The chaotic real estate development in the last 20 years has led to the emergence of a new problem, namely the access to property achieved through private access roads. Due to the lack of firm and clear regulations, all sorts of legal problems have arisen over the years regarding the rights to access roads. Implicitly, these problems have also had an impact on the value of real estate, respectively on the owner's ability to transfer ownership.
The appraiser, by the nature of his work, in addition to identifying the property, analyzing the property rights, analyzing the market, must identify and analyze how to achieve access to property as well as the related legal rights.
In order to understand and have a clear picture of access to the property, the assessor must ask the client for a series of documents: site and delimitation plan (PAD) property and access road, land register extracts for private access roads and for any other parcels of land that were located between the property and the access road. This analysis is carried out from the property limit of the subject of the assessment to the nearest public road.
The purchase of a real estate through a bank loan implicitly brings the need to evaluate that building by an authorized appraiser. Conducting an assessment, with the implications it entails, can clarify and resolve this analysis of the situation of access to property. It is important to note that no bank institution accepts under guarantee a building whose situation regarding the access road is not legally regulated.
When transferring the ownership of a property to which access is made by means of a private road, the buyer must ensure that the sale purchase contract ensures one of the following options:
- ownership is transferred for shares of the private access road;
- an easement of car and pedestrian crossing is established in favor of the building they buy;
- notarized promise of the developer regarding the cession to the local administration of the property rights over the access road.
Of course, there may be other variants, but these are the most common. Failure by the buyer to ensure that he will benefit from legal rights over the private access road may have further implications, most frequently at the time of a resale of the building.
The problems arising from the analysis of rights to private access roads is extremely complex and require minimal knowledge of a legal nature and topography in order to be understood.
The following are some examples of situations encountered in practice in over 17 years of activity:
- the access from the property to the public road is made through a succession of 6-7 private roads with different owners (the buyer of such a property must ensure that at the time of purchase he receives rights of use over all these private roads);
- between the property and the road there are one or more strips of land with another owner (the buyer of such a property must ensure that at the time of purchase he receives rights of passage over all these lands);
- the promise of ceding the access road after the completion of the investments to the local administration to be a legalized one.
Therefore, our advice is that when you want to purchase a real estate property, to treat with great attention the situation of access to the public road, respectively to make sure that with the ownership of it, rights over the access road are also transferred.
Buy responsibly!
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