Could there be any issues with buying a house that has responsibility for a private road?

[TibetanTea]

We have seen a really lovely house - a cottage that's over 200 years old. It's a modest house - a small 3 bed.

But it owns a short stretch of private lane that two other houses use for access to the main road.

The public would never go down the lane. It just leads to the two other houses and the one that's for sale. There's a gate half way up the lane to stop people going up to the houses.

I'm just wondering if this is something we should be concerned about or conversely, is it nothing really to worry about? (Hoping of course that people might reply the latter, but I just don't know...)

I have terrible spatial awareness, but I'm going to say the lane is about 50m / 50 yards long.

The water pipes for the houses run underneath this road. When there had been a leak previously, apparently the local utilities company did fix it.

There's no flooding risk in our area. I'm not sure what other things need to be considered.

Would just love to hear of anyone's experiences with having responsibility for a lane like this, and whether it could be a headache best avoided, or not really an issue.

Maintenance and repair will probably be your responsibility. You need to check the land registry and investigate what the rights and responsibilities are.

I own a property with this situation and it's fine, the road is in good condition, but I'm mindful there may be expenses at some point.

Cost of maintaining and repairing it, issues with people who have the right of way over it and resale would be the 3 that spring to my mind

Liability if anyone has an accident due to condition of the road? Visitors, postie etc. insurance needed. Small chance of fly tipping if it's secluded? As the land owners you would be responsible for removal/disposal.

I have friends, who built a house on land and oddly they owned the private road that led to the land / their house and the other houses should have been maintaining the road, but nobody did and all the 8 other properties had been built on land which needed the road for access / knowing they did not own it, but had the right of access only by agreement of the road's owner. The road was in an appalling state, very big potholes and friends offered to tarmac it / bring it back to a good condition, but only 2 of the 8 properties wanted to contribute, so a charge of some sort (not sure of the exact details) has been put onto the properties when they are sold. Issue is who does what and my friends then erected a gate to stop the properties using their land to turn round in, as the other homeowner had been using that to compensate for not converting their gardens to parking and not wanted to back out down the poor road (about 100 yards or so). Water might be covered by insurances, but who maintains the road, responsible for repairs and liability. I'd be getting proper advice and my friends had solicitors that confirmed to all the other households their responsibilities etc., but they still wouldn't pay, hence the charges.

A proper tarmac road or a farm track? My dad has the latter - shared responsibility/ownership with two other properties. He fills potholes himself with hardcore, but he has a digger as he’s a farmer. Less easy if it’s just you with a wheelbarrow! It’s like any shared ownership - easy if you all get on and have similar ideas about upkeep, harder if one person wants to do some work and the others can’t/won’t pay. Bear in mind you’ll have to grit it yourself in winter too.

Thanks all for these useful replies.

@PrincessofWells I know there will be many variables affecting cost but could you give me a rough idea of how much it costs to maintain on an annual basis? Or is it more an 'as and when' situation when it comes to costs...

I'll ask the agent this this week - but at the moment I just have no clue. (Wasn't quick witted enough to ask on the viewing.)

@Hoppinggreen yes, I'm also wondering how this might affect resale.

@OttersAreMySpiritAnimal crikey - I didn't even think of liability for things going wrong on the road

@YYURYYUCICYYUR4ME yes - this is the sort of thing I need to find out. When the agent said "you own the road" I just assumed we would have to incur all costs. But need to find out if there is a cost sharing arrangement. The fact that he didn't mention one makes me think there isn't one...

It will get pot holed
no one will want to organise repairs and no one will want to pay their share
so it gets more rutted
( experienced in this 😞)

These comments are all so useful.

Gritting in winter - there's another thing I hadn't considered!

I am now struggling to remember the exact surface of the road - peering at Google satellite images is suggesting it's tarmac, but I can pop round tomorrow to fact check.

Although the age of the cottage and the lane aspect makes it sound rural, this property is actually slap bang in the middle of a large town.

The property was once in a rural village that has been swallowed up by an urban conurbation.

So this neighbourhood has this villagey feel (it's in a conservation area), but at the end of the 'lane' it's back to an urban landscape.

Definitely don't benefit from a farmer's digger - or any kind of skills to cope with road maintenance ourselves!

Sorry last response to @TooExtraImmatureCheddar

@Cocothecoconut if you were me do you think it might be easiest to avoid?

Do you have any experience you can share re. how much re-tarmacing costs?

I wouldn’t go near it, you can always tell an unadopted road by the state of it, nothing ever gets done and my car gets wrecked .

I wouldn't be concerned in the slightest. My parents live at the end of a similar road. It is shared with three other houses.

In 35 years and t has never needed to be resurfaced as it gets very little use. A few times they have filled in a pothole but it cost nothing more than a bag of McCrete from B&Q.

It all depends what the neighbors are like
maybe ask the sellers what happens if it needs doing
cant say about prices as ours was done many years ago

This wouldn't bother me at all, I live off a shared lane/drive, one of the 6 cottages that have access owns it, but we all share responsibility for maintenance. It had been resurfaced a few years before we moved in, and it's completely unproblematic.

It should be fine. I live on a private estate. In the past the various houses (quite a lot of houses compared to yours) bought the land from one owner so now it is shared and the costs shared of things like annual insurance, resurfacing, tree and grass verge works. In your case I would not worry about it - just make sure the road in due course does not get too many potholes in it.

I live in one of 5 houses on a private road. It's off a country lane and was block paved when the houses were built. Technically we share responsibility but in 38 years no-one has ever needed to do anything.

Is it actually private, as in on the deeds of your house, or just unadapted?

If one of those houses decides to build a massive extension, they'll have heavy plant going up and down it. Which then means the need to sort out who pays for the damage.

I live in a home where we co-own the road and communal green space. It’s a bit different because there are multiple homes so we have an elected group that manages things, collect annual fees to cover scheduled maintenance and costs, and at least try to save for bigger repairs. We still all had to put in for a major repair recently. The amount wasn’t horrible spread across multiple homes, but I’m sure it hit some budgets harder than others.

I have no regrets. The benefits of this particular house and the shared space is worth the unpredictable “tax”

you definitely need to go into it planning for the expense and knowing exactly what the rules are for the property.

@Xenia @Scampuss @Aaron95 that's reassuring

@Jeezitneverends The ownership of the lane is on the property's deeds.

You can see the land it owns here in purple. (I blocked out the road names to protect the sellers' privacy. Hopefully still clear!)

The house icon indicates where the house for sale is.

You can see its neighbour (to its right) would be landlocked without using your lane to reach the main road.

It owns paths that surround the neighbouring house.

Not sure why such a weird arrangement came into play. They used to be a row of four cottages. Apparently only two remain, so it's a semi detached now.

Some of the finest oldest houses in my home country have roads like this. The owners quite like them full of potholes because people will be coming and going quite slowly and noone who can avoid them will adventure down there.