Sanctuary Ridge Adventures in Farming

Delays…

The “Access Road”

No one likes waiting! I would consider myself a patient person but waiting is sometimes so tedious. This process is taking so much time. Initially our contract was set to close on February 28th. We had our financing and contingencies taken care of so there didn’t seem to be anything standing in our way. But there was.

Imagine an island. There is a bridge to this island but it is owned by someone else. They gave permission to access the island via their bridge when the property was originally sold 40+ years ago. That has been our dilemma with the Farm. The only way to access the property is a private road through a timber farm. The records of long ago, and the neighborly way of keeping your word, are no longer adequate. Title Insurance companies are doing their job and we are appreciative of their diligence, as well as our amazing realtor, who are likely saving us time and money should we have any issues in the future accessing the property. All parties have been very helpful in finding a remedy. Tennessee has laws preventing “Land Lock”, which is where a property is surrounded by other properties with no road frontage. The law says that a person has the right to access their property via an easement. An easement is a legal right to a limited use of another persons property. You may need an access easement to cross over someone else’s property to enter or exit your own property. You may need an easement on a private road that will allow you access to the property and ensure you can get to the main roads in the area. To ensure access to property, the easement is usually deeded with the property. In this case the deeded access was never transferred to the current owner. It looks like a “quit claim” can be filed transferring the deeded access to the current owner, allowing the current owner to file a “quit claim” transferring the deeded access to us. IF we can get these documents signed, the title insurance company will insure the property. IF we can’t get these signed, we have to wait for a surveyor to survey the access road and have that recorded before we can proceed with closing on the purchase of the property. This could delay the closing up to 3 months! We are praying it all works out in a timely manner but we trust God in this and believe that for whatever reason, this has to be in HIS timing. The closing was rescheduled for March 6. It’s very likely that the closing will be delayed again. I’ll keep you posted on the progress!

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