How To Find An Easement On A Property

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An easement is a legal allowance that permits the holder to employ or alter a slice of property that does not actually belong to him. Often, easements are used past utility companies that need to run wires and pipes across private backdrop and dig holes and erect posts to service them. In some cases, easements are created to permit a property's neighbors and other private parties to use a section of the property for their own benefit. When an easement is created, information technology is created for a specific purpose – there is no catch-all type of easement that allows everybody to use a department of belongings or ane that allows its holders to use the holding for any unspecified purpose.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

Notice easement information from county property records, local utility companies and the city tax assessor.

Agreement Property Easements

Easements in gross. This type of easement benefits an individual or grouping, rather than a property. Public utility easements are easements in gross.
Easements appurtenant. An easement in appurtenant, also known as a shared parcel employ easement, benefits properties rather than specific people and groups. An example of this type of easement is a shared driveway that is technically on one packet of land, just attached to its neighboring package.
Prescriptive easements. These are easements created through the continued use of a property without its owner'south permission. This could be a fence or another construction on the property.

For prescriptive easements to go legally valid private property easements, the unauthorized, observable utilize of the belongings must continue for a specific period of time. In California, this flow is five years. In Texas, it is thirty years. Easements are attached to their properties, and so they generally remain in place when the backdrop are sold to new owners. What this ways, in near cases, is that when a new heir-apparent purchases a property, she purchases it with the easement. She cannot typically interfere with the utilise of that easement by another political party, whether a utility company that needs to use the belongings to serve the area or a neighbor who uses a path on the belongings to access a nearby pond; users of the easement go on to have that right even after the new owner takes possession of the property.

Other types of easements are: express easements, which are created through private agreement between landowners and recorded with their land deeds, and unsaid easements that arise out of necessity. An example of an implied easement is a property possessor's utilise of his neighbour's private road in order to admission the principal route.

Visit the Tax Assessor's Office

The first finish for holding owners or potential buyers who seek information most individual property easements is often the city revenue enhancement assessor's office. Ofttimes, yous tin can find the information you're looking for here, only non always. This is because easements are non part of a holding's tax assessment, so although the assessor could have information nigh easements and shared bundle employ in his records, he might not have all of it, and the information he does have might be outdated or incomplete.

Other Means of Finding Easement Data

For accurate information nigh public land easements, individual property easements and shared parcel use, a property owner or potential heir-apparent should head to the county clerk and look at the holding'due south public records. Legal records of easements in gross and easements appurtenant can be establish with transfer deeds and other documents related to a holding. Finding out whether in that location is a prescriptive or implied easement on a property can be trickier because proving that this blazon of easement exists requires the easement's user to prove that it fits the criteria for a legal easement, and this criteria varies from state to state. Prospective buyers concerned about these kinds of easements tin can work with real manor lawyers to determine not merely whether easements are present on a belongings, merely also their validity.

Another source of information about utility easements is the utility companies themselves. Property owners and prospective buyers can contact utility providers and request data nigh existing easements on specific parcels of state.

Individuals because buying belongings can also seek easement information from their title insurance providers. A title insurance provider verifies real manor titles and provides owners and prospective owners with information about liens, easements and other issues about their properties that could lead to lawsuits and title disputes.

Easement Rights for Property Owners

When a property with an easement in gross is sold to a new owner, the easement on the land that permits utilise past some other political party remains in place. Nonetheless, the holder of the easement cannot sell the easement itself. This is true of public country easements and private property easements – if a utility company or another easement in gross holder no longer needs their easement, they cannot sell or transfer information technology to another holder without the landowner's consent.

An easement appurtenant remains in place when either belongings involved is sold. A new purchaser is typically required to abide by the easement, though she may challenge information technology by removing the feature that originally made the easement necessary, by executing a release agreement by quieting the title. Quieting a property's title is a legal action by which the possessor asserts that an easement is not legitimate for some reason, such as an wrong survey of the belongings boundary or that the easement had been relinquished through a quitclaim deed.