Is there any such thing as abusing a easement across my property?

[Larry Caldwell]

As others have mentioned, the B&B owner is responsible for the damage to your driveway caused by renters. You might call him and ask if he wants to perform the maintenance himself on the whole road, or have you do it and send him the bill. If it's a B&B, who is making breakfast for the tenants? If it's a short term rental, he's running a motel, and those are often regulated and inspected, depending on your jurisdiction. It's your money, but I doubt it will be worth the cost to hire an attorney. The local lawyer referral service will normally give you a half hour consult for $25 or so. Beyond that, you may want to do your own research and just use small claims court to recover any damages.

 

[4570Man]

Instead of first thing hiring attorney or getting some government agency involved why don’t you try talking to the guy. I know that if one of my neighbors approached me with a reasonable complaint I’d be willing to negotiate a peaceful solution within reason. If their first response was doing some of the above suggests you better hope you win because you can forget about any neighborly solution after that.

 

[Navvet]

As far as the driveway goes, consider fencing, or rocks or .... Claymores.

I vote for Claymores :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

 

[bcp]

You could put up an honest sign, with large and small print.

Bruce

 

[BoylermanCT]

At the rate of over 120k a year I壇 guess the IRS is already getting their cut.

Air BnB does all the tax reporting for you, so yes, the IRS gets their cut!

 

[Oldoak]

Air BnB does all the tax reporting for you, so yes, the IRS gets their cut!

I would hope so. The rest of us pay the price for all the tax cheaters.

 

[EddieWalker]

I have no idea of what the law is in Washington, so my first course of action would be to take all the paperwork on your land to a real estate lawyer and have them decipher what the easement says. Until you know that, there is no point in doing anything else.

Here in Texas, I've worked for clients that had easements to get to their homes, and clients that had easements across their place to get to homes behind them. In every case, it's a problem. Some have gone hostile and sabotaged the road to make it as bad as possible to get through. In one case, they cause the people renting the house to move out and the landlord lowering the rent to the point that some crackheads moved in. At another place, they culverts where removed. Mother Nature was blamed for this, but I don't believe she had anything to do with it. And at another place, the road was so word down by lack up maintenance that the water lines from the street where exposed and damaged. The guy at the end of the road tried to blame everyone else on the road for destroying his water lines, but when he tried to sue to have the other home owners pay for it, nothing happened because they said that the lawyer was bluffing and there was nothing in the easement that covered that. And his refusal to pay his share of costs to maintain the road invalidated the easement.

Back in CA, a friend had some land that was land locked by a State Park. He had two easements through the Park to get to his land. His easement was rock solid, but they wanted him to sell them his land, so they started harassing him and everyone that used the easement. They would send Park Rangers to sit at the gate and block it, and then refuse to allow anybody through it. We took pictures of them and he sued the park for a significant sum, and won. Then they changed the road through the park and said that the easement didn't allow anybody to use the new road, so he sued and won, forcing them to fix his road and make it accessible for a fire truck to get to his cabin. Then they closed down the road because it interfered with some type of endangered salamander. He sued them again and won because that endangered salamander never existed anywhere near his land and they had lied about it being there. The thing about this guy is that he enjoyed fighting the Park and going to court. Overall, he made money on them. He even built a pond on his land and when they took him to court over building a pond without a permit or environmental study, he claimed that the pond had been there for a hundred years and he was just cleaning it out and repairing the damage to the dam. He won that one too!!!

I have no idea what the solution is for your easement issues, but just wanted to share with you some things that I've encountered. Hopefully you can resolve this quickly and cheaply. If not, look for loopholes in the easement that you can use to cancel it, or force them to pay for damages that will make it financially impossible to continue renting the place out. And if they don't pay, allow you to file a lean on the land with ridiculous interest rates.

Good luck.

 

[4570Man]

I would hope so. The rest of us pay the price for all the tax cheaters.

So how does rather or not this guy pays taxes on his house rental affect you?

 

[dieselcrawler]

First off, talk to the landowner, in person and on site if possible. Keep it neighborly, its the right thing to do. The last thing you want to do is ruin a possibly good relationship with the landowner by having the first glimpse of this issue come to their attention in a letter signed by a lawyer. I've been thru this, a good relationship with a long term family friend has soured to a certin degree. Talk to them!

Look up the details of the easement, know what is and is not permitted. The new owner may have no clue its not a 'public' road, and that restrictions may exist. No harm in doing this research first. You may end up surprised yourself.

Keep it civil as long as possible. When it goes sour, Friday afternoon when the traffic starts might be a good time to start that new 4' culvert ditch, oops, outta fuel, cant finish it this weekend, sorry your car is stuck on the wrong side come Monday morning!

 

[dmottv]

I bought this property 4 years ago. There is a easement allowed up our driveway and beyond to a cabin.
The cabin just recently sold and the owners turned it into a rental, listed it on AirBNB.
It now is relisted as a year around Lodge.
I have gone from a car or two once in a while going by to 6-10 cars on some days.
My gate is being left open, cars driving on my lawn.
People coming to our house after dark looking for the cabin they just rented

Anyone ever run into a BNB Rental Lodge problem?

The bottom line is that you are in negotiation with an absentee owner of investment rental property. A good attorney who can review the easement language, the applicable zoning and site regulations, and develop a plan to leverage the issue in your best interest, is the best way to move this problem forward.

I have seen physical altercations, property damage, spite fences, odorous animals and junk vehicles used to ascerbate similar situations, many times moving the situation into the legal arena. Hiring a good attorney to begin with is a good move to best protect yourself.

 

[dmccarty]

First, easement and property line issues can get out of control real fast and cost lots of money not to mention end up with dead people. Sounds extreme but it happens. I read several Irish newspapers and in the last few months there have been several property line, easement and noise related conflicts that left several men shot with one dead and one killed by pallet forks. :shocked: I bring this up as a warning and also to show that this scat goes on in other places besides the US.

Back in 2002, a TBNer started a thread about an easement issue that dragged on for years, and in the end, the TBNer lost the court case and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Get a case of beer and start reading, https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/rural-living/14251-help-i-need-legal-advice.html.

As other's have said, check what is in your easement and county regulations. The county might regulate rentals and one would think there are taxes to be paid and/or licenses needed to run the rental. I know that my county and a neighboring county are going after property owners who are renting out there place and not having the proper permits and paying their taxes. Not sure I would want to play this Nuke Card but I would certainly want to know the regulations.

From a noise situation, call the law on them. I used to have to do this in the city with some problem renters. For the running on the grass issue, you will have to put up some sort of barrier. We have a person in our area that does this with mason string strung from short rebar pounded in the ground to keep people from driving on his grass. Heck, I saw a house on the way to work where the guy did something similar but used stacked bricks.

Back to Ireland. Because of their housing shortage in some areas, they are looking to pass, I don't think it has passed yet, a law limiting the number of days a property can be rented on a short term basis. To solve their housing shortage, they want to limit the short term rentals to force long term ones. Course the reason they have a housing shortage is because 40% or 60%, I forgot which percentage but I think it is 60%, of the cost of building housing is government regulations and permits. :shocked: They are talking about removing some of the planning board requirements which is the big reason for the housing shortage. Anyway, I mention this because we did a AirBNB in an apartment in a rural area of Ireland which does not have a housing shortage as well as a townhouse in Dublin. This was not an issue in the rural area but in Dublin one of the neighbors we had to get the keys from did NOT like us for some reason. Best I could tell is he did not like his neighbor across the street from renting out their house while they were working in another country. There certainly were not noise issues, the house rental cost too much, so I think the neighbor did not like the rental for political reasons. Heck, we had a cab driver tell us he is in favor of property tax to force old people out of their homes in the city so young people could afford/find housing. :shocked::confused3:

Good Luck,
Dan

 

[EddieWalker]

Back in 2002, a TBNer started a thread about an easement issue that dragged on for years, and in the end, the TBNer lost the court case and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Get a case of beer and start reading, https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/rural-living/14251-help-i-need-legal-advice.html.

I remember this. I always wondered what the other side of the story was? He portrayed himself as the victim, and every lawyer involved was incompetent. That really sent up some red flags for me, which makes me question his version of events. That was way too much money to have to pay to not to have done something wrong.

 

[TnAndy]

So how does rather or not this guy pays taxes on his house rental affect you?

It doesn't. The whole federal income tax deal is merely a window dressing to make the system appear legitimate. IF they can 'borrow' (and by that I mean simply create the money, adding to the national debt) 50% of what is spent, as they have in years past, then they can create the other 50% as well, and no taxes would have to be collected.

Unfortunately, that would expose the whole joke of the system for what it is.....a clearly naked emperor instead of one just dressed in shorts/wife beater T shirt. So the IRS is there is act as if tax collection is vital to the system, when, in fact, in the long run, it won't make a lick of difference.

 

[Tomtint]

...What I can tell you from my expiration..is that the cabin owner did not approach our and tell you their plans or try to mitigate clear problems that were eminent. This shows you what you are dealing with right away. Talk to your local town officials, see if it is legal for a BB to be there. Make sure they have all permits required and in place, then if so, speak to a local attorney. Have all your deed records, and his..in hand, as this will save you time..and money. If all is legal, approach the owner and explain what the problem is , and try to find a solution that is beneficial for both parties..( maybe move the easement to another spot ) .. if all this comes up zeros.. go rogue and make his camp undesirable to any renter. There are many ways to do this.

 

[ch1ch2]

So how does rather or not this guy pays taxes on his house rental affect you?

I can not believe you would even ask that question.

 

[4570Man]

I can not believe you would even ask that question.

So other than the fact the OP doesn’t like the cabin and if he not paying income taxes on it ( which apparently he is ) you could use that against him. Other than that I don’t see why that’s anyone else’s problem. The guy that makes a little cash money and doesn’t report it to the government. Yea, he’s definitely the one to blame for ruining the country. NOT.

 

[Ortimber]

Instead of first thing hiring attorney or getting some government agency involved why don’t you try talking to the guy. I know that if one of my neighbors approached me with a reasonable complaint I’d be willing to negotiate a peaceful solution within reason. If their first response was doing some of the above suggests you better hope you win because you can forget about any neighborly solution after that.

Best advice so far. People are so afraid to negotiate one on one anymore.

 

[TheMan419]

Absolutely see a lawyer. Not to sick the lawyer on your neighbor, but to see what your options are. You are in a much better position if the easement or law prohibits the AirBnB from being their vs if the neighbor is totally legit in what he is doing.

Then once you know the score talk w the neighbor. Do not say well I have been to my lawyer and he says...... just talk to him.

 

[Industrial Toys]

That was not my point about the taxes. Just a good way to make someones life and renting ideas problematic. Hey, it did in Al Capone.

Next suggestion: BED BUGS! Not as bad as the IRS.

 

[4570Man]

The problem would appear to be people leaving the gate open, driving in your yard and coming to your house. Wouldn’t better signs, better directions on the website and better instructions regarding the gate solve the problem? Maybe if they still don’t close the gate charge them extra and put that money towards an electric gate. The neighbor obviously should pay out of his pocket but even if you paid the cost of that is way less than a legal battle. Go ask the guy in the thread that was linked here if giving away 15 feet of property or wasting several years of his life and over 500,000 thousand dollars was a better deal.