How to search a county recorder's office for easements on your lot

Land records are kept at the county level in nearly every state. A handful of New England states keep them by town instead, and Louisiana uses parish clerks. Before searching, confirm which office holds records for the lot's location, not the mailing address. A house with a city mailing address may sit in an unincorporated part of a neighboring county.

Next, collect the names of everyone who has owned the lot. Recorder indexes are organized by party name, not by street address. The current deed usually names the prior owner as grantor, and that prior deed names the owner before them. Following that chain backward is how you find easements granted decades ago.

Every recorded document lists at least two parties. The grantor gives an interest and the grantee receives it. When a homeowner signs an easement to a power company, the homeowner is the grantor and the utility is the grantee. Searching the grantor index for each past owner's name surfaces every easement, mortgage and deed they signed.

Look for document types labeled easement, right-of-way, grant of easement, dedication, declaration, covenants or plat. Many online indexes let you filter by document type. When a result looks relevant, note the instrument number or book and page. That reference is the permanent address of the document and is what a title commitment will cite in Schedule B.

Most utility and drainage easements in a modern subdivision were never granted lot by lot. The developer drew them on the subdivision plat, and recording the plat created them for every lot at once. The plat is usually indexed by subdivision name, with a plat book and page or a cabinet and slide number.

Your deed's legal description normally names the subdivision, block and lot. Use that to find the plat, then read the notes and the dashed or shaded strips along lot lines. Widths are commonly written right on the drawing, such as a 10-foot utility easement along the rear line.

A growing number of counties publish their index and document images online. Some are free to search but charge a small per-page fee for copies; others require an account. Older records, often those recorded before the 1980s or 1990s, may only be available on microfilm at the office itself.

If the portal is limited, call the office. Staff cannot give legal advice, but they can tell you how far back the online index goes, whether plats are scanned, and what copies cost. For a certified copy, ask specifically, because certified copies usually cost more than plain ones.

The recorder only holds documents someone chose to record. Easements created by long use (prescriptive easements) or implied by how land was divided can exist with no document at all. A records search also does not tell you where an easement sits on the ground when the document describes it loosely, such as a blanket easement over the whole parcel.

That is why a title commitment and, where location matters, a boundary survey remain the standard tools before buying or building.