I have a conundrum that I'm hoping you fine folks can help me out with. My wife and I are interested in buying a plot of land and found a privately owned well on the corner of the property. It's behind a chain link fence with various NO TRESPASSING signs and a phone number, which only connects to an automated answering machine. It's clearly being maintained and is accessible from a maintenance road that runs along the edge of the property. There's no record of the well on any of the property maps, but it is connected to the power lines. The local utility informed us that someone has been paying the power bill and supplied our agent with the owners contact information, but she hasn't responded to any calls. We need to close in the next 24 hours, or we lose our earnest money, but we don't want any unexpected surprises from the well owner down the road.
This is our dream property, and we'd really hate to miss out this opportunity. Any advice would be welcome.
Private well on property, but can't seem to find the owner.
byu/TheDunkirkSpirit inRealEstate
Posted by TheDunkirkSpirit
5 Comments
What does your real estate attorney say about who the owner is and have they attempted to contact the owner?
What does the owner of the property say about any agreement(s) with the well owner? What’s been recorded?
Sounds like you are delaying closing until this gets resolved.
Did an easement come up in the title search? If not, if not. I think you might be buying a well.
You aren’t gonna close in the next 24 hours. How could you possibly think that you would close if there is somebody else who’s well is on the property? Where is the real estate attorney in this and where are the owners in this? The owners who are selling.
It’s not your dream piece of property if somebody else has a well on the property and none of that has gotten legally addressed. I also don’t understand why there wasn’t an extension of the contingency period and why you would have to surrender your earnest money. It sounds like your realtor has not done a good job on this.
That is wild!
Ummmmm in college we connected the landlord’s community power to our apartment’s power and used their power for half a year, and they made big efforts to contact us. So if you want the owners to contact you, that’s a surefire way! haha don’t do that
edit: once we tapped into their electricity we were running all sorts of servers hahaha
Title policy search should have uncovered this. Whether it’s a utility easement, public water easement, etc. you’ll want to contact title company, county records office, neighbors, or whoever else can shed some light.
May need to extend closing, get title company to insure over it, cite seller representation clause, holdback escrow, contact attorney.
Best of luck.