Hey everyone, so I’m looking at purchasing a 35 acre property that is intersected in the middle by a highway and then also has a dirt road running through it that is owned by a timber company (see attached picture, the red borders are the outlines of the parcel).
I am still waiting to hear back from the owner on whether or not he is allowed to use this road, but in the meantime, I am trying to determine if the road increases or decreases the value of the property?
Even if the company allows the property owner to use the road, would most people not like the idea of having through traffic coming through their property? Or is do the benefits of access outweigh the negatives?
Functionally, it appears you have two separate parcels here. If there hasn’t been an official split made to give them two separate parcel numbers, you might as well do that. Nobody is going to put their house on one side and their garage on the other.
Thanks for the reply Sean! Good point about splitting it into two separate parcels…I was kicking that idea around.
I am mostly wondering whether the dirt road through the top part of the parcel would increase the or decrease the value. I going to verify, but the owner said he thinks the resource company allows people to use it. In that case I would go with positive/neutral impact on the value.
I would say it totally depends on what you think the highest and best use would be for the property. You will likely fetch the highest price for the land if you sell it to someone who wants it for that highest and best use. If it is for a single family residential building lot, which could be the case even though it is on a highway, I would say that no, whoever would want to build and live there net-net likely would prefer NOT to have timber company coming through there, making noise and kicking up mud or whatever. So the road decreases the property’s value. But if you think it would make a great storage facility site or a parking lot for RVs, who cares about the timber road, and as you say, being able to use that road might save whoever develops it a lot of money saved on access. So the road in that case would increase the value of the property. It all depends. Hope that helps.
Any access is better than no access. I think your positive/neutral impact on value is probably along the right lines, but like you said, best to verify what you can.
