Not unless you have an agreement to provide someone access.
On family property here, we have a private road which provides access to about a dozen properties. Without our road they are landlocked. Each property owner has an “ingress-egress” easement with us. We are required to maintain the road in passable condition, only because of those agreements.
Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center is barricaded one day a year so its status as a private street is not jeopardized by the state’s law of adverse possession.
A minor point: it’s the county that levies r e taxes, not the city. A condo owner, in a high rise or otherwise, has an interest in the common elements in proportion to his ownership. For example, 40 owners, each gets 1/40th of the common elements. This must be compared to a cooperative, which many states no longer use as title really gets complicated since the building is put into a corporation and the apartment owners own shares. That gets really messy upon foreclosure, as all interested parties must be given notice. There’s no animal as a “condominium corporation.” Developers may design their properties as condos, pursuant to that state’s laws regarding condominiums, but title to the common elements is, as I noted above, governed by a Home Owners Association (which doesn’t have title to anything).
When a tract of land is subdivided, the plat must be approved by several government authorities, including the county and the city. The plat will show the streets either as dedicated for public use or “private roads.” Since the county and the city have approved the plat, that designation is accepted. Title to the street depends upon the state and when it was dedicated. Under the common law, title remains in the subdivider unless he conveys it with the lot. (The municipality gets only an easement for public use.) Therefore, under common law, if A, the developer, conveys x to B, but does not include the adjoining street(s), title to the street remains in the developer, even 100 years later. (Of course by then it would be the developer’s heirs or devisees.) If one owner, along the chain of title, does not include the street (but it was previously included in deeds), then title to the street remains in that grantor.
States have enacted plat acts, which state that if the developer follows the plat act and abides by all it entails, title in the street belongs to the municipality. If a street is vacated the word “abandoned” is used in some states), but dedicated prior to the enactment of that state’s plat act, upon vacation, title would revert to the heirs or devisees of the developer, even if they don’t know anything about it. If vacated but dedicated pursuant to the plat act, title will go to the adjoining owners.
The original town of Chicago,for example, was incorporated prior to the Illinois’ Plat Act. Title to all the streets in the OT of Chicago is in the adjoining owner, and, in many cases, the owner does use the underground area for its own use. The streets can be used by the adjoining owner so long as it does not interfere with the public’s rights for street purposes.
helicopters
Are you sure that’s the case for the original townsite, or are you maybe thinking of the School Section (Madison to Roosevelt, State to Halsted), where there was some problem with the streets never properly being dedicated or accepted?
It is true for the OT of Chicago. Many of the financial institutions and other large corporations have archived files and other stuff underneath Dearborn, Clark, and other downtown streets.
I forgot to note on my prior note to this post that not only is it not the city, but there is no foreclosure, at least in those states in which I did some title work. If the county r e taxes are not paid, they become delinquent and are sold at a tax sale. States have different laws on the procedure of these sales. In Illinois, the law is if delinquent for two years, they are held at a public sale. If nobody bids, the delinquent taxes are added to the next sale. These sales are held perioidically In Illinois, the interest to redeem the property is set by law. In Cook County, most of the bidders are professional. Once the property is sold, the owner has a limited time to redeem. IIRC, it is two years. The interest to redeem is set by law and depends on how long after the sale the redemption is had.
Most of the properties that have delinquent tax sales are vacant lands. Mortgagees will escrow the taxes, so they never become delinquent, as taxes are prior to any other lien. Even if no mortgage, no valuable property owner will allow his land to be delinquent for two years. Some of these lands will have taxes delinquent for many years.
This is different from a foreclosure because it is a non-judicial proceeding: no court proceedings, although due process is observed by giving due notice. Moreover, the procedure for redeeming is different, as redemption requires paying interest to the purchaser as provided by law.
I guess I should have replied to the entire quote in one post. Private roads are not created by magic or by a mystical company. They are created by the owner or owners of the land. Usuually one person will own an entire tract and sell off lots to others, creating a private road or easement to access a public road. The location of the easement will be described in the initial deeds, but do not have to be repeated in subsequent conveyances because they run with the land and, since recorded, are of record. The lot will include the easement, and the owner of the lot still has title to the land covered by the easement. If the original owner of the entire tract has a plat made, setting off the easements or private roads, they would not necessarily have to be included in the deeds. Anyone buying a lot buys it subject to the easement, but the owner of the lot has fee title to the land underlying the easement.
I think it’s been implied in this thread, but not stated explicitly. The OP has the process backwards, at least in the vast majority of cases. It’s not that streets are created as public streets and somehow become private. When streets are first built, they are often built by a private developer, so the streets start off private. They may or may not become public as further events unfold over time.
Well, not quite. A person, corporation, partnership, etc. owns a tract of land. Perhaps a farmer owns a tract of land and decides to sell it to a developer. This entity or developer wants to subdivide the property (into blocks and lots). He has a land surveyor make a plat of the land according to how the developer wants it to look. On that plat, streets are set forth, dedicated to the public. This is necessary for ingresss to and egress from the individual lots and also for approval by the appropriate governmental bodies (city, county, etc.) This is called a “subdivision.” Once the plat is approved, and the county seal affixed, the city or county, as the case may be, has accepted the dedication of the streets and alleys. It then becomes the responsibility of the city or county (if not located in a city or town) to maintain them. If, for some reason, a street is not actually used and the city never maintained it, the city may vacate it, either on its own initiative or by the adjoining owners.
There are times when private streets or roads are in existence, either by designation on a plat, deed, or by use, and the owner or adjoining owners wish to dedicate it to the city.
All the land in the USA were once located by a metes and bounds description. There were no subdivided lands. Mostly farmland or large tracts owned by paper companies, hunting clubs, etc. The earliest descriptions were very rough. Sometimes “going 12 paces from the white oak to the picket fence and then right 10 chains to the old creek…”
A survey of a tract by m&b is the oldest known manner of describing land. When it is surveyed, it consists of runnng out tracts by courses and distances and planting monuments at the corners and angles. This is difficult and liable to error. For this reason, surveyors inaugurated the rectangular system, which is in force west of Pa. and in western Canada. The original 13 states were not surveyed under the rectangular system. On May 18, 1796, Congress passed an act providing for the survey of the territory NW of the Ohio River and above the mouth of the Ky River. This provided for surveying the lands into townships and sections by the use of “range” lines, “meridian” lines and “township” lines, which I am not going to go into in this thread.
Eventually, someone owning a tract may wish to subdivide it, thus creating blocks, lots, and public streets, which is how civilization, as we know it, came into being. 