My first foray into timber land ownership...

[Oldtimer]

I have struck a deal with an acquaintance to buy 8 acres of land for $3,000.
It's got about 2 acres of high dry ridge, and the rest is very wet. It's land locked, but some deed research may reveal a forgotten ROW. Doesn't matter to me, as I do not intend to build on it, and the abutters are willing to allow periodic access for logging.
It was cut, heavily, in the mid 1980s, but I can easily cut the cost of the land and deed transfer off it. After doing that, I want to plant white pine, red oak, and red spruce in the areas that best support them. The tax bill is $40 a year...
I will also build a warming hut for my local snowmobile club, as the trail runs right across this parcel. Hope to get the town to make the building tax-exempt because the club will own the hut and it's a non-profit. Just a neat side bennie that I can use the hut as a hunting blind in deer season..

 

[parttime]

OT's a land baron. way to go.:msp_biggrin:

 

[Dalmatian90]

Didn't think land could be sold that is land locked without there being some sort of ROW.

Not uncommon around here. Dumb, yes. But makes for good bargains for folks years down the road

In Connecticut I can think of a few general situations, and most New England states have similar property laws.

One is it was simply in the family and they never bothered because they didn't care about Uncle Bob crossing Cousin Joe's land. Just because you use a certain way doesn't mean you gain a legal right to use it -- current CT law allows the land owner over which the access runs to serve notice (I believe registered mail is OK) and record in the land records once every 15 years that they do not recognize the other party has a right of way. It's up to the other party, if they wish, to sue to find otherwise. I believe before that the land owner only had to assert his control once every 15 years -- say by locking a bar way one day in those 15; a perfect "he said/she said" situation -- try proving the other party didn't bar a property once every 15 years if they say they did! (which is why you now need to record it in the land records).

Second is they forgot to sell the easement with the land. Uncle Bob sold Cousin Joe a 100 acres and an easement. Cousin Joe dies, his kids inherit the land. 40 years later they sell it to their kids. The cousin's kids' kids sell it to John Doe. And then the kid's kids die. Meanwhile Uncle Bob's place is sold out of the family. Someone finally realizes they don't have the deed for the easement to Joe's old place. After looking through the land records for a while, since the easement deed isn't indexed well once it got lost in the shuffle, they finally find Cousin Joe's Kids never sold it to their kids. NOW you start racking up the attorney fees -- because you have to track down the will for Joe's Kids and who inherited their property (which might not have been the kids' kids), and probably then THEIR survivors to finally find who now legally owns that original easement and buy it from them. Assuming of course the folks who owned Bob's old place over the years had been exerting their rights, either by periodically barring the way or notifying the current owners that while they know they pass over their land to access it...that they do not own an easement to do so, preventing the current owner's of Joe's place from saying they have an adverse easement.

Third, especially with older eminent domain proceedings, the State was just a-holes. The land HAD access to a public highway either directly or by easement. Then the state took part of the property for a state forest, or a limited access highway, or some other use and cut off that access and did not create an easement over their land or purchase/seize a right-of-way over someone else's land to the newly land-locked piece. Good luck fixing that screw up after the eminent domain court case is closed...and until the 1970s (at least in Massachusetts) it was the landowner who lost property who had to initiate a lawsuit -- the state just took the land, and didn't even make an offer until you filed a lawsuit for compensation.

 

[ShaneLogs]

Congrats! Always nice too keep your local snowmobile club thriving like that! :msp_wub:

 

[Jim Timber]

Check your laws for "cartways" - here in MN we're mandated the ability to gain access for parcels over 3 acres. It's a "shall issue" process, and forces a 33' easement for a legal road. You do have to pay the other land owner, but it becomes your property (not public).

I'm so glad my 84 acres is the middle.

They might make me buy a road instead of allowing me to put my driveway through my swamp because of this law. My swamp abuts a township road, and it's 300' to high ground. I hope to select cut (pre-harvest thinning) 35yr old aspen this winter.