anyone live on a 'private' road? splitting up costs question

[F150HD]

This issue has arisen locally....see image.

A private road is not maintained by the county, the homeowners along the road pay to maintain it (no HOA btw).
In the image, Apple Road is not a private road, it is maintained by the county.
Pear Road in red, is a private road and is not maintained by the county.

Question: If the 6 homeowners A-F need to split up a $1500 maintenance bill for the private Pear Road, what is the best means to split up the cost?

Dividing $1500 by 6 doesn't make sense as homeowner A only uses 1/10 of the road, homeowner B uses 1/3 of it etc. while homeowner F uses the entire road every day.

I have ideas on calculations but curious as to how someone else may calculate the cost for each homeowner A-F?

(and/or how this is typically calculated if you are someone living on a private road. Again, no HOA for these homes and its not part of the discussion. Thanks.)

[hicabob]

I have lived on 2 private roads. On #1 the cost was split according to how much of the road one used so F would pay 10x what A pays in your diagram. On #2 F is the head of the "road committee" so tries to keep all residents payments the same. Both were voluntary. I think proportional to usage is the way to do it.

[quantAndHold]

The road my brother lives on is split equally. They all use the road, they all pay for it.

If it were me, I would look at deeding it to the city/county, and having them take care of it.

[finite_difference]

Proportional seems like you pay Distance*X, where X=$1500/Sum(distances)=$1500/(3.25 miles) = $451.50/mile.

A pays 0.1 miles * $451.50/mile = $45.15.
F pays 1.0 miles * $451.50/mile = $451.50.

Sum of all payments should equal $1500.

However, I could see one arguing that A is getting a better deal out of this than F, because A benefits from the economy of scale that you have when maintaining a larger road. That is, if A lived by themselves, they probably would need to spend more than $45/yr to maintain a 0.1 mile road to their house.

[2pedals]

Homeowner A place a toll at the entrance to the road </sarc>

[Mike Scott]

In your case, it would be easiest to divide it evenly and be done. Everyone is using it and it's not that much money. That was what we did on a private road on a previously owned property. The informal agreement on our current private road is that the farmers who drive semi trucks and bulldozers etc on it pay a bigger share. They also run their road grader over it when they have it out. We sort of randomly take turns mowing the edges. In practice, one neighbor usually arranges for the gravel delivery and I just give him however much he says is my share. It makes life a lot less complicated and seems close enough to fair. It costs us a few hundred $$ every three or four years and the road stays in decent condition especially considering the heavy traffic.

[suemarkp]

I had this issue and hated it. We did have a road maintence agreement in our title docs. It mandated equal split. My problems were the schizophrenic guy next door with no money, and the guy at the end of the road on disability with no money.

My kids and I provided free labor for 9 years to fill potholes. I just wanted reimbursed for gravel. Most people were grateful and paid their share right away. One family i had to hound a few times. The two others mentioned were hopeless.

When i sold the next owner paved the road to his driveway which is 75% of the road. I think the disabled guy at the end may be on his own now.

[8foot7]

Not screwing over your neighbors with complicated formulas is worth $250. Split the payments equally and call it a day.
If this were $25k then maybe it would be a different story but for goodness' sakes don't let perfect be the enemy of Good Enough.

From another perspective, I would probably not pay more than an equal split of this bill if I lived down this street. I'd be respectful about it but I would say to you, "it looks like $1500 divided by six is $250 so that's what I'll pay here because that's a fair amount but I'm not going to pay more than that so that A B C can pay less." And if I were A, I would be happy to pay the $250.

[stan1]

Split it 6 ways. My guess is the person who owns house F would like that approach. The person who owns house A would want to pay based on linear feet of road travelled. At that point may as well charge by frequency of use too. Maybe E comes and goes once per day but D comes and goes 10 times per day. Obviously D should pay 10x more than E if that's the case, right? Or look at value of property on Zillow and pro-rate that way?

The amount of money in this scenario is $1500 not $15,000 or $15M. All six should be neighborly not cheapskates, keep this simple, and cut their check for $250 while being thankful they live on a quiet road with good neighbors.

[hightower]

My wife and I live on a long private drive. We are at the end of it and it's about 1 mile long with several homes on the way back. My father in law actually owns the road, but we all have easements.
We all pay a yearly amount into a road maintenance fund that is a savings account held for future road repairs. My wife actually manages the whole thing for everyone so she's more informed as to the breakdown than I am, but basically there is a formula that a previous owner made that splits the payments based on how much of the road each person uses. The person with the least amount of road used only pays like $50 per year, whereas we pay the most since we're at the end and it's like $360/year. To me it's fair since we are responsible for more wear and tear than anyone else. It make sense that we should pay a bit more. Everyone along the road seems to be fine with it and pays their fair shares.
I think it's better to do it this way so that no one is shocked with a large bill at the time of road repair. Paying a little each year and letting it build up slowly over 10 years or so makes it less painful when it's time to repair. We just had a $7000 repair actually last year and we didn't have to bother anyone for cash, just wrote a check from the savings account and let everyone know what was being done and the price. I'm not a fan of holding a savings account with other people's money in it, but I make sure that we never touch the balance so that we can provide documentation of all transactions each year for complete transparency. Everyone has been perfectly neighborly with it so far.

[fortunefavored]

Personal experience similar to above: split equally, but several people will claim "no money" - so it ends up being split between the few people who can afford it. Usually waiting until it is really really bad and enough people cave in.

I hope to avoid it in the future unless it is tied to an HOA with some legal teeth to ensure people pay.

[ram]

One option is that everybody pays a fixed $100 (total 600) and the remaining $900 is proportional to the distance of the road used.

[prd1982]

If you are "A", then propose that everyone pay the same. If you are "F", then propose paying proportional. At least the other neighbors will know you are willing to pay your share (or more). And good luck.

I suspect maintenance will be deferred until one (or maybe two) houses talk it over and just pay.

[aristotelian]

You could set up toll booths at three or four points and charge a nickel at each one as you go down the street. Then you would be assured that everyone pays for exactly the amount of road they consume.

[neverpanic]

One option is that everybody pays a fixed $100 (total 600) and the remaining $900 is proportional to the distance of the road used.

In my opinion, yours is the fairest solution.

That said, everyone living on the road benefits from being a part of that community. Split the cost equally and move on.

[MarkerFM]

One option is that everybody pays a fixed $100 (total 600) and the remaining $900 is proportional to the distance of the road used.

This is brilliant! A solution that should appeal to all.

[tim1999]

I would split it evenly 6 ways. Getting into nit picking over varying distances of road used by each neighbor seems like a good way to get everyone ticked off at each other and less willing to cooperate with future road maintenance efforts. If I lived at the end of the cul-de-sac and you told me you wanted me to pay the bulk of the maintenance bill because I used the entire length of the road, I'd tell you to either accept my check for my 1/6 share or go pound sand.

[blackangus]

Our state statute prescribes several methods including percent of frontage, % of valuation, and size of lot. All have their arguments for and against.

[z3r0c00l]

Would absolutely split evenly, having good relations with neighbors is worth more than a few hundred bucks. The only exception is if someone wants something cosmetic or needlessly expensive, such as a built up or improved dead end to the road for F that only they would see. I lived on a road like this a few years in a place with severe snowfall. I had to clear huge stretches of rough road myself and it took hours after a storm. Slowly realized that several neighbors were elderly or broke or unable to do the work. Didn't bother me at all, everyone should contribute as they are able and receive help if needed. This is what I would do for family so why not closest neighbors?

[shess]

One option is that everybody pays a fixed $100 (total 600) and the remaining $900 is proportional to the distance of the road used.

This is brilliant! A solution that should appeal to all.

An issue this addresses to some extent is: What is the value to having a road at all? Would A be happy if they had to pay the ENTIRE cost of the road just to their point? It would probably cost more than $1500/10, because nobody would come out to do the work for $150.

In fact, you might ask the contractor doing the maintenance about this issue. They might say "Oh, yeah, 90% of the cost is getting someone out here with equipment to do the first inch of work". You might find that it's more fair to have everyone pay $200 plus a pro-rata $300/mile. Of course, at that point it's just easier to /6 and be done.

[F150HD]

Proportional seems like you pay Distance*X, where X=$1500/Sum(distances)=$1500/(3.25 miles) = $451.50/mile.

A pays 0.1 miles * $451.50/mile = $45.15.
F pays 1.0 miles * $451.50/mile = $451.50.

Sum of all payments should equal $1500.

However, I could see one arguing that A is getting a better deal out of this than F, because A benefits from the economy of scale that you have when maintaining a larger road. That is, if A lived by themselves, they probably would need to spend more than $45/yr to maintain a 0.1 mile road to their house.

This is what I came up with too, thanks.

[F150HD]

Split it 6 ways. My guess is the person who owns house F would like that approach. The person who owns house A would want to pay based on linear feet of road travelled. At that point may as well charge by frequency of use too. Maybe E comes and goes once per day but D comes and goes 10 times per day. Obviously D should pay 10x more than E if that's the case, right? Or look at value of property on Zillow and pro-rate that way?

The amount of money in this scenario is $1500 not $15,000 or $15M. All six should be neighborly not cheapskates, keep this simple, and cut their check for $250 while being thankful they live on a quiet road with good neighbors.

IRT frequency.....some folks on the road come and go 20x per day, some don't use the road even once per day.

In Cities I've lived in, road maintenance cost was a function of linear footage of the home along the city street. Folks who lived on a corner paid 2x the normal home as they bordered two streets.

[F150HD]

The road my brother lives on is split equally. They all use the road, they all pay for it.

If it were me, I would look at deeding it to the city/county, and having them take care of it.

having the county maintain it brings restrictions on building on ones property, permits, inspections etc. not many along the road are fond of that.

Personal experience similar to above: split equally, but several people will claim "no money" - so it ends up being split between the few people who can afford it. Usually waiting until it is really really bad and enough people cave in.

I hope to avoid it in the future unless it is tied to an HOA with some legal teeth to ensure people pay.

a noteable point....esp if one homeowner becomes unemployed and cannot pay.

One option is that everybody pays a fixed $100 (total 600) and the remaining $900 is proportional to the distance of the road used.

interesting idea.

Our state statute prescribes several methods including percent of frontage, % of valuation, and size of lot. All have their arguments for and against.

if you ever find a link for that, throw it this way. Sounds interesting. Not much luck searing online for this.

[F150HD]

Thanks to all for the great input.

[Wricha]

Live,on private roads for 35 years . Split evenly. If you can get that through you have hit a home run. Otherwise the fight over the condition of the road will become even more controversial.

[gips]

you don't want to end up where we did, no one could come to an agreement so I ended up shoveling 2 feet of snow off our part of the road only to find two of my neighbors hadn't done so. eventually we split it up by proportionally.

[Olemiss540]

What if homeowner F uses the road once a day and homeowner A uses it with 14 folks in big wheelers?

I would gladly pay am even split if I was homeowner A.

[stan1]

Thanks to all for the great input.

Do you mind telling us to wrap this up are you A or B or ????

[Saving$]

I am familiar with schemes where everyone pays by frontage of property on the street. However in your diagram, that would not be fair as F's frontage at the end of the road is only the width of the road.

[galawdawg]

If this is voluntary, I'd suggest polling your neighbors. After all, what they think is fair and what they are willing to pay is much more important and relevant than anything we might suggest.

[White Coat Investor]

I've only lived on a private road once. We were the 3rd of 4 houses. It was split equally.

[Elric]

Our development has four "pipe stems," private shared driveways. They are owned by the homeowners along each specific pipe stems, not the HOA. But per the HOA covenants, costs are split equally among those along each pipe stem, not proportional to distance.

[tesuzuki2002]

One option is that everybody pays a fixed $100 (total 600) and the remaining $900 is proportional to the distance of the road used.

This might be a good way to do it. I can see the challenge with splitting up evenly as well as splitting up by distance of the road. (Big factor that is hard to work out is actual usage... How many people in the home that drive? (2 or 6 ?) multiple trips a day or once a week.

I like the thought that everyone chips in evenly and be done with it. I wonder if any of the current home owners thought of this when purchasing?

But if not everyone is on board with all paying the same amount... Perhaps 50% of the cost everyone contributes to evenly and the other 50% is based on how much of the road you use. Similar to above, but based on percentages to it can always track that formula based on the total cost.

[Shackleton]

When we lived on a private 1/2 mile road with 6 properties, we had a “road committee” that was essentially a limited HOA for road maintenance. Everyone paid in the same amount. I was at the far end of the road, but the people that lived at beginning of the road regularly used the road for their ATVs and dirt bikes so it all worked out fair.

[Traveller]

We live on a private road with 8 lots and each split equally. This is stipulated in our HOA agreement.

However, as someone mentioned above, the bill is actually split between those willing to pay... There has been one bad apple in our barrel that we are constantly fighting with. Other than that, it seems to work well for our neighborhood to just split the bills equally.

As others have said, I don't think the distance from the head of the road really matters as frequency of use could vary wildly.

[theduke]

On my road, it's done the same way as "hightower" above.

[chuckb84]

On our private road we just split it evenly. There are 23 homes on a Y-shaped cul de sac, and it's only (at most) 1/2 mile from end to end.

The problem with basing it on distance from the nearest public road is that some people are in and out many times a day, while some use the road only occasionally.

Given how hard that is to figure out, we just all pay the same.

[hudson]

If this is voluntary, I'd suggest polling your neighbors. After all, what they think is fair and what they are willing to pay is much more important and relevant than anything we might suggest.

Agree
A meeting or two or three would be great to talk it out and come up with a plan.
A lead person in our private road neighborhood went from house to house collecting checks to resurface the road. He got the quote and did all of the legwork. 80% or so of the homeowners paid; it was done. Later we were annexed into a city; they took over the road. I went house to house to have a city sewer petition signed. There was a lump sum plus front footage assessment. All of my 8 neighbors signed. The city used my very limited petition to put sewers in for the entire development...maybe 50-60 houses.
The person that takes the lead in these kind of projects can get the job done, but he/she has to be ready to take some lumps. Everybody isn't going to agree. When meetings start going badly, adjourn and come back in a month.

[Cigarman]

The easiest solution is everyone should pay their "fair share". LOL.

[Harry Livermore]

We share a driveway with one other neighbor. The driveway is entirely on our property; the neighbor has an easement to use it, and a deed requirement to share repair costs at 20% of the entire driveway length. Driveway is about 600 feet long, and the neighbor's house accesses it at about the 150' mark. We are "all the way up".
In our case, it's just simple asphalt. There is no real infrastructure to speak of; no curbing, drains, etc. I have taken the lead in repair, as needed. I have put in a couple of bags of cold patch here and there at the edges. I have sealed the driveway twice, including the area below neighbor. He did not offer to help or pay, and that was OK; I am happy to be generous. Neighbor is semi-retired and does not always need to get out in the morning during a snowstorm, for instance. I have the largest walk-behind snow thrower Ariens makes, and pride myself on doing the entire driveway. Neighbor also has a snow thrower and will pitch in. Sometimes we are the ones sleeping in after a storm and I head down to discover he's done most of my part of the driveway; I certainly appreciate the gesture. So far it has worked. Not sure what will happen if one or both of us decide the "bottom part" needs resurfacing. But I'll approach it in a kind adult manner. I'm also not sure what a future neighbor's expectations will be... will he want to hire a plow guy for just the bottom part, and expect me to split 50-50? I'll just take it as it comes I guess.
TL/DR:
OP, I don't envy you, as I think it has the potential to be an awkward meeting between the neighbors, but it must be done. I am surprised the details are not included in everyone's deed?
Maybe host a happy hour to get everyone chatting about it.
Cheers

[boomer_techie]

Question: If the 6 homeowners A-F need to split up a $1500 maintenance bill for the private Pear Road, what is the best means to split up the cost?

Just divide by 6 - everyone pays the same. A uses much less of the road, but benefits more when neighbors aren't bouncing past on a dusty bumpy road.

Other option: F pays for .15 miles, E for .15, D for .1, C for .2, B for .2, and A for .1 miles. In this option, if C balks, then the segment from B to C doesn't get repaired.

I'm on a private road and years ago we split it evenly when a portion of the road needed repairs. My end needed paving repairs while the other end needed drainage repairs. Conceptually, does that mean the paving repairs were split between fewer neighbors?

[AB609]

I live on a private dead end road with 3 neighbors. We just split the road costs evenly. Anything other scheme is too complicated in my mind. We just did a $30K resurfacing project on the road this year and we split the cost evenly and nobody complained.

[corp_sharecropper]

To me, while I find it an interesting "problem" to solve (a mathematical model somehow factors in a bunch of variables), it's simply too complex for something good neighbors should be able to handle like responsible adults (part of growing up is accepting that life isn't perfect/fair, especially at the level of singular issues).

I also think the idea of making F pay more has a big issue in the sense that I would imagine the majority of maintenance, both by probability and wear/tear, will occur at the beginning of the road where more people are using it. Doesn't seem right for F to pay more every time a new pothole develops at the very beginning of the road. Additionally, adding another variable for where repairs are needed along the road would make it further ridiculous.

The engineer in me would love to use cameras to ID & count vehicles on the road, factoring in gross vehicle weight of each owner's car/truck, and bill accordingly.. but that's just the engineer nerd day dream.

[stan1]

We just did a $30K resurfacing project on the road this year and we split the cost evenly and nobody complained.

Helps if everyone has a lot of money.

[TNWoods]

I would recommend that 50% of the cost be split equally, and 50% be split using the proportional distance formula.

It is true that the economy of scale factor comes into play, and "A" is benefitting mightily, as finite_difference says.

What if "A" had no neighbors at all on that road, and had to pay 100% of the cost of that short distance? It wouldn't be $45.00.

TNWoods

[F150HD]

We just did a $30K resurfacing project on the road this year and we split the cost evenly and nobody complained.

Helps if everyone has a lot of money.

yep. not many have $10k liquid. On this board? maybe, gen pop, no.

[DetroitAvant]

One of the road we used to live on was a special assessment district and they did it based on frontage (so not distance from road, but amount of road that lines your property).

[whomever]

Heh.

There isn't any universally 'fair' way.

The various apportionment schemes seem to be assuming that the cost is evenly distributed along the road, e.g. for paving. But what if the big cost is replacing the culvert at the junction with the public road? Everyone benefits equally from that (maybe ... see below). But what if the culvert is between house #3 and house #4? Only 4, 5, and 6 benefit from that.

Some of the questions are philosophical ... if house #6 is a summer place used 2 weeks a year, while #1 lives there full time, who benefits most from the bridge that connects #1 to the public road. You can argue that both benefit equally because neither can access their house at all w/o the bridge, or you can argue that #1 gets 52 weeks of benefit, while #6 only gets 2 weeks of benefit.

For another twist, we have some rural land that is accessed by a couple miles of 4WD road. We'd like to clean it up a bit, but have neighbors who prefer it be barely passable, on the theory it discourages trespassers.

I don't think there are any cut and dried answers. I do think it's wise to try really hard to get along with neighbors

[dratkinson]

Or, another way to look at it.

Split evenly, and argue...
--A is paying to get from main drag to his driveway.
--B is paying to get from A's driveway to his driveway.
...
--F is paying to get from E's driveway to his driveway.


It's another matter how the amount is to be paid, 1) a small non-refundable amount annually into a fund for periodic road maintenance, or 2) a larger amount as needed, or 3) a combination of both to take the bite out of a larger repair.

Would ask neighbors what they prefer.

And if agreement is not reached, then turn road over to county and 1) pay for road maintenance on county taxes, and 2) accept county restrictions on roadway frontage use (homeowner responsibility to shovel snow from new sidewalks,...).

[vested1]

This seems like splitting hairs to me, or more like freinds squabbling over who owes what on a dinner tab. Why create conflict with neighbors over something that is relatively inconsequential? I can see where it could be an issue if the road was 10 miles long instead of 1.

The OP mentioned that they weren't part of a HOA, but the concept is really the same. The HOA we belong to charges $185 a month for road maintenance, free golf, free swimming, and free sewer (everyone else outside our HOA in our rural geographical area is on septic).

I can't wait til the next HOA meeting where I'll bring up the issue of fairness, mainly because our HOA is so free of conflict that we need to spice it up a bit.

We live near the beginning of the miles long paved private road, and use the golf course, the swimming pool, and the sewer (only two of us) much less than many of the other residents. Some members use those facilities even less than we do. Maybe implanted microchips under the skin of every resident, or ankle monitors should be required so that we could track every resident's location on the road, the golf course, the swimming pool, and the bathroom.

After all, fair is fair.