Buying Land. Question About Access Roads

[stevehaigh]

Whenever i look at a nice piece of land to buy it's always set back from the main road and everyone says "oh, no problem, you can use that dirt road, we've been doing that for ever".

Of course i'm not going to buy anything without a guarentee that i have legally verifyable access to my land for ever, so I was wonder what are the available options?

Clearly getting a chanot for the road would be idea but it's unlikes the owner of the land with the acess road will create a separate chanot and sell it. I've heard that if the dirt road has been in public use for at least 10 years, then the owner of the land connected to the road can ask for it to be drawn on the government map as a public road.

Does anyone have any first hand experience or at least reliable information about this stuff.

Thanks Steve

[OOLEEBER]

Hi Steve,

This is not a direct response to your question (which is a good one) but I've had problems which may be related and ad some fuel to this fire. Or at least expose my stupidity.

My wife assured me that the land 80m from the road (and adjacent to her mums house and my business premises) was ours if we wanted because her mum did not want us moving too far away with our kids etc.

I spent a small fortune digging a huge pond 4m deep and using the din (soil) to build a big area for the building of our home. The soil excavated from the pond was not enough for the home or the 80m road through the rice fields. I forget how many trucks came and dumped while the dozer worked through the night to make everything just so.

A few months later it turned out that the land was also tied to 3 other brothers and one would not sign it over to my wife.

I told her what the ######, lets just offer him XXX Baht and lets start building. My wife was shocked at the prospect of losing face so it's not going ahead. Now we're moving most of the soil 40m to an area owned soley by her mum and the deeds have now passed to my wife.

The lesson is plain so I won't spell it out. Just be careful.

And by the way. I think my wife was right. The rogue brother was after something and he would have got it if not for her. Now he's still got nothing.

[Sumitr Man]

You should be able to register an easement / right of way at the local land dept. where the land is registered. This will give you a perpetual right that cannot be revoked by the land owner but you do need the original land owner's permission.

Last year I was briefly involved in something along these lines, as I remember it the land owner did not give his permission, but the person seeking the right of way took him to court and won. Not too sure you want to do this though