I’ve had a couple of queries of late relating to road reserves. Misunderstandings surrounding the limitations associated with crown road reserves in particular have caused some grief.<\/p>\n
Crown road reserves are generally parcels of land that were set aside for road access to land allocations at the time they were originally surveyed, sometimes back as far as the 1800s. Roads have indeed been built on many of these reserves, but many are also just vacant crown land. <\/p>\n
Problems can arise for the unwary when purchasing parcels of land that appear to be accessible via a crown road reserve. It is important to understand that while the intention might have been to provide access to all parcels of land that were surveyed, much of the early planning was done in Sydney, without the use of appropriate contour maps. Road reserves were often just straight, interconnecting lines, drawn with no regard for the prevailing terrain. The result is that, while a crown road reserve might exist on paper, it may be impractical or even impossible to actually build a road on the reserve. Note also that it is the relevant planning authority that decides whether or not it is practical to build a road—not the property owner.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that the existence of a crown road reserve does not guarantee access via that route to a parcel of land. It’s a case of ‘buyer beware’, and it’s important that prospective purchasers of virgin lots ensure that the access to the lot is both legal and practical<\/em>.<\/p>\n The absence of practical access via a crown road reserve is often overcome through negotiation with a neighbouring property owner. Ideally, a road is constructed via a practical route and the road reserve is adjusted accordingly, either through the Department of Lands or simply via purchase of the relevant parcel of land from the neighbour. In these cases, however, it’s important to settle such matters prior to, or at least in conjunction with the purchase of the land requiring said access. Coming to a gentleman’s agreement with a neighbouring property owner, for access through their property, may seem like a friendly and perfectly satisfactory approach at the time, eliminating all the fuss associated with adjusting property boundaries, but history shows that relationships can change, for all sorts of reasons. And unfortunately the courts are not interested in gentlemen’s agreements, or the fact that a falling out with a neighbour means that you no longer have practical access to your property.<\/p>\n When purchasing a property that uses a right of way through the property of a third party, it is possible to be granted legal access to that right of way, in perpetuity, but this must be written into the purchase agreement or subdivision plan for the property at the time of purchase. This will, of course, require the consent of the relevant third party—it\u2019s not just a case of getting \u2018the court\u2019 to grant you access.<\/p>\n The upshot of all this is that it is very important for any buyer, especially of a lot in a rural area, to ensure that they have guaranteed<\/em> legal and practical access to the lot prior to finalising any purchase agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve had a couple of queries of late relating to road reserves. Misunderstandings surrounding the limitations associated with crown road reserves in particular have caused some grief. Crown road reserves are generally parcels of land that were set aside for road access to land allocations at the time they were originally surveyed, sometimes back as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/peteharrison.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/peteharrison.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/peteharrison.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peteharrison.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peteharrison.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"http:\/\/peteharrison.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"http:\/\/peteharrison.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/peteharrison.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peteharrison.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peteharrison.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}