Hi, I’m Shelly with Cardinal serving. Today I want to talk to you guys about properties that are large in size. And maybe they’re not your typical four cornered lot. Sometimes more rural in nature. Because a lot of times, due to the size of those properties, there’s a lot of apprehension of what you do and don’t know and who can access what property.
How can somebody else use your driveway? And that’s exactly what we’re going to look at today. So today we’ve got a property that’s what we call a flag lot, which means that there’s a bulk of the property in one space, and then there is a flagpole or a long, skinny strip that provides the access for that property to the main road.
And a lot of times there’s concern and question about this flag apportion. Is it an easement? Do they actually own the land? In this particular case they do own the land and they have exclusive rights to use that land, even though that that driveway is known as Grant drive. This is not a public road. It is private property in ownership by our property owner.
The problem with this particular example has come into play is this neighbor that lives beside us, has built a garage, and instead of taking the driveway from his garage down here to highway Z, he has connected his garage to Grant drive, which is our personal driveway. It is private. He does not have permissive right to do that. However, when the police were called, he told the police that there was an easement in place for him to be able to do that.
However, to date we have not seen a copy of that easement, nor have we been provided with a drawing or any type of indicators that that is the case at this point. The problem now becomes, how does this gentleman have right, to use our driveway? Who’s going to maintain it? What kind of liabilities are there and what are the future title implications if we allow him to continue to use that land without permissive use?
This is where having a surveyor and having a great title company with a knowledgeable attorney on staff is a great place for you to be as a homeowner. If you have any questions about the surveys that you have in your possession, or if you want to get a survey, please consider contacting us at 636922 1001 or send an email to inbox@Cardinalsurveying.com, and Judy or Jasmine will be back in touch with you to let you know what the process looks like and how much it’s going to cost.
We want you to make it known what you own, so that these types of situations don’t happen to you.