Shared Road Issues

[dooleysm]

We've live on a shared road with 5 other homes. We are the 3rd drive up, so 2 below and 3 above. The road is in baaaaad shape and getting worse daily. No work has been done on it in the 3 years we've owned the property. There is no kind of agreement in place to care for or maintain the road. My wife and I are spearheading an effort to get the road taken care of. We don't know any of the neighbors other than waving in passing. We've sent out letters 2 different times. We heard nothing back after the first letter and have now had 3 responses (all positive, yeah, let's do it) from the second letter. We're hoping to just collect $100-$150 per house initially.

We're hoping to use this to get some ditches dug, a strategic culvert installed, and 2-3 loads of gravel spread. We have access to a backhoe, skid steer, and experience operator who'll work cheap (SIL's boyfriend). I think we can get the road through the winter with that much.

The issue I'm having is that I can't let the road get in this kind of condition again, which it soon will without a more permanent solution. Ideally we'd like to get it up to county specs and have the county take it over as a named road. My FIL is a builder and claims this is done all the time, but the road has to be up to certain specs before the county will touch it. Anyway, I'd like to get some kind of more formal agreement in place to collect yearly money for upkeep and improvements to the road, with the goal of getting it up to county specs. I think this would be advantageous to the other owners as an agreement like that would surely be helpful when looking to sell. I have no idea how to draw something like that up though. Should I shell out a few bucks for a lawyer to draw something up, or are there online templates or other resources for that kind of thing?

Any ideas on this whole situation?

 

[Marcussen]

Around here we have county commisioners, My neighbor had a similar situation. after a heavy rain they had to park their car by the county road and walk to their house. There was 3 houses on the private road. the county commisioner wanted the road up to county standards before he would declare it a county road, (graveled 30 foot wide and ditched with a 60 foot right of way.) They only had a 30 foot right of way, it would have cost $8000 for gravel and road work.

They ended up paying $3000 for one lane of gravel, of the 3 neighbours only one paid the other two said NO, I don't know if you can force your neighbours to pay anything.

 

[dooleysm]

I know there's no way to make anyone pay anything they don't want to. At this point, the road is so bad that I think everyone will be willing to pitch in. In fact, I'm not going to do anything until everyone pays an equal amount. It's all or nothing. If it's nothing somebody's going to get stuck, soon, and make the road impassable for everyone above them. If everybody doesn't pitch in soon, it'll be me getting stuck, early some nasty morning. I'll then head back home and take a nap and think about the best way to unstick my car for the rest of the day. Then I'll take my tractor down and pull it out.

I mostly just want a tool to get everyone together and agreed on the continual maintenance of the road and figured the guise of a written document would help. I think it will add value if anyone goes to sell their home in the future, to have this written agreement, so that a potential buyer would realize that there are provisions for maintaining the road.

 

[randy41]

who owns the road?

 

[EddieWalker]

Timeing might be off right now with Christmas coming up. I know winter is when it's needed the most, but if you were to time it closer to when people get there tax return, you might find it easier to get some cash. People tend to spend there tax return more freely than any other money they earn.

Here, the road has to have a 60 foot right of way and be built up to country specs before they will take ownership of it. The 60 foot part of it is usually the deal killer.

I would ask for more money when you get ready to start this and put what's left over into an account. You'll have to form a home owners association and open a bank account, but it will be worth it. After the repairs are done, it's going to be allot harder to get people to pitch in money every year to maintain it. Usualy they will let it totally fall apart again before they are willing to pitch in and do anything.

It's also harder to get the person at the beginning of the road to pitch in as much as those at the end of the road. One persone is only using a small percentage of the road while others are using all of it.

If you really get serious about it, you need to go door to door and talk to everyone face to face. It's easy to real a letter, put it down and forget about it. When you talk to them personally, more people are gonna get involved. Schedule a meeting to get them all together and have some snacks. Find out what they are all thinking and maybe get some sort of timetable set up.

Now would be a great time for a Christmas get together to plan something for the spring.

Good luck,
Eddie

 

[dirtworksequip]

Why don't you call a meeting of all the homeowners on the road and discuss what options you might have. I'll tell you from personal experience though, there will almost always be someone that will not want to pay for the road upkeep.

 

[firemanpat2910]

When you talk to the neighbors, bring up the safety aspect. If you car will get stuck so will a police car, ambulance or fire truck. I have personaly seen a house burn to the ground with a fire truck stuck a half mile up a single lane dirt trail, blocking every one else from getting by. Oh and while Im complaining, trim the trees back from the road too. My bright red shiny firetrucks dont like getting sratched and having the lightbar ripped off

 

[dooleysm]

The road is owned by the original seller, who still owns many acres in the area. I talked to him and has very bad feelings about what has happened with that land he sold. He was under the impression (from his sellers agent) that there would be houses built up there. Only 2 out of the 7 homes in that chunk of land are stick framed houses (the other stick framed house has it's own access road), everyone else but us pulled in trailers or doublewides and most of them are not well maintained. Long story short, he owns the road (60 feet wide), and has granted everyone a right of way. He doesn't care what we do, but doesn't want to be involved.

Eddie, what goes into forming a home owners association and opening a bank account for it? Is this something I need legal or other help with, or can a reasonable person do this on his own?

Waiting for spring is not an option, the road will absolutely become unpassable once we get the first significant snow of the season. As it is now, there's one area where you have to slow to a crawl to get between a 16" deep trench caused by runoff and a pothole that will bottom out a car. Once that gets muddy and slick with snow, someone will get stuck.

The safety aspect is a good one. There are 2 homes that are below the bad parts of the road. One of them gets all the runoff though, and has a large trench forming in his yard, as well as many deposits of rocks. The remaining home is unaffected by runoff and has a decent stretch leading to their drive. However, the closest fire hydrant is past the really bad parts. This is an awesome bargaining point I hadn't thought of. No way could a fire truck make it up that hill.

The thought of dealing with people not wanting to pay has been the issue that has caused me to avoid dealing with the problem. I am willing to contribute any amount to get the road taken care of, but I am only willing to do it if everyone on the road contributes equally. It's just getting too bad to avoid the problem any more.

 

[dirtworksequip]

Shawn, you stated that some of the homes where not well maintained. If the people don't maintain their home what reason would they have for wanting to maintain the road. Good luck! I think you have your hands full. I hope you can resolve your problem. Chances are that a few will pay for the good of all.

 

[randy41]

i suggest to keep it as simple as possible. i also suggest not using a related party to do the work. get a quote from a contractor and let everyone make out their check to the contractor doing the work and forget the homeowners association. most homeowners associations are corporations. you should be most concerned with getting the 2 homeowners below you to agree.