Easements: Know Your Property Rights
In the article given below we’ll be discussing an important topic that’s “Easements: know your property rights” let’s talk about it in detail:
Found out the home you’re actually planning to buy has an easement on the property? That could really be a good thing, a bad thing, or a completely neutral thing. Here’s what easements are, and exactly how they affect your property rights.
What are property easements?
An easement gives an individual or organization a legal right to use someone else’s land—but just for a needed purpose. A utility company may actually have an easement on your property so as to access an electrical pole. Or if your driveway overlaps your property line, you might actually rely on an easement on your neighbor’s property in order to get to your garage.
What you really need to know about easements when buying a home:
1. Does this property have easements?
Legally, sellers must disclose easements on their property during the sale, so you ought to know if an easement exists by the time you’ve got a purchase agreement, if not sooner. But if you’re buying a bank-owned home being sold as-is, you must do some extra research yourself. Your real estate agent can assist you decide if there’s reason to suspect a property might have an easement on it, but contact the city to actually find out for sure. You need to find out exactly where and what sort of easements they are. Some easements, for instance, remain after you buy the house, but others don’t.
2. What sorts of easements are there?
The property rights an easement allows actually depends on the rules of your particular easement. There are many varieties, but these are some of the features that help define them:
- Appurtenant vs gross easements: In an appurtenant easement, the property owners are allowed to access the land that’s actually only accessible through a neighbor’s land. These technically benefit a property. An easement in gross actually benefits an individual or entity, whether that’s a neighbor, a utility company, or any other organization.
- Public vs private: Both appurtenant as well as gross easements can grant access to public or even private entities or properties. A private easement is actually one which might allow a neighbor to access your property, and a public one might further allow any member of the general public to walk through your yard.
- Affirmative vs negative: Majority of easements allow something to happen, which are affirmative. However they can even prevent actions, too, like blocking someone’s solar panels with a line of trees, which might be a negative easement. (That’s right: easements can cover rights to air space, area underground, and also the surface of land.)
Prescriptive easement: Prescriptive actually describes the way during which an easement comes into being. This is often when someone is using a property owner’s land regularly for a particular period of time (set by state law) without being restricted by the owner. This is quite commonly referred to as “squatter’s rights.”
3. What are your property as well as easement rights?
If you really buy a house with an easement, odds are, you’ll got to abide by the rules of the easement—because they’re rarely put in place lightly. Let’s say you really purchased a beachfront property, and the one and only way the neighbors can access the public beach is through a path in your yard. You’d legally ought to let them use it, because they actually have a right to access the public beach. Similarly, if a utility company has an easement to access a pipe under your yard, there’s not much you can do to really change that.
Otherwise, you actually have the right to use your property in any way you’d like — so long as that doesn’t include anything that prevents the easement from being accessed in its intended way.
4. What if you’re really buying a property that actually relies on an easement on someone else’s property?
If you fall in love it are infatuated with a home that’s perfect and in the right neighborhood, but it’s a really narrow driveway, you might be pleased to find out that you have an easement that permits you use a few feet of your neighbor’s property so as to get in and out of your car. You simply need to ensure the terms of the easement guarantee it’ll stay with the property after you purchase it, and be open as well as friendly with your neighbor about the rules of the easement. They are the ones who have to let you use it, however if they’d prefer you to treat their property in a certain way, respecting their wishes will actually help keep things neighborly.
5. How can easements really affect my renovations or additions?
If you actually plan to build a new construction home or an addition, it’s especially important to know whether there are any easements on a property before you purchase. You’ll be able to find out by looking over your paperwork. Furthermore, you’ll find easements on deeds, plats as well as other homeowner documents. Moreover, if your neighbor received an easement to make sure a view of a lake, for instance, you couldn’t expand, renovate, or perhaps plant a tree that might really block your neighbor’s view.
6. Can easements be challenged?
They can. But you’d need to go to court to challenge an easement, so it’s not easy to do in the middle of home buying. If the easement holder agrees to terminate, it might be a smoother process. And in some of the cases, easements actually have an expiration date (this would be stated in your deed), so that could really be excellent news.
Other cases are challengeable, but harder. For example, if there’s a prescriptive easement that’s not in continuous use (like a shed was built over your property line, but it’s no longer used), you could easily challenge it. However, there’s no guarantee you’d win.
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