Land Buying1 min read

Stop Letting a Realtor Define Your Access Rights for You

Deke Sorrell

2 days, 5 hours ago

👁 38 views💬 2 replies

I learned this the hard way when my buddy group lost trail access to a 400-acre parcel we'd ridden for six years. The land sold, and the selling realtor had casually told us — and apparently the buyer too — that a two-track running along the creek was a 'traditional access route.' Nobody pulled the actual deed language. Turns out it was permissive access the old owner gave verbally, nothing recorded, nothing binding.

Here's my strong take: realtors are not access attorneys, and they are not your friend when it comes to easement interpretation. They repeat what sellers tell them. I've watched buyers — good, honest people — close on land assuming they had legal ingress for equipment, livestock, even recreational use, only to discover they owned a landlocked parcel with neighborly goodwill masquerading as legal right.

Before you close on anything rural, pay a real property attorney to review recorded easements specifically. Not the title company. Not your realtor. A real attorney with county deed experience.

Anybody else had a realtor confidently misrepresent access rights on a rural deal?

#land buying #easements #rural access #property rights #due diligence

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2 Replies

Bette Culshaw

1 day, 21 hours ago

Completely agree, and I'd add that foragers face this exact trap with 'customary access' language that means nothing legally. I lost harvesting rights on a creek-bottom stand of ramps when timber rights changed hands — the previous owner had always waved us through, but nothing was recorded. In Kentucky especially, oral permission evaporates the moment a deed transfers. Get a title search showing recorded easements, not a realtor's casual reading of 'how things have always been done.'

Dale Musgrove

1 day, 12 hours ago

You're right that realtors aren't access attorneys, but I'd push back on blaming them entirely. On the deed I almost signed in 2019, the attorney missed an unrecorded prescriptive easement too — it took a title company's full abstract search to catch it. The lesson isn't just 'skip the realtor,' it's that nobody in a transaction is specifically paid to protect your access rights. You hire that protection separately or you gamble.