Purchasing an Easement?

There is a small, ackward vacant lot that I have found which sits behind several multi family type houses. There is also an alley way that runs behind all these houses that basically dead ends into this lot, however this can not (legally on paper) be construed as access to the lot even though obviously it physically could be, but you are required to have paved or road access to a lot in order to build on it according to the guy in city planning, as well as a physical address to the property which this alley way would not provide I suppose.

It is a really wierd, unique find with potential if it can be worked.

I am going to explore this alley way in terms of making it a legal access point to this lot, as it is already a utility easement, and since many of these houses have make shift parking spots and even paved driveways accesed behind their house through this alley way perhaps there is a strong case to somehow make it a legal alley way, however according to the guy in city planning my only shot at developing this piece of land would be to acquire an easement from one of the two adjoining properties in front of this lot. I wont even mention the fact that a good portion of it sits in a flood plain, lol, which is another mess I am looking at dealing with.

My longwinded question is, does anybody have any experience in this or have any ideas about potential deals to purchase the rights of an easement on someones property to be able to build a driveway down the side of their property to access a lot?

There are two shots I would have with 2 different property owners, both of which are investment properties with the owners living off site, which probably helps my case in my opinion because they probably like making a little money.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts-

Hi,

This is kind of one of those Phfunky deals, I am not sure you want to be in! 

However, I am going to suggest if you want to try doing it is take an option on the property and see if you can market it to, and sell it to one of the adjoining neighbors properties for a profit. If you can option the lot say for $10k and resell the lot for $20k to a neighboring property which the lot can then be opened up, landscaped or turned into additional parking it serves a better and “Best Use” for this situation.

The problems you run into are cost and running utilities to the lot, then you have disclosures and you already mentioned a “Flood Plain” which you have to disclose to a buyer!

I would simple basically wholesale it over to a neighbor, even if your option was say for $10k and you had to take $10k down and payments over some number of years for a balance, at least you made money without the headaches.

           GR

Oh it gets even phunkier GR : )

It is actually a tax deed sale that has been sitting around for years, city owned. It is in a very valuable land area that has been “up and coming” over the last 5+ years. The houses in front of it for example are tax valued at around $210-$230K respectively…the land value of both houses are $125K. The property I am looking at is a little more then half the size of the other lots and just barely classify it as a buildable lot by sq. footage size.

I dont think utilities would be too big a deal…electricity is right there and the city will pay for your water lines to reach your property, and just have strandard “tap in” fees or whatever, and the gas company will do the same I believe, however obviously one of the many things to check into before purchasing…I would either do all the red tape work on this property and get it, as well as the land cleared to sell, or develop it to build a house and live for a few years then sell/rent.

My intuition tells me that if something could have been done with it, it would have been researched and snatched up years ago, but I am a newbie and learning so I am chasing it as a deal and working it to see if it can be, and if not I learned a lot in the process.

One idea I would love to do if I had the money, would be to purchase one of the houses if I could get them at a price that makes sense, then attach an easement onto the property, and develop my new property behind it. Lipstick renovate the house I purchased since it needs it very badly, and sell for a small profit while living in my new house for 2 years at which point I sell or lease depending on my situation.

Its actually a really cool piece of property and nobody knows it exists really, especially the home owners because their lots are so deep and this lot is situated amongst a bunch of green trees and very high bamboo type plants that sits on top of city owned property with a creek bed on the other side. It could easily be developed and not made to llok like a bunch of houses on top of each other.

Also, it looks like the “alley way” behind it which runs right into it could be made into a strong case for an “implied easement” just from language but I am not a lawyer…this will take more research to find out and perhaps, city planners, paper work, courts, and HOA and lawyers ultimately…who knows.

I think the biggest obstacle is the whole flood plain problem, but a lot of the houses around them are built on top of small variances of this flood plain, however this lot is a little more central to the flood plain where as the others just have large sections at the back of their property which it crosses.

I just dont know anything about flood plains and building in them, around them, or on them so…

woops…mispost

im doing something wrong on editing my posts :banghead

You can click on the “modify” button at the top right part of your post. Make your changes, then save it. Then everyone will see your changes and at the bottom of the post it will say something like “last edited on DATE, TIME by PFunk.”
If you want to insert a quote, you can delete part of the post you’re inserting, but you have to keep the word quote in brackets in there so the system displays the quote properly.

All you can do is to approach the owners of the properties that the alley way passes over and ask them to sell or lease you an easement across the existing alley.

I wouldn’t give you one if I knew that you would tear up the alley to install water and power. But you are not asking me.

I think that property has a lot of issues that you need to be absolutely certain about before you start spending money. Maybe you’ve found a little gold nugget. Maybe you’ve found a great big money sink hole. I don’t think you have enough information to make a decision.

What;s the lot size? The first thing that came to my mind was garages. Alleyways normally have lots of garages next to it. Could you build an unserviced double garage on it and rent it out for a few years and maybe down the road turn that garage into a granny flat/garden suite and rent it out as an apartment? If I had a dollar for every homeowner I saw use these garages behind their houses and at some point hook up service, get rid of the garage door, put in a few windows and turn it into a granny flat… And the only way to access the property is through the dirt alley. Maybe check in on what the laws on unserviced garages and granny flats/garden suites in your city are?

Another thought was finding out what the rules are on storing vehicles on that lot. What are the city bylaws on storing a double wide mobile home on it and renting it out? Are there min. size requirements to occupy it? I remember owning a fourplex years ago and one of the tenants parked a mobile home in the parking lot. He was this retired army sargent who had the nerve to rent it out and have his mobile home tenant use the shower in my fourplex without proper compensation. I had to fight with that guy for a year before he took that stupid thing off my property and there wasn’t much I could do because he had valid license plates on it and he was entitled to an unmarked dirt parking spot in the lease. He kept denying that someone permanently lived there, but I saw someone going in and out of it all the time.

That’s a great example of why I like to put people in on a month-to-month lease. Behavior like that and I would’ve sent him a 30 day notice of lease termination. Glad you were finally able to get rid of him.