe the power company should go after whoever started the service like probably the shady people who conveyed the remainder of the properties to that last house and probably started service so nobody would notice. Or if not then the power company has been running those lights for free and too bad for them they didn't catch their own mistake 🤷
Sounds like they only sent the bill to make it into the news, so the issue wasn't ignored.
@@Br3ttM probably that is correct
The last house was probably the model home, and somehow the street was included in that lot sale.
Ben being used as a drip tray again, Under #71, Steve's LHS
I wore that emblem on your shirt when I was in the Army.
I too got a bill for the street light by my house that they refuse to move and a bunch of elves came late at night by with a BB Gun and shot the light out.. so no more bill I guess
That was going to be my suggested solution. I wonder if they could remove the light, since they are paying the bill? Then if someone pushes back, then they must be the one who should be paying the bill, right?
@@joewilson3393 At the very least I'm putting the switch in my living room!
A new subdivision was proposed near me. Some neighbors and I attended some of the planning commission meetings. Initially developer wanted it to be gated. Some commissioners were concerned about distance of the gate to the public road including backup of cars. The gate got scrapped from the plans. With a private road the developer can request gated road and may also be able to have narrower road and may not have to install curbs and dig dig rather than pipes for storm drainage. The developer may be able to get by with lower cost of road but then the homeowners may then be responsible for road repair and snow removal. Cities and townships won't just let any road be conveyed to them--it has to meet their construction requirements for public roads. Some older subdivisions in my state may have private gravel roads. The local government may not just accept a gravel road or a narrow road without storm drains to be conveyed to them.
Even with public roads a subdivisions may need to pay 1/2 of cost of resurfacing in my area. My township has offered to cover 1/2 of the cost of resurfacing while the other 1/2 is covered by special property tax assessment by those living in the subdivision. Something like 60% or more of the residents must sign agreeing to the assessment in order for it to be applied to all in the subdivision. I don't recall the exact percentage required.
I had something different happen.. One day I get a letter from the city saying that they abandoned a strip of land behind my house and that I'd be responsible for it in the future.
Solution:
1. Install parking meters or sell parking passes to park on the street. Put in a toll booth for access or sell access passes to the residents & guests.
2. Make profits.
3. Buy more roads...
I worked at a marina and the city of Seattle public works came to the marina in 2021 and informed them that the water supply backflow valve that was installed in 1970 is not in the correct location. After all this time they now say that it should never been approved on the original plans. They now had 90 days to fix ( $10,000+) the issue or receive a $500 fine and $25/day....
There was a piece of property in San Diego like that where it divided the owner 2 properties. The new owner constructed a wall which was promptly torn down and the court ruled with the owner of the two properties that he could not offer to sell the property by threatening to build a wall and then building a walk whose sole purpose was to obstruct business.
In my neck of the woods (SE PA), it's written into the notes of the subdivision plans that the roads are offered for dedication to the municipality upon completion of all construction. This is part of all the final releases of securities, bonds, etc. I f it wasn't a private shared access (written into all affected properties deeds), then it's up to the municipality and the owners/builders, in the end, to fulfill the initial approved agreement.
I have a similar story. My wife and i bought a house a year ago and while going thru the process we was told the neighbors driveway was a shared driveway and we have a driveway on the other side of the house. Now the driveway is as wide as a vehicle and we also owned the property on the other side of the driveway. Well the driveway was put in when the house was built well we go to closing and find out that the property the driveway is on cuts off the wall of our house and part of our pool and we did not own it some guy in another state dose and taxes has not been paid for 20 years. So we had to contact the city and they offered to sell it to us for $10
I bought my house in 2011. It's an old place built in 1930. Apparently at some point in the past when the house to the north side of my property was built, the people that owned my lot gave six feet of the north side of the lot that extends from the front to the back, approximately 150 feet. They did this so the new house would have room on the south side of their house, rather than it just being right up against the property line. I'm not sure what the legalities of property lines are, but that 6x150 feet is still part of my taxable property apparently. Oh, a side part of this story is that my neighbor who owns that house now, asked me if I would sell him half of my front yard that is on the other side of my driveway so he can park his tow trucks for his business.
Also good idea to look at GIS survey to help on initial review of your property lines. Most counties have free access to it.
We have a property term here in the uk called a ransom strip which is a piece of land retained by a seller when selling a larger piece of land who can then restrict access or demand payment to sell the strip (and access) back to the current owner. Entire parcels of land can be enclosed then access restricted completely. It may have origins before modern planning permissions became a thing to prevent the new owner for example building anything that may devalue or impact surrounding land or using the land if the new owners break an agreement not to use the land for certain purposes.
My father in law bought a piece of property in Wisconsin about 15 years ago. Fast forward to just a couple years ago and he found out developers built all around it and left no easement.
In the UK when they occur (rare) the strips of property separating homes from the road are called ransom strips with good reason.
This is why I'm glad in Oklahoma that deeds have to have all this on them and measurements of the property
That street that was bought by a private person in at auction was in San Francisco in one of the high end neighborhoods in SF the neighborhood is presidio Terrace at the north end of the City near the Presidio
If i owned the street i would set up a toll booth to cover maintenance and power
Depending on the amount of traffic and if it was viable, they should have put a toll booth in.
Would probably have to factor in stuff like upkeep and liability insurance for the road.
Lot of roads in my town are private roads. The residents are always upset with the town for not maintaining it but it's not the towns road. Always check if the road is accepted by the town before you buy a house.
I purchased a house that was subdivided from a manufacturing company. They originally used my home as a sort of office/lobby. So it has some really beautiful architecture and looks really nice.
But i also own the manufacturing companies parking lot and most of the road leading to it.
Meanwhile because of the way they subdivided the property my neighbor owns the other driveway leading to my property as well as a small portion of my lawn and shrub wall.
Luckily I get along with the manufacturing company and my neighbors.
There’s a tiny triangle of land near us that hasn’t had taxes paid on it since the 70s. Records only state a name with no address.