Comment by pmyteh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmyteh | Hacker News Reader

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And worse - not all properties are even registered: there's no complete cadastral survey. It's now compulsory to register land on sale, but there are lots of pieces that haven't been sold in decades or centuries.

This can result in some quite odd outcomes. The road outside my house, for example, isn't owned by the local council like most roads, but is 'unadopted'. It's probably owned by the descendents of the builder who laid out the road and built the houses in the 1840s, but as it would be a liability rather than an asset (and was probably forgotten about shortly after the last house was sold in any case) nobody knows who that is.

There are ways around this. We have specialised title insurance to cover the risk that the road isn't actually a right of way, and there are provisions in English & Welsh law that give responsibility for road maintenance to the frontagers (like me) if the road owner isn't known. But it's added a surprising amount of friction. If there were a 'register or lose it' provision then it's likely something sane could be worked out once the land reverted to the crown. But as it is, we're in this weird semi-purgatory forever. No way of claiming adverse possession over a road, sadly...

It's not adverse possession, but does your jurisdiction not recognize implied easements?

Easements don't change ownership of the underlying land, they just establish a right to use/control the land in a particular way. Road access would (in many jurisdictions) be protected by an easement implied by necessarity (because access is a necessity) or an easement implied by past usage (analogous to adverse possession).

It does, and it's very likely that we'd eventually win in court if it became an issue. But AIUI, we'd need testimony to 20 years of continuous access as of right to our house (not any of the others on the street). As a newcomer, that's not entirely trivial - the people we bought it from were only here 8 years, and I think we'd need to go another two owners back to get the full 20. And in any case the court case (and inevitable buggeration in the lead up to it) would be expensive and unpleasant.

Anyway, the building society (mortgage holder) wanted better security than that, so insurance it is.

I wonder if aerial photos would show cars parked and help prove it.

Always seemed odd to me that there's no way to compel a local authority to take ownership and responsibiltiy for an unadopted road.

AIUI they (often?) will take it over, but only after it's been made up to the same standard that a new road would need to be for them to adopt it. Which is quite the undertaking, especially when you need to persuade each individual frontager to cough up for the building works.

Most roads are actually not owned by the local authority. Adoption means tthey take over responsibility but the freehold remains with the original owner. Title plans are drawn to the assumed highway rather than the original ownership. The definitive information is most likely to be in conveyance documents.

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