Landlocked
Landlocked describes a parcel with no legal way to reach a public road, whatever path may exist on the ground. No Virginia statute defines the word, but the Supreme Court of Virginia uses it in the test for an easement by necessity, and county division rules decide whether new lots may lack a road.
No statute defines it, and a permit at the road does not cure it
Look for landlocked in the Code of Virginia and you will not find a definition. The word is still in daily use here, and it does real work in two places: a court test and the county ordinances that govern dividing land.
In ordinary talk it means a tract with no road to it. The meaning that matters in a sale is narrower: no legal right to travel from the parcel to a public road. A track on the ground and a right of record are separate things, which is why access is the first pass in reading land for a sale. A recorded right-of-way can also exist on paper where nothing on the ground yet looks like a road.
A state permit does not change that. Under VDOT's Land Use Permit Regulations an entrance permit carries only VDOT's own rights in the right-of-way and leaves getting permission from others with an interest in the land to the permit holder, so a permit at the road says nothing about the right to cross the ground between that road and the parcel.
Working out whether a given tract has a recorded way out is the subject of how to know if land has legal access.
Landlocked at the moment the land was divided
Where the Supreme Court of Virginia puts the word to work is its test for one kind of implied easement. Among easements created by implication, Virginia recognizes easements by necessity and easements by pre-existing use.
The Supreme Court of Virginia's statement of the easement by necessity has three elements: the two tracts came from a common title, the easement is reasonably necessary to the tract it serves, and that tract "became landlocked at the time of the severance of the two estates" with no other way in and out except across the neighboring land. Timing sits inside the test: the tract has to have been landlocked at the severance, when land held under one title was split.
How those elements differ from a deeded right-of-way, and from an easement implied from earlier use, is set out under deeded versus implied easements. Whether a tract with no road can still be sold is the question answered in whether you can sell land with no road access.
What division ordinances allow a lot without a road, and the one they bar
An old landlocked tract is a matter of history. A new one would be a matter of a plat, and the three ordinances below attach a road, a right-of-way or deeded access to a lot as a condition of creating it.
- Pulaski County requires all access for a subdivision, whether easement or right-of-way, to be deeded and recorded with the circuit court clerk, or the subdivision is denied. It also says: "Subdivisions that result in lots being entirely surrounded by the parent parcel shall not be permitted."
- Floyd County defines a Limited Access Lot as a lot unable to meet the ordinance's road frontage requirements, and allows it only as part of a Large Lot Division. In that division, lots without public road frontage have to be served by a right-of-way at least 50 feet wide to a public road, and platted vehicular access must be practicable.
- Carroll County, as the county's posted ordinance reads, has a Class C subdivision for parcels existing and recorded before January 1, 2014 that lack the road frontage or acreage for Class A or Class B. It allows at most five lots of at least 1.5 acres, on a street right-of-way at least 25 feet wide, privately maintained by the developer or a homeowners association.
Family divisions carry their own version. State law lets a county require that lots under five acres in a family subdivision have a reasonable right-of-way of not less than 10 or more than 20 feet to a dedicated, recorded public street. How that fits the rest of a family division is covered in what a family subdivision is in Virginia.
Each of these rules works at the moment of division. None of them turns an existing tract with no way out into one that has a way.
Own a parcel with no road to it?
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Questions about this term
Is a parcel landlocked if a neighbor has always allowed a drive across the field?
It can be. Landlocked turns on a legal right to reach a public road, not on whether anyone has been driving in. A neighbor's permission is not the same thing as a recorded right-of-way, and whether years of use created any right at all is a question for a Virginia real estate attorney, not a surveyor or a listing agent.
Is touching a road always enough when a parcel is divided?
Not under every county's division rules. Carroll County's posted subdivision ordinance treats property as served by a state road for a Class A subdivision if it meets that road at a point where a driveway could be built, and Pulaski County requires lot frontage topographically suitable for building an entrance. Whether an existing parcel has legal access at all is a title question for a Virginia real estate attorney.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.
- 24VAC30-151-20: Land Use Permit Regulations, general provisions Virginia Administrative Code
- Palmer v. Yancey (2017), opinion stating the elements of an easement by necessity (PDF) Supreme Court of Virginia
- Opinion recognizing easements by necessity and by pre-existing use (PDF) Court of Appeals of Virginia
- Unified Development Ordinance, July 2025 (PDF) Pulaski County
- Land Division Ordinance, effective January 1, 2026 (PDF) Floyd County
- Subdivision of Land ordinance, county-hosted copy with April 14, 2014 amendments (PDF) Carroll County
- Va. Code 15.2-2244: family subdivisions Code of Virginia