I own a building and the neighboring land owner won’t allow any of my customers or employees park in my parkin

Question

I bought a business building 2 years ago and one of the tenants wanted to co-purchase the building with me, but I decided to purchase it by myself to avoid problems down the road. Well when I purchased the building the tenant started to cause problems for me. He started by saying he wanted to expand his space so I made arrangements for him to expand, and when it came time for him to expand he decided to renege on the whole deal. It upset me but I was forgiving. Then it came time for him to renew his lease and he refused to sign a new lease (but he continued to make his monthly payments) and eventually moved out. The final straw and what I need help with is about a year ago the city had a bunch of odd shaped sections of land that they were selling off in silent auctions, and a 20ft. strip of property that separates my building’s parking lot from the only entrance to the parking lot was one of the pieces of land for sale, long story short I put in a bid and unknown to me so did my now ex-tenant and he won. Now he is punishing me by not allowing any of my employees or tenants or any of our customers drive over his piece of land to park on my parking lot and if any one does he calls the police and threatens me that he will sue. It is so bad that I used to have a dumpster in my parking lot and he wouldn’t allow the garbage truck drivers pass over his lot to retrieve the trash, so I was forced to get 10 garbage cans so that I can drag them around his property line to the ally for garbage retrieval. What can I do? Because of him not allowing people cross his land to park in my parking lot no one will lease any space in my building. How can I win? He says that he will sell the piece of property to me for 3 times as much as he paid for it, and he paid 2 times too much for it to begin with.

Answer 1

You need to see a real estate lawyer. Since the driveway to your parking lot crosses this land and may have for some time, you may be able to force an easement.

Answer 2

A lot depends on state law, but I can't imagine proving that an easement exists being terribly difficult.

You MIGHT be able to make a case for Adverse Possession. Be sure to discuss that with an attorney.  

If you have a potential case for either, you may find out that the property is suddenly for sale, cheap, and that you're the only potential Buyer.  

Answer 3

GO DIRECTLY TO COURT, he cannot block access to your business. You can go and get a easement order because the building was pre-existing and therfore access is grandfathered in.

Answer 4

The first thing I would do is check the property deed at the County Clerks office. It's public information and there is a very good chance that there is a provision for accessing your property via your ex-tenant's property. The deed is free to examine at your request. If there is a right of way provision, make a copy of the deed and present your ex-tenant with a copy and a written letter establishing your intention to excercise your rights across his property.

If there is no right-of-way provision, you can file for an easement with the town board, stating that he is harming your business and limiting your rights to use of your own property. They should issue you accessibility rights, especially if he is blackmailing you with it.  

Answer 5

david is right - this is about an hours worth of any lawyer's time to write a letter asserting you have an easement to the previous tenant.

Answer 6

Get a real-estate attorney.  You can use the eminent domain law to basically force him to sell the land to you for current value because it is necessary for your business.  Your attorney can tell you more.

Answer 7

The long existing easement (written or not) can be continued.  Get a lawyer to get it added to your deed.

Have to go to court,  but pretty much a slam dunk.

In the meantime I would continue to go across the strip.  I doubt the police can or would do anything.  He could not sue you as there as no monetary damages to him.

Or, you could offer him a small amount of money to agree to the easement withour court.

Answer 8

Is there access to you property from any other place than over this one strip or are you "landlocked" with this strip being the ONLY way to gain access? If you are landlocked except for access over this one parcel, he can NOT legally preclude access. He is required by law to provide an easement. Consult a real estate attorney. I'll bet there IS an existing easement. To find out if there IS an easement, go down to the hall of records, the county clerk or wherever they file property deeds and look at the property description for your and his parcels. Do not simply take his word for anything about the property. Go directly to the source. If there IS an easement, it will be listed in the descriptive paragraph. Make a copy and wave it in his face as you do a victory dance while crossing over his property while ignoring any threats he might make. If there is NO easement and you are in fact landlocked, that is where the attorney comes in, to take action to force him to yield the right of way by granting the easement, which then gets entered into the property records. Your problem is, if you are NOT landlocked with this one parcel the only access, you are out of luck. If you have several access points available, you only can force one to yield. If there is ANY other access, no matter where it is, you can NOT force this particular guy to do anything and he is completely within his rights to refuse to allow people on his property.