Access is a legal question before it is a physical one

Buyers inspect a parcel, drive up to the boundary, and conclude it has access. What they have established is that a vehicle reached the edge of the land on the day of the visit.

That is not access. Access is a right, and rights are established on paper.

The distinction that costs money

A track crossing a neighbour's field is used by permission until the neighbour changes, sells or objects. Permission is not a right of way, and it does not run with the land. The buyer discovers this at the point of development, which is the worst possible moment: the capital is committed and the leverage is gone.

What we check

• Whether a recorded right of way exists, and over whose land.
• Whether the approach is a public road, a village road, or private land used by custom.
• Whether the access shown on the ground matches the access shown on the plan — these disagree more often than buyers expect.
• Whether the approach depends on a road that is proposed rather than built. A parcel whose access exists only in a future alignment is priced as landlocked, because today that is what it is.

Why this is the second test

Our screen runs legal, planning, access and demand. Access sits third because it is cheap to check and expensive to get wrong, and because it is the test where the site visit is most likely to mislead a buyer into confidence.

A parcel with clean title, a good zone and no enforceable approach is not a discounted opportunity. It is a parcel we decline.