Types of easements
What is an easement on my property?
An easement is a legal right for someone else to use a specific part of your land for a specific purpose, such as access, utilities, or drainage.
An easement gives another person or entity a limited right to use your property without owning it. The right is usually recorded in the public land records and transfers to future owners when the property is sold.
Common residential easements include utility easements for power and sewer lines, driveway easements for shared access, and drainage easements for stormwater. Less common types include conservation easements and prescriptive easements created by long use.
An easement can reduce how you use the affected part of your lot. You may not be able to build, fence, or landscape inside the easement corridor. The easement holder can also enter the property to maintain its rights.
What this looks like in practice
An easement splits the bundle of rights that comes with owning land. You keep title, possession, and the tax bill; someone else holds a specific, limited right to use part of the property for a defined purpose. That right is usually permanent, usually recorded, and usually survives every future sale.
What varies enormously is impact. A rear-lot drainage easement that has never been touched may affect nothing you would ever build. A 100-foot transmission corridor across the middle of a lot changes what the lot is worth and what can be done with it. Before treating an easement as either harmless or fatal, read what it permits, where it sits, and how wide it is.
What to do next
- 1List every easement affecting the parcel from Schedule B of the title commitment.
- 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 each corridor against the area you actually intend to use or build on.
- 4For anything crossing buildable area, get a written statement from the holder on what is permitted inside it.
What to look for
- Recorded easement documents in your deed or title commitment.
- The specific purpose, width, and location of each easement.
- Whether the easement is appurtenant (runs with the land) or in gross (personal to a utility or individual).
- Any maintenance, access, or removal clauses.
Questions people ask next
Does an easement lower my property taxes?
Rarely automatically. Assessors may account for a significant corridor in the assessed value, but you generally have to raise it, with evidence, through the assessment appeal process.
Can an easement ever expire?
Yes, by its own terms if it was granted for a term or purpose, by written release, by merger when one owner acquires both parcels, or by abandonment where the holder's conduct shows an intent never to use it again.
Do I have to disclose easements when I sell?
Recorded easements will surface in the buyer's title search regardless, and most state disclosure forms ask about known encumbrances. Disclosing them early avoids a renegotiation late in escrow.
People also ask
General educational reference only. Prescription periods and their exceptions change, and several states set the period by case law rather than by statute. Read the linked official code and consult a licensed attorney in that state before relying on any of it.
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