Compensation
Driveways, crossovers and turning movements, and why access often matters more than acreage.
Access is how a property connects to the road network. It determines who can reach it, how easily, and from which directions. For commercial sites it is close to being the whole asset, and for farms and rural holdings it decides whether land can be worked at all.
Highway and transportation projects change access constantly, often without taking much land. A relocated driveway, a closed crossover or a new median can alter what a property is worth without touching a building.
Access loss shows up in the remainder. Under section 40A-64 and, for Department cases, section 136-112, the question is what the whole property was worth before and what the remainder is worth afterwards. Access effects belong squarely inside that comparison.
The short answer
Find your entrance on the plan sheet. If it moves, narrows, or loses a turning movement, the value of the remainder has changed and the appraisal needs to say so.
Frontage strips that carry the entrance.
Read moreThe site as it works afterwards.
In preparationWhere access and circulation drive value.
Read moreField entrances and internal crossings.
Read moreThe commonest cause.
Read moreHow it fits the whole claim.
Read moreA relocated entrance may meet the road at a worse point, or require vehicles to cross more lanes.
A raised median removes left turns. For a business drawing from both directions that can be the single largest loss in the project.
Closures further along the road change how traffic reaches you even if your own entrance is untouched.
Delivery and farm vehicles need swept paths. A narrower or repositioned entrance may exclude them.
An entrance that becomes steep or awkward is a different entrance.
Being pushed onto a service road or a shared entrance alters control and convenience.
Effects on access feed into the value of the remainder, which is precisely what the statutory before and after comparison measures. How far a particular access change is compensable turns on the facts and on the case law, so take advice from a licensed North Carolina attorney.
Where a public body has taken or damaged property without a proceeding, section 136-111 provides a remedy in Department cases. Raise it promptly, because time limits apply.
Not necessarily. The question is not whether access exists but whether the property is worth less with the access it now has.
Plan sheets, traffic patterns, delivery and customer routes, and photographs of the existing arrangement all help. Gather them before construction changes the site.
Explore North Carolina resources matched to your property, the project affecting it, and the stage you have reached.
Get Help