Landlocked Property

Might be a little help on THIS thread.

In most states property cannot be sold without giving access through the property from which it is being separated. This can cause problems with those being divided by a flowing river etc. as the seller is not expected to provide a bridge.

I used to hunt some land that was owned by the parish. Basically it hunted like state land and was for public use. This property is accessible from 2 different ways. The whole area is kind of different in that the land between the access points is owned by a bunch of different land owners. The north access has a locked gate that the first land owner locks but has to give a key to the landowners past him. The property I hunted extends to the north road. The south access isn’t locked, however the property in question does not extend to the southern road. Years ago I came in from the south access and cut through a land owners property to access the “public” land. He got mad that I used his property as a right of way (I only walked, never took my bike through his land), and he shut that down.
Since then I’ve never been able to access that property anymore. I’ve tried to find other ways to it but it’s basically land locked. Pretty much nothing I can do because I’m not a parish official and can’t get a key to the northern access gate. Sucks it has to be like that but I guess that’s how it works for us poor people lol

Never buy land that does not have legal access. Land needs access to a road or a deeded access agreement across the adjacent property.

If the current owner wants to sell it they need to negotiate and document the access before the sale.

The other land owners owe you (the buyer) nothing.

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Landlocked Property

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Never buy no matter how good you think the deal is friend. I had a chance to buy 60 acres at a steal that was landlocked along the Amite River in E Fel parish. It was full of Timber that would have paid for half the place. I decided not to buy on good advice from my dad. The ole baw that bought 5 years ago hasn't been able to do anything with it because he can't get the right of way situation straight.

There was a discussion on this board a month or two back on this.

If I remember correctly in my quick research, in MS an adjoining land owner has to give you an easement.

That does not mean that you won't spend a lot of money in legal fees but they have to give you access.

Just remember, no where in MS Law does it require any landowner to grant easement to another owner.

Some people have rolled the dice and stolen the property in order to pay legal fees and construction costs to get an easement.

I was once planning on looking at some landlocked land. The seller told me the people that owned the access route were really cranky but I could use their road. My daughter was about 4 years old and very intuitive. We got to a gate where we had to enter onto the cranky neighbor's land. There was a very old trailer about 50 yards away. "No trespassing" signs everywhere. I got out and opened the gate. When I got back in the truck, my daughter just blankly stared ahead and said, "We're gonna get shot." I looked at my wife, got out of the truck and re-closed the gate and just left. nope.

Thank you all for the insight.

Anyone ever have any luck negotiating with Weyerhaeuser for a right of way/easement? This would likely be a fairly significant distance, approximately two miles through WH property.

They would not even consider our situation, partly because of the small tract and I’m sure partly because they just didn’t want to deal with it. I would assume if you got in touch with the right rep of WH they could give you a concrete answer.

It’s all about the price. All land has multiple values.The dirt has value, the minerals, timber, improvements, etc. you have to find the value. For example. I bought 40 acres of pine timberland for 1250/acre years ago. About 20 years old. No access either legal, historical, or physical. An adjoining property with deeded access and similar timber went up for sale. They wanted 2,800/acre. So I could have bought the adjoining tract and now my tract doubles in value. Instead I waited for a buyer to purchased the adjoining tract and offered my 40 for the same price. It would be worth more to him than anyone else.

In your case, if you can buy the landlocked tract cheap enough I would throw some money at the neighbor to give you deeded access. If you buy the tract for 40k for example then spend 10k on deeded access, survey, and legal work. Now with legal access the tract may be worth 80k.