Your name may be on the title of your property but an easement can give neighbors and other entities the right to access a certain part of your land in some circumstances. Before you agree to buy, it is important to know if there are easements on the property and what type they are.
What exactly is an easement?
An easement is the legal right to use someone else’s land for a specific purpose. It does not give anyone right of possession. For example, someone else wouldn’t be able to start a vegetable garden on your land. It only gives the rights over land use for specified intentions.
For example, a utility company may be granted the right to run cable or a neighbor may be granted the right to cross your land to access the street. Netlaw Man discusses various easement issues, such as how an easement comes about and how it can be stopped.
An easement may be made by an express grant, usually in the property deed, or by an implied grant, where the rights are implied by law instead of being specified in the deed.
Easement in gross
Easements in gross are the most common form of easement. This enables utility companies to enter a property at no charge in order to provide services.
A title search will typically allow you to discover these types of easements, such as those involving telephone lines and cables. However, you may be surprised to discover water and sewer line easements when you start digging to build a swimming pool.
If an easement was known about by the city and properly reported but you were not informed about it when you bought the property, your owner’s title insurance policy provider should pay you for any loss in property value due to the easement.
Easement appurtenant
An easement appurtenant is part of the ownership of the land and cannot be transferred upon the sale of a property. Easements for roads or driveways over a neighbor’s land, for example, fall under this easement type. This means that if a neighbor is granted an easement appurtenant to access a road by crossing your land and he sells, the new owner has the same limited right.
This type of easement should be communicated to you when you buy so you are not surprised when a neighbor exercises this right. The majority of easement appurtenants are created by property owners agreeing to it.
A prescriptive easement
Prescriptive easements are the type that may cause friction between neighbors because they are created without the permission of the property owner. To illustrate, a neighbor may fence in and use a piece of a property and continue to use it for years without permission from various owners.
The neighbor may be able to file a lawsuit to acquire a prescriptive easement over the disputed land. It is up to the owner and not the trespasser to file legal action within five years of hostile possession in order to claim back the property.
Do you have to comply?
If your property comes with an easement, you have to comply. For example, if a neighbor only has access to a road through your property, you can’t deny access. You may just be slapped with a lawsuit.
You may be able to successfully challenge an easement in certain circumstances. An easement could no longer apply if the holder agrees to terminate it. An easement may also have a termination date after which it ceases to apply. At other times, especially when it comes to a prescriptive easement, challenging it may be tough.
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