“What’s wrong with this photo?” you ask. “It looks like a perfectly nice house to me.” Well, I agree. There’s nothing wrong with the photo. I’m cheating. It’s just that… well, you see the driveway? I can’t help but wonder what it’s connected to, as the listing makes one thing very clear: “THERE IS NO LEGAL ACCESS TO THIS PROPERTY IT IS LAND LOCKED.”
(via #mefi.)
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So, if it will not qualify for bank finance, how did it end up “bank-owned?”
This is why you always have a good survey done before you build.
Weird!
Artful – the economy has gotten so bad that the banks don’t even trust themselves.
Still, a great find for anyone with lots of cash, a few helmets and a couple of cannons.
I kind of feel sorry for the people who used to own it. On the plus side it might make a great house for someone who doesn’t want anyone to visit them, perhaps a great house for someone in the witness protection program.
What it probably means is that access to the house is across someone else’s property (not unusual) but that there’s not actually a legal easement in the titles guaranteeing access (which means if the landowner whose land you have to cross decides he doesn’t like you, you’re screwed.)
Artful, there are at least three reasons why this could be so.
1. The bank might have taken a chance back then that it isn’t currently willing to take;
2. There might have once been a public road, but it’s been closed since;
3. It’s one of those lots that originally had three or four houses on it (say, if the original owner built homes on his property for his kids) but has now been subdivided, and this house has no access.
It’s not all doom and gloom. In California (and, I suspect, many other states) you can apply for an “easement by necessity“, which essentially forces an easement across the land of whomever’s keeping you from the closest public road. That land then becomes the “subservient tenement”, while yours is the “dominant tenement”.
(I was awake for that class in Real Estate Principles. Ha!)
Not only do I get daily laughs here, but I also learn so much.
I actually live in this town (30 years now) and know exactly where this is. It is accessible by road, there must be a mistake or something. Peach Farm road is what it sounds like- it goes up to an old peach farm, which is now mostly a sportsman club hunting area. Some of the land was sold off over the years an new homes built in the bubble. This house is definitely near or directly on a road.
We have many Class 4 roads (unmaintained, dirt or just a trail) in town where there are houses WAY out in the woods. It takes a 4×4 and some creative driving to get home for some people.
Not only can’t you get a mortgage, you probably won’t get title insurance either!
Thanks for that information, Sean. I was staring at the Google overhead view and couldn’t understand how there was no access when there is, pretty clearly, a road there.
Is it a private road, by any chance?
I wonder if the way it ended up in bank hands had to do with being used as collateral for a different type of loan? Also, some pictures of the interior would be nice, without them, it sort of gives the impression that the people living there have dug in for the duration.
“No conventional mortgages available! No legal access! Former owners prepared to make a stand! Own the next Alamo today!”
Just found the site and wanted to comment on this. A couple of members of my family are looking to buy a house that has a similar type of thing. The driveway to the house is government property. I have no earthly idea why, but this reminded me of that!
A landing zone would be better.