Unadopted Road - what do I need to know?

[Babyleafy]

I've seen a perfect property for me. Small but perfectly formed. This is what I've been looking for forever. I want to downsize from a ridiculously big family home now there's just me, but round here (and I don't want to move out of area) that largely means going back to a terraced house in a not so nice area. All the detached houses are 4/5 bedrooms plus land. When the occasional bungalow comes up (usually also with land) they get snapped up by developers.

So this is a new build bungalow on the edge of town. Just off the bus route but with a rural feel. Surprisingly affordable, but that's becuase it's on an unmade unadopted road.

The new build has been built on what was previously garden. There are 8 houses in total, most older well established properties. I'd guess the road is about 300 yards long. Roads at either end of it are adopted.

I know there will be costs associated with the road, but if I'm to consider this property, what do I need to know and what should I be asking?

They usually get adopted if the area is well used.

This one's been like this for 40 years to my knowledge. It's not "used" except by the houses on it.

You need to know who owns it and what the maintenance responsibilities are.

Q1. Who do you share legal responsibility for repair and maintenance with if anyone?
Q2. Is there a stipulation in the deeds for frequency and type of maintenance and repairs.

I share legal joint responsibility with my neighbour but the type and frequency is down to us to agree between us. It is one neighbour and it's been fine. But if it was several households it could mean some are pushing to have more done more often, or the reverse.

We also have to agree what method and materials to use. Again this has been ok so far but if one wanted the most expensive contractor and the other the cheaper one you'd want to know you could resolve that. If the agreement dictates how that resolution is found it might help.

It is possible to have the council adopt the road, there are costs attached so you could look into that and see if it might happen in the future.

Id want to know 3of the bin men will come down it or if you need to drag your bins to the adopted road.
What happens if the road falls into disrepair and , say causes damage to a vehicles wheel - like a pothole. Who is responsible for that?.

This is false and not the criteria for adopting a road whatsoever.

Some mortgage companies will not give mortgages on properties on unadopted roads.

Yes! You definitely need to know where the bins go other! It's a game changer if they will come up your lane.

You need to know who is responsible for what. And what you don't want is for the responsibility to lie with one home owner who refuses to do anything about the road when it's in a poor state.

If it's all the owners responsibility then it needs to be clear how a decision is made as to type of repair/when etc and avoid the scenario of turning up at home to find neighbours have decided that road planings just laid on top of existing rutted road is fine and they then present you with your share of the bill in which you had no say in.

Bin men will go to your house of course. The adopted or not just decides who looks after the road surface and any pipes etc which run underneath it.

But if the road becomes very pot holed you might find some vehicles like the post van start to refuse to go up it, if it's likely to cause damage.

I walked away from a house I liked because it was on a recent-ish estate and there was an estate maintenance charge due to the fact that the council had not and would not adopt the roads.

I started worrying about what this would mean if the drains became blocked, if the street lighting needed to change or if there was something major like a flood due to heavy rain or the road caving in...

It would not be for me and I would be careful about the implications if I were you.

Members of my family have lived on an unadopted road for >50 years. What it means is the council don't maintain it. They literally do nothing. So if there are any issues with the road - potholes say, or the verges need trimming - it's up the residents who live on the road to do it or just put up with it in the state it's in. It might be worth knocking on a few doors and asking your would-be neighbours how it works. Usually they'll be at least one or two people who will chuck some gravel in potholes or run their strimmer over the weeds, but if there is no one doing that year after year it will get in a worse and worse state.

First question is what's the present condition like? If its pretty much OK, smooth, no potholes etc, no big flooding issues, then it might not need any maintenance for decades

It’s a bit of a quirk in my part of the city and we have 15-20 unadopted / private roads, mainly dating back to Victorian times. Of these roads, about 5 are in very good condition (including the one I live on) and the rest are full of potholes. I would only consider a house on a well managed and maintained street like mine.

Questions to ask:

• who owns the land ( do you own your own frontage or have an equal share of the whole street)?
• who pays for repairs / ongoing maintenance?
• How much have residents contributed over the last 3/5 years?
• when was the last major spend / how much was it?
• is there a well run management committee eg annual AGM, minutes, separate bank account, annual maintenance charge approved by residents etc?
• What happens if there is a dispute and one or more resident refused to pay for essential maintenance?
• is there public liability insurance?

I’m treasurer for my road and always receive an email from a prospective buyer’s solicitor asking for details of all the things mentioned above. If they can’t be provided or the road looks in poor condition with no plans in the pipeline to improve it, I’d be very wary of proceeding.

Get a copy of the deeds - hopefully each of the houses has a covenant to pay a proportionate cost of annual maintenance and repair. That’s what we have - there’s a management Co which collects and trims the hedges / clears the ditches and repairs. The road was resurfaced a few years after we moved in - contributed about £500 and it’s still going strong 10 or so years later.
main issue for us has been water supply - where does the water authority mains run to? Any pipework under private land is up to owners to maintain / repair etc. Check you have a right to the flow of water through any pipes on private land.

eseentially none of it is a problem, but you need to know what’s what and you should use a decent solicitor experienced in estate properties and rights - do not go cheap in the conveyancing.

I bought such a property, the main thing is you need to have a letter from the previous owner that they have used the road unchallenged for x number of years, you also need indemnity insurance - if someone comes out the wood work and says its mine and you can't use it, it was added into the mortgage and was peanuts at the time, as pp said, mortgage company insisted on this.

On mtce... ha ha there were 3 properties, 2 of us maintained the road (it was a pot holed track) the 3rd neighbour, did nothing at all, he'd give us some money but a shovel he never touched!
It wasn't much maybe a few bags of hardcore each year but ironically, it was him and his building/diy stuff that caused most of the wear, they also had the most cars..... later on his wife started an internet company so vans wrecked the lane, so we moved.

Bin wouldn't go down the lane either, other services no issues.

Personally, wouldn't do it again.

Agree with all the comments about being aware of who owns the road, who is responsible for maintenance, and how it is organised. Not just the road surface, but the drains and street lighting as well. Also, is there a right of access over the road in the deeds, especially if only one person owns the road?

I’d also add that if the residents ever want to get the council to adopt the road, the road surface has to come up to council highway standards, which could have a high cost that the residents are responsible for.

An unadopted road was on my list of non negotiable deal breakers last time I bought. Along with stuff like a flood zone and a flight path. For all the reasons posters have given above, it could be a continual unresolvable problems.

We lived on an unadopted road. For us, it wasn’t a problem at all because by the time we bought, the residents had formed a company, sold the road to the company, and the company maintained the road. Each resident had a share in the company and had to pay annual fees (about £70) and if the resident didn’t pay fees they would legally lose the right to use the road. The company had liablity insurance on case anyone got hurt on the road and sued etc.

Questions I suggest you ask

• Who legally owns the road
• Who decides when it is repaired and how
• When was it last repaired
• Is there insurance in case someone sues over an injury on the road
• Does the road have a bank account and how much is in it right now
• Our vendors could answer all th questions easily and prove the answers with docuso we bought (and later sold) with no problems
• If they hadn’t been abke to answer and had said something vague like “oh we all contribute as and when needed” then I wouldn’t have bought there.

(And of course bin men collect from
the road.)

Yes this is what I was hoping for. A proper formal arrangement. I can well see that having to agree with neighbours when and how things are be done would be a minefield.

my town has quite a few unadopted roads. the council have nothing to do with maintenance, which includes street lighting as well as road or verge repairs. i know of one modern estate where the developers didn't pay the council for the adoption of the roads the way they were supposed to and it hit a crisis point when the road/culvert over a stream was declared unsafe for heavy vehicles. think the owners ended up suing the property developer to get it sorted.

normally all frontagers to the road (i.e. people whose driveway/front path opens onto the road) have joint ownership/liability but if your property is built in the grounds of another house you may want to double-check that.

my brother lived on one where it generally worked well - one of the residents would sort maintenance issues (often himself so much cheaper than paying professionals) and everyone paid without quibble. i've known another road though where there were only a few properties coming off a fairly substantial section of road and it became a potholed/rubble-like nightmare. and another road near me (which is more like a farm road but now has around 20 properties off it) the council did stop collecting the bins due to road condition and the houses had to bring everything down to big bins at the end of the road about 700 yards from their houses. the property owners did resurface the road but it took about a year to get sorted.

here (Scotland) the council policy is that they will adopt the road if you bring it up to adoptable standard but that's a pretty high bar...