Buying & selling

Should I buy a house with an easement?

Usually yes, most homes carry routine utility strips along a lot line. What decides it is where the corridor sits, how wide it is, and what the holder is allowed to do inside it.

Easements are so common that refusing every property with one would rule out most of the market. The question is never whether an easement exists but whether this particular one interferes with why you want the house. A ten foot telecom strip along the front line is background noise. A fifty foot pipeline corridor across the only flat part of the back yard is a different purchase.

Work through three things during your inspection period: the location relative to the house and the yard you actually plan to use, the width and the rights granted, and whether anything already built sits inside the strip. That last point is the one that bites buyers, because an encroaching deck or garage becomes your problem the day you close.

If the corridor does constrain the property, that is a price conversation rather than an automatic walk-away. Appraisers measure the effect as the difference between the property with and without the burden, and sellers of constrained lots often expect the discussion.

What this looks like in practice

Buyers who back out over an easement almost always do it late, when the corridor surfaces in a title review with a week left on the contract and nobody has time to work out whether it matters. Given a fortnight and the recorded grant, the same buyer usually closes. Read Schedule B in the first days of your inspection period, not the last.

The corridors worth worrying about share a pattern: they cross the part of the lot you were counting on. A twenty foot pole line along the front is invisible in daily life. A drainage easement through the only spot a pool or addition could go changes what you are buying, even though the listing photos look identical either way.

What to do next

1Ask for the title commitment on day one of the inspection period and read every Schedule B exception.
2Pull the recorded documents from the county recorder, clerk, or register of deeds, most offices provide a certified copy for a few dollars per page, and many publish a free online index.
3Plot the corridor against a site plan and mark where the house, the yard and any future addition sit.
4Walk the property looking for sheds, decks, fences or pools that appear to sit inside the strip.
5If the corridor limits real use, price it into your response rather than treating it as pass or fail.

What to look for

Where the corridor crosses in relation to the house, the yard, and any addition you have in mind.
Whether the seller's improvements sit inside the easement without written consent.
Access rights: who may enter, how often, and whether they must restore the surface.
Any shared driveway or access agreement that binds you to cost sharing after closing.

Questions people ask next

Can I ask the seller to remove an easement before closing?

You can ask, but releasing one requires the holder's agreement and recording a release, which rarely happens on a purchase timeline. A more realistic request is written consent for an existing encroachment, or a price adjustment.

Will an easement make the house harder to resell later?

A routine utility strip has little effect because nearly every comparable home has one. A corridor that removes buildable area narrows your buyer pool, which shows up as a longer time on market more than a lower headline price.

Alabama prescriptive easement law

In Alabama, prescriptive easements generally require 20 years of open, continuous, and adverse use. Read the full Alabama summary.

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