Owning real estate expands your ownership rights significantly compared to renting or leasing. However, owners cannot do what they want with their property and easements are one reason for that. We explain what easements are, how they work and how you can limit or expand your property rights.

Easiness definition and examples

An easement gives a person, company, or government the right to use another person’s property for a specific purpose. It does not give them any ownership share. How you can use your property depends on the type of easement.

Types of easements

The three main categories of easements are related, gross, and prescriptive easements. We’ll explain what these categories mean legally and then explain in plain English how they work. Easements are far less complicated than they may sound.

Easement assistant

“Assigned” means that something legally accompanies something else. An associated easement is therefore an easement that mediates with the property. In other words, it’s permanent and can withstand changes of ownership.

An associated easement concerns two neighboring properties. The dominant property or rental apartment receives access to someone else’s property. The property entering is the official or official residence. A notice of easement should be noted in the inheritance deed and probably also in the real estate deed.

Let’s say you live in a community where half of the houses are on the lakeshore and the other half are not on the lakefront. Your lake property may have an associated easement that allows your neighbor outside the lake (the dominant property) to access the lake shore via a path that runs along the edge of your property.

Relief as necessary

A necessity easement is a subcategory of easement affiliation. While lakefront access can be a luxury, there are other situations where property access is required.

For example, suppose you own two acres of land. There is another house on each side, a forest in the back and a public road in front. To care for your aging parents, you decide to move them to your property, but to allow them to maintain their independence, sell them the front acres of your property and home.

They then build a new home on the back acre. An easement must be specified in the title deed so that you can use the driveway that now belongs to your parents to get from your new house to the main road. This type of easement can be legal even if it is not registered.

Easement in large

A gross easement is the most common type of easement. Easements fall into this category. If you have water, sewer, gas, telephone, cable, or power lines on your property, the utility company may have an easement. Rainwater drainage channels and flood culverts are also examples of gross easements.

The utility company is the dominant property or rental that gets access to your property. Your property is the official residence or official residence. A gross easement only affects a property and grants access to a specific unit, such as the energy supplier.

In contrast to an associated easement, a gross easement does not have to remain with the property due to a change of ownership. In practice it often does. If you sell your home, the buyer is unlikely to be able to get the utility to give up their easement on the part of the yard where the utility pole is located.

Even if a rough easement does not generally allow the controlling property to transfer its access to another company, public utility companies are again more of an exception. If the electricity company changes hands, the new company will likely still have the right to access the pole in your yard, just like the old company.

Monument preservation and conservation services

A listed easement prevents current and future owners from altering a property in a recognized historical district in a way that affects its historical significance. A conservation easement preserves land so that it cannot be built on.

Landowners can establish these types of easements to protect something they consider valuable or believe others will find it valuable, e.g.

There are also financial incentives. The owner of historic property or vacant land may be able to claim tax breaks such as a federal income tax deduction, and heirs to the property can benefit from an estate tax reduction. Establishing such an easement can also lead to lower local property taxes.

Prescriptive easement

If a company has been openly and continuously using someone else’s property for several years without the owner’s consent, it can impose an easement. The number of years varies depending on the state.

Due to mandatory easements, it is important that neighbors or the public not use any part of your property on a regular basis without a formal written agreement – unless you want them to be given permanent rights that may affect even future owners of your property.

Apartment owners’ associations (HOA) must also be aware of the prescribed easements. For example, suppose that members of the public openly use a path that is in an HOA for years. If the HOA did not attempt to restrict public access to the trail, the public could eventually be given the right to use the trail via a mandatory easement. If the HOA later tried to get out of the way and sued the public, the HOA could lose.

How to set up an easement

An easement can best be justified with an express easement, ie you specify it in writing. This will help avoid future litigation, loss of enjoyment and loss of value.

The way many easements are actually set up is done through an implicit easement: an informal, unwritten agreement with another party. Required easements are often implied. And the lack of a formal agreement leads to mandatory easements.

This is how you find out whether a property has an easement

Before buying or improving a property, you need to know if there are easements. If you use any portion of an easement in a way that interferes with the use of the easement holder, you can suffer financial and emotional loss if you add landscaping, trees, fences, sheds, additions, or other improvements that you make to it Have to dismantle the area. A heap Houston homeowner found themselves in this situation after acting on an implied easement with a utility company.

Here are the sources you should consult when looking for easements on a property:

• Land registry of the district
• The town hall
• Utilities
• Real estate appraisals
• Title search

Title insurance can protect you from undisclosed easements that the title company failed to find prior to a title policy being issued.

How to remove an easement from your property

First, check whether the easement has a termination date or is based on a condition that no longer applies. The easement you are trying to remove may already be invalid. If an easement holder does not use the easement long enough, it can be assumed that he has given it up.

If the easement is still valid, you can get one Release of easement Request the dominant property to waive its right to access your property. You may have to file a real estate appraisal and pay a fee to remove the easement. The easement holder must submit a deed of annulment, a type of legal document, to formally terminate the easement and make it publicly known.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)