Buying a Home With a Shared Driveway in Tennessee
What should you check before buying a home with a shared driveway or private road in Tennessee?
Three things, in this order. Confirm there is a recorded easement in the county register of deeds giving the property legal access to a public road. Get a copy of any road maintenance agreement and read who pays for what. Then confirm your lender is satisfied, because a title commitment showing no legal access will stop the loan. Tennessee does not require a maintenance agreement by statute, and FHA does not require one for a shared driveway, but your lender and your title company can still condition closing on one.
By Khristian Schlemmer | September 15, 2026
Drive ten minutes outside Lebanon, or out toward Gladeville, Watertown, or the rural edges of Mt. Juliet, and shared driveways stop being unusual. Family land gets divided. A back lot gets sold off. Three houses end up sharing 900 feet of gravel that nobody officially owns.
Buyers almost never ask about it during the showing. They ask about it in week two of the inspection period, when the title commitment comes back with an exception they do not understand, or when the neighbor mentions in passing that the culvert washed out last spring and "everybody chipped in."
That is late. Here is what to look at, and when.
Legal access is the whole ballgame on a shared driveway in Tennessee
A home can be physically accessible and legally landlocked at the same time. The gravel exists. The right to use it may not.
What you want is an easement appurtenant that is written, recorded, and describes the location, width, and purpose of the access. Recorded matters. Recording an easement in the county register of deeds gives public notice and protects priority against later purchasers. An unrecorded easement can still be enforceable against someone with actual or inquiry notice, and a plainly visible driveway is a decent argument for inquiry notice, but "we would probably win that argument" is a bad thing to buy.
Tennessee addresses private roads directly in Title 54, Chapter 14 of the Tennessee Code. One provision worth knowing is T.C.A. 54-14-117, which establishes that the easement belongs to the owners of the lands benefited, and that it can revert when it is not used. Access rights are tied to the parcel, not to a handshake between two neighbors.
There is also a public-use path. Tennessee courts have recognized that public use of a road for more than 20 years can create a prescriptive public right, and government maintenance of a street can show acceptance. That is a legal argument, not a document, and it is not something to rely on at the closing table.
Your title company earns its fee here. The title search identifies a lack of legal access, and it shows up as an exception on the title commitment. Read Schedule B. This is also a reason to think carefully about who selects the title company on your transaction, because you want a closer who will actually explain what the exceptions mean instead of sliding the page across the table.
The maintenance agreement is where the money lives
Legal access answers "may I drive on it." A road maintenance agreement answers "who pays when it fails."
Here is the part that surprises people. FHA's minimum property standards require that private streets, including shared driveways, be protected by a permanent recorded easement, ownership interest, or be owned and maintained by a homeowners association. But FHA does not require a joint maintenance agreement for a shared driveway. State and local requirements can differ, and individual lenders routinely impose their own conditions on top.
In practice, what happens in Middle Tennessee is that the lender reviews the title commitment and, seeing shared access, conditions the loan on a recorded shared driveway or road maintenance agreement. Sometimes it is already in place. Sometimes it has to be created, signed by every benefited owner, and recorded, in the middle of your inspection period, with people who did not ask to be involved in your transaction.
Start that conversation early. A missing agreement is a solvable problem in week one and a closing delay in week four.
A good agreement spells out:
Cost allocation, and the method. Equal shares, or shares weighted by frontage or by distance traveled.
Routine upkeep. Grading, gravel, drainage and culvert maintenance, debris and snow removal.
Repair triggered by heavy vehicle damage, which matters if a neighbor runs equipment or a business.
How decisions get made and what happens when someone refuses to pay.
Whether the obligation runs with the land, so it binds future owners rather than just the people who signed it.
If the answer to "is there an agreement" is "no, but we all get along," price that. Gravel road maintenance is not free and washouts are not rare.
Six questions to ask during your inspection period
Is the driveway inside a recorded easement, and can I see it? Ask the title company for the recorded instrument, not a description of it.
Is the road county maintained? Call the county road department and ask directly whether the road is on the accepted maintenance list. Do not assume. Many roads that look public are not.
Is there a recorded maintenance agreement, and who signed it? An agreement signed by two of four benefited owners is a partial agreement.
What does my lender require? Ask the loan officer to confirm in writing what they will need regarding access and maintenance. Ask before the appraisal, not after.
How wide is the easement, and does the actual drive sit inside it? This is where a survey pays for itself, and it is a separate question from boundary lines.
What has failed in the last five years? Ask the sellers and, if you can, the neighbors. Drainage history predicts drainage future.
Utilities deserve a mention too. If power, water, or internet has to cross someone else's land to reach the house, those rights need to be recorded as well. On rural parcels this same due diligence mindset applies across the board, which is why I tell Wilson County buyers to look hard at site conditions like sinkholes and karst geology and at flood zone exposure at the same time they are looking at access.
Does a shared driveway hurt resale?
It narrows the buyer pool a little, and it narrows it more when the paperwork is messy.
A clean file, meaning a recorded easement, a recorded maintenance agreement that runs with the land, and a documented cost-sharing history, is close to a non-issue. Rural and acreage buyers in Wilson County expect shared access and know how to evaluate it.
An undocumented arrangement is different. It introduces uncertainty at exactly the moment a future buyer's lender is deciding whether to fund, and uncertainty gets priced. If you are buying a home where the access is informal, understand that you are also buying the job of cleaning it up before you sell.
With Middle Tennessee inventory sitting longer than it did two years ago, buyers have room to make access documentation a condition rather than a hope. Use it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a lender refuse to finance a home on a private road in Tennessee?
A lender will not fund a property without legal access, and the title search is what surfaces it. Most lenders will approve a private road or shared driveway once a recorded easement exists, and many will also require a recorded maintenance agreement even though FHA does not mandate one for shared driveways. Get your lender's specific requirements in writing early.
Who is responsible for repairing a shared driveway in Tennessee?
Whoever the recorded agreement says is responsible. Absent an agreement, the benefited owners share a general obligation tied to their easement rights, and disputes end up being resolved neighbor to neighbor or, occasionally, in court. That uncertainty is precisely why the written agreement matters.
Is a shared driveway agreement required by Tennessee law?
No statute requires one for a typical shared residential driveway. Requirements come from lenders, title underwriters, subdivision regulations, or an existing HOA. A written recorded agreement is best practice regardless, because it binds future owners rather than just the current neighbors.
What is the difference between an easement and a survey?
An easement is a legal right to use land you do not own. A survey is a measurement showing where boundaries, structures, and easements physically sit. You often need both. The easement tells you that you may use the drive, and the survey tells you whether the drive is actually inside it.
Does a shared driveway affect my home insurance?
It can affect access for emergency vehicles and, in some cases, liability exposure, and insurers ask about private road access on rural properties. Raise it with your agent while you are still in the inspection period so a surprise does not appear during underwriting.
The bottom line
A shared driveway is not a red flag. Undocumented access is. Confirm a recorded easement, get the maintenance agreement in hand, and clear your lender's conditions early, and the rest is just gravel.
If you are looking at a home outside Lebanon, Mt. Juliet, or anywhere in rural Wilson County where access is shared, this is exactly the kind of thing I check before we write an offer rather than after. Reach out anytime and we will look at the specific property together.
About Khristian Schlemmer
Khristian is a top-producing Middle Tennessee Realtor and founder of First Class Real Estate, serving buyers, sellers, and investors throughout the Greater Nashville area. With over $75 million in career sales and 300+ homes sold, he is known for creative marketing, strong negotiation, and delivering a true first-class client experience. Born into a family passionate about real estate investing and home building, Khristian combines local market expertise with modern marketing strategies to help clients confidently achieve their real estate goals.
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