Compensation
Driveways, medians 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 a trading site it is close to the whole asset.
Florida highway projects change access constantly, often without taking much land. A relocated driveway, a closed median or a new turn restriction can alter what a property is worth without touching a building.
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.
Where access loss is captured.
Read moreFrontage strips that carry the entrance.
Read moreWhere access loss damages trade.
Read moreSites where access drives value.
Read moreThe commonest cause.
Read moreThe site as it works afterwards.
Read moreA relocated entrance may meet the road at a worse point, or force vehicles across more lanes.
A raised median removes left turns. For a business drawing from both directions that is frequently the largest single loss in a project.
Closures further along the road change how traffic reaches you even if your own entrance is untouched.
Delivery 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 what remains, which is what severance damages measure. How far a particular access change is compensable turns on the facts and the case law, so take advice from a licensed Florida attorney.
Where a public body has taken or damaged property without a proceeding, inverse condemnation is the route owners use. Raise it promptly and in writing.
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, customer and delivery routes, and photographs of the existing arrangement all help. Gather them before construction changes the site.
Explore Florida resources matched to your property type, the project affecting it, and the stage you have reached.
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