Buying a house on private road

[EsmesRedPetticoat]

We are looking at a house on a private road, 2 houses use the road to access the houses but it’s not a through road to anywhere. There’s no agreement in place currently to pay for maintenance as far as the vendors are aware and they don’t know who the land belongs to.
anyone have any experience? What would we need to consider? Would this put you off a property? It’s towards the top of our budget but in so many ways it’s a dream house except for this!

We live on a private road, my neighbour owns it, it’s in all our deeds that they need to maintain and give us access and we need to pay an annual fee. There is only a hand ful of houses.

there is no issues, the road is fully maintained, and done very well. I’d just consider the agreements in place, what’s in the deeds etc and the appearance of the road Ie is it currently well maintained, past that I’d have no issue. My neighbours are better at Maintaining it than the council is in the public roads.

Our road is across a golf course and is a dead end. No owner as such. Each household pays a monthly fee according to the number of cars it has (most have one or two) and the golf course also contributes because it's used for access for mowing and maintenance. One neighbour manages the account and organises the repairs once a year or so. We knew about it when we moved in 25 years ago and it's never been a problem.

Good call on the land registry. Il look into that tonight. We had a look at the outside last night and it’s not quite as tucked away as we thought it was so location-wise it’s not as great as it seemed from the pictures.

My friend has just moved into a house like this and it does have its benefits only four other houses share the road and it's a no through road and looking at the condition it looks like they maintain it well. I don't know about ROW she has legally.

I used to live on an unadopted road. It was every owners responsibility to maintain the part in front of their own house. Ours was fine so it didn't cost us a penny, but some parts had holes in it. this actually served to slow down the minimal amount of traffic we had, (one car every 10 minutes) so was a good thing. I'd definitely do it again.

I really wouldn't concern yourself with anything until you've seen the property & know if you like it or not. good luck.

I’d not consider it if you can’t find out who the owner of the land is and I say this as someone who lives on a private road. In my case, there are more houses but it’s very clear who owns the road (every resident equally), we have a separate bank account that everyone contributes to annually, a committee that makes day to day decisions, PLI of £2m, an AGM every year that’s minuted, basically it’s really well organised and everyone knows what’s expected of them. I really wouldn’t risk buying a property without something similar.

I lived in a house with a private lane - owned by the two houses.

even that was a nightmare. Repairs are expensive and both houses need to agree. You also need agreement for an utilities - do they run under the private lane?

I would never but a house with shared access or private lanes again.

I have recently bought a house on a private road and have no issues. There are six houses on the road and we each own the road in front of our property from boundary edge to edge. All houses have right of access down the neighbours road to access their property. We maintain the road we own but apparently several years ago all the houses had the road resurfaced at the same time and shared the cost to avoid inconvenience of everyone doing it separately. Its very clear on the deeds who owns which portion and no issues as far as I know. It’s very peaceful 😊

This is exactly our position. There is a formal agreement set out in the deeds of 6 houses governing maintenance, which are covenants in the title. Works perfectly y
our issue was that our house didn’t have a right of way because of a technical fault in the land registry title when the plot was carved out of the main plot that the houses are on. We got statutory declarations from th previous owners demonstrating 20 years continuous and uninterrupted/ unchallenged access and then got an indemnity policy which can be passed on. We now have a further 15 years so I guess could apply for a prescriptive right, at any rate - it took 6 Mai this to do the conveyancing but we corrected the issues as far as possible. Get the very best conveyancer and work from there. These things are often fixable

I was bought up in a house on a private road, over a 100 houses. All very clear and in the deeds, we’ll maintained, there was a committee, I remember them finally paying to put in streetlights. But this sounds less organised.

As others say this can be managed if ownership is known and acknowledged. Even some unknowns that are very unlikely can be covered by an indemnity.
The problems that can occur for you is that an owner suddenly pops up and wants to charge you for access. All perfectly legal. Will the vendor shoulder the risk?
Something like it happened in or near Newbury I think. Owners had to pay to drive over 50metres of driveway.