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Loading...Loading...An easement is a legal right that lets someone other than the property owner use a certain part of the property for a specific purpose without giving up ownership.
You may have seen an easement if you've ever looked at a property survey and seen lines or marks that don't seem to match the fence line. A legal agreement called an easement lets someone else use part of your property for a certain purpose. That "someone else" could be a neighbor, a utility company, a local government, or even the people in your area. You still own the land. You're still on the deed. But the person who has the easement has the right to use or access a specific part of it.
As a home buyer, this is important to you. Easements are very common in residential real estate. When you buy a home, you also buy any easements that come with it. This is because the easements are attached to the property, not the person selling it. That path that goes along the front yard? Most likely an easement. The power line that goes across the back corner of the lot? Most likely an easement.
The word comes from the old French word aisement, which means "the right to use." For more than a hundred years, courts in the United States have recognized easements as a property right, and they are still a common part of property law today. They are written into deeds, kept on file with county governments, and enforced by law.
Most easements are very normal and won't change how you live in your home at all. But some of them can limit what you can build, where you can put a fence, or who can walk through your yard on any given day. That's why it's important to know what you're looking at before you close. The good news? Once you know how they work, easements aren't scary. And most of the time, they are there for a good reason.
An easement establishes a connection between two properties or between a property and an external entity. The dominant estate is the legal term for the property that benefits from the easement. The servient estate is the property that has to deal with the easement. If your neighbor can use your driveway to get to their garage, they own the property and you own the property.
Once an easement is made and recorded, it usually stays with the land. That means it stays with the property no matter who owns it. Do you want to sell your house? The easement is included. Your neighbor sells theirs? The easement still applies to the new owner. This is why it's important to do a title search before you buy. It shows you recorded easements so you know exactly what you're signing up for.
You might be surprised at how often this happens during the loan process at AmeriSave. A title search finds an easement, and all of a sudden the buyer has questions. Is it okay to build a shed there? Can I put up a fence for privacy? Can I say no to access? The answers depend on the type of easement and what the recorded document says.
An easement does not give someone else ownership of the property. The easement holder can use the property for the purpose that was agreed upon, but they can't move in, sell it, or do anything else that the easement doesn't allow. If a utility company has an easement to keep underground cables in good shape, they can dig up that part of the land to do so. They can't pave it, build on it, or do anything else with it.
I should point out that the location and the scope of an easement are not the same thing. The scope tells the holder what they can and can't do. The place tells them where they can do it on your property. Both are important. It's easy to live with an easement that has a clear scope and location. A vague one with loose edges can cause problems later on.
You also can't make an easement harder than it was when it was first granted. If a neighbor has an easement to walk across your property, they can't start driving heavy machinery across it. A utility company can't put up poles above ground if they already have an easement for underground cables. They need to make a new agreement first. When you look over easement documents during the buying process, you should take the original terms seriously, just like the courts do.
Not all easements are the same. The type of easement on a property tells you who holds the right, how it was created, and what it allows. When you work with AmeriSave on your loan, the title report will identify any easements by type, so knowing these categories helps you read that report with confidence.
These are far and away the most common. Utility easements give companies the right to install, maintain, and repair infrastructure like power lines, water pipes, sewer systems, gas lines, and internet cables on private property. You might not even realize one exists until you try to build something in the wrong spot.
Utility easements usually prohibit building permanent structures within the defined area. Landscaping is typically fine, but the utility company can remove anything that gets in the way of maintenance. If you’ve ever wondered why a neighbor’s fence jogs around a utility box, that’s an easement at work. These are so standard that appraisers rarely adjust a property’s value because of them.
One detail that surprises home buyers: even though the utility company has the right to access that strip of land, you’re still responsible for maintaining it. You mow it, you keep it presentable, and you pay property taxes on it. The utility company just has the right to show up when they need to.
An easement appurtenant involves two adjacent properties. One property benefits (the dominant estate) and the other carries the obligation (the servient estate). A classic example is a shared driveway. If two houses share one driveway, the property that doesn’t own the driveway land typically holds an easement appurtenant giving them the right to use it.
Because these run with the land, they transfer automatically when either property sells. The new owners on both sides inherit the arrangement. You can’t negotiate your way out of it during closing because it’s tied to the land itself, not to the people who created it.
An easement in gross benefits a specific person or organization rather than a neighboring property. Utility easements are actually a subcategory of easements in gross. So is a situation where, say, a fishing club has the right to access a pond on someone’s private land. The right belongs to the club, not to any particular piece of property.
These can sometimes be trickier to transfer. Commercial easements in gross (like utility rights) are generally transferable. Personal easements in gross (like the fishing club example) often aren’t, depending on state law. If you’re buying a property with one of these, it’s worth asking a real estate attorney whether the easement will survive a change in the holder’s identity.
This one catches people off guard. A prescriptive easement is created when someone uses part of your property openly, continuously, and without your permission for a period of time set by state law. According to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School, the required period varies by state and is often the same timeframe used for adverse possession claims, typically somewhere between 5 and 20 years.
Imagine a neighbor who has been cutting through the back corner of your yard to reach a bus stop every day for 15 years. You never said anything. A court could rule that they’ve earned a prescriptive easement. The fix? If you’re aware of someone routinely crossing your land, the simplest protection is giving them written permission. That changes their status from trespasser to permitted user, and a permitted user can’t claim a prescriptive easement.
When a piece of land has no access to a public road, the law recognizes an easement by necessity. This typically comes up when a larger parcel is divided and one of the resulting lots ends up landlocked. The owner of the landlocked parcel gets a legal right to cross the other property to reach the road.
Courts don’t require the property owners to agree on this. The law simply says people have the right to access their own land. If you’re buying a property near a landlocked parcel, it’s worth checking whether your lot carries an easement by necessity for the neighboring owner. This type of easement is fairly narrow in scope. It only covers what’s strictly necessary for access, not recreational use or anything beyond getting in and out.
A conservation easement is a voluntary agreement where a landowner permanently restricts the development or use of their property to protect its natural, scenic, or historic value. These are common in rural areas, near protected wetlands, or on properties with historical significance.
According to the Internal Revenue Service, qualified conservation contributions can provide income and estate tax deductions under IRC Section 170. Individual landowners who donate a qualifying conservation easement may deduct up to 50% of their adjusted gross income, with a carryover period of 15 years for unused deductions. Qualified farmers and ranchers may deduct up to 100%.
The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service also administers the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), which helps landowners protect farmland and wetlands through conservation easements. These programs use a “before and after” appraisal method to determine the easement’s value, comparing the property’s fair market value with and without the restrictions in place.
Easements don’t just appear out of thin air. They come into existence through a few specific legal mechanisms, and knowing how one was created can tell you a lot about how permanent and enforceable it is.
An express easement is the most straightforward. Two parties agree to the terms, put it in writing, and record it with the county. This is the gold standard. It’s clear, documented, and enforceable. When you buy a home and the title report mentions an easement, it’s almost always an express easement. The recorded document will spell out the location, the allowed uses, and any conditions.
An implied easement is created by circumstances rather than a written agreement. Courts look at how the property was used before it was divided. If a large lot is split into two parcels and one has always used the other’s driveway for access, a court may recognize an implied easement even though nobody put it on paper. The key factors are whether the use was apparent at the time of division and whether the parties expected it to continue.
Then there’s prescription and necessity, which we covered above. Prescriptive easements come from long, open, uninterrupted use without permission. Easements by necessity come from landlocked parcels. Both are recognized by courts even without a written agreement between the parties.
AmeriSave borrowers sometimes ask whether they should be worried about implied or prescriptive easements on a property. From a lending perspective, recorded express easements are accounted for during underwriting and appraisal. The trickier scenarios involve unrecorded easements that only a physical inspection or attorney review would catch. That’s one more reason to get a thorough property survey before closing.
Let’s talk about the question most buyers really want answered. Does an easement hurt what your property is worth?
In most cases, no. Standard utility easements along the edge of a lot or beneath the street are so routine that they have virtually zero impact on value. Every house in the neighborhood probably has the same ones. Appraisers account for them as a normal condition of the property.
Where things get more interesting is when an easement reduces the usable area of a lot or limits what you can build. A wide utility easement cutting through the middle of a backyard, for instance, could prevent you from putting in a pool or building an addition. That kind of restriction can affect both your enjoyment of the home and its resale appeal.
Let’s walk through a quick example. Say you’re looking at a property listed at $400,000. The lot is half an acre, roughly 21,780 square feet. During the title search, you discover a 30-foot-wide utility easement running along the entire back boundary, covering approximately 4,500 square feet. That’s about 20% of the lot that can’t support permanent structures.
If comparable homes without that easement sold for $400,000, an appraiser might value your property somewhere between $380,000 and $390,000, reflecting a 2.5% to 5% reduction depending on how much the restriction limits practical use. On a $400,000 home, that’s a difference of $10,000 to $20,000. Your down payment calculation changes too. At 5% down on $390,000, you’d bring $19,500 to closing instead of $20,000 on the original price. Small shift, but it adds up across the full loan.
The monthly payment math shifts as well. At a 6.75% interest rate on a 30-year mortgage, financing $370,500 (that’s $390,000 minus 5% down) gives you a principal and interest payment of roughly $2,402 per month. Compare that to $380,000 financed at the same rate, which comes to about $2,464. That $62 monthly difference may not sound dramatic, but over 30 years it adds up to more than $22,000 in savings. Understanding how an easement affects the appraised value helps you make a better-informed offer.
Conservation easements work differently. Because they permanently restrict development, they can reduce assessed value substantially. But landowners often receive tax benefits that offset the lost value. The IRS allows qualifying donors to deduct the difference between the property’s fair market value before and after the easement. On a property appraised at $500,000 before the easement and $325,000 after, that’s a potential deduction of $175,000.
If you’re buying a property with an unusual easement and you’re not sure how it affects value, ask your lender. AmeriSave’s team can help you understand how the appraisal accounts for it and what it means for your loan amount.
Easements can feel permanent, and many of them are. But there are legal paths to ending or changing one.
The most common method is a release. If the easement holder no longer needs the right, they can sign a written release that’s recorded with the county. This officially removes the easement from the property’s title. Both parties can also agree to modify the easement’s terms, like changing the location or narrowing its scope, and record the updated agreement.
Merger is another way easements end. If one person buys both the dominant and servient properties, the easement merges into full ownership and disappears. You can’t have an easement on your own land.
Abandonment can terminate an easement too, though it’s harder to prove than people think. Simply not using an easement for a while isn’t enough. The holder must demonstrate clear intent to give up the right, usually through some affirmative action like removing infrastructure or signing away claims.
Courts can also terminate easements that have become impossible to use, are no longer necessary, or were created for a purpose that no longer exists. If an easement by necessity was granted because a parcel was landlocked, and a new public road is built giving the parcel direct access, a court might rule the easement is no longer valid.
Look, dealing with easement removal isn’t something most home buyers need to worry about. But if you’re buying a property and the existing easement doesn’t sit right with you, talk to a real estate attorney in your state before closing. The rules vary by jurisdiction, and a professional can tell you whether modification or removal is realistic for your situation.
Finding an easement during the home buying process doesn’t mean you should walk away. It means you should ask the right questions.
Start with the title search. This is standard in most closings, and it’s where recorded easements show up. Ask your title company for copies of the actual easement documents so you can see exactly what’s allowed, what’s restricted, and where on the property the easement applies. Don’t just rely on a one-line summary.
Next, get a property survey. A licensed surveyor will mark the physical boundaries of any easements on the lot. This is where you’ll see whether that easement runs along the edge of the property, where it barely matters, or right through the middle of your planned outdoor living space. The survey cost is a small investment compared to the peace of mind it gives you.
Here are a few questions worth asking before you close. What type of easement is it, and who holds the rights? Is it a utility company, a neighbor, the city? What activities does the easement allow on the property? Can you still landscape, install a fence, or park vehicles within the easement area? Does the easement restrict any of your planned uses, like building an addition, putting in a pool, or adding a detached garage? Has the easement holder actually used the easement recently, or is it dormant? And are there any maintenance responsibilities that fall on you as the property owner?
Living in Waikiki, I see this come up with beachfront and shoreline properties more than you’d expect. Public access easements along coastal areas are common in Hawaii, and buyers sometimes don’t realize a portion of their yard is technically a public walkway until they read the fine print.
Working with AmeriSave through the loan process, you’ll have a team that can connect you with the right resources to evaluate any easements on the property. Your loan officer, your real estate agent, and a title professional should all be part of that conversation. Don’t skip those steps.
Easements are one of those real estate concepts that sound more intimidating than they actually are. Most residential properties have at least one, and the vast majority won’t change how you live in or enjoy your home. The ones worth paying attention to are the ones that restrict what you can build, who can cross your property, or how much of your lot is truly usable.
A title search and a property survey will tell you what you’re working with before you commit. Read the actual easement documents, not just the summary. Ask questions. And if something doesn’t sit right, don’t skip the step of consulting a real estate attorney. If you’re in the market for a home and want to make sure you understand everything attached to a property before you buy, AmeriSave can walk you through the process and help you feel confident about your decision.
Most utility easements don't allow permanent structures in the area that is set aside for them, but it depends on the terms of the easement. You can usually plant grass, do landscaping, or put in things like garden beds that can be taken out. The easement holder may need to give their okay for fences. Check the recorded easement language for any restrictions before you buy. If you want to be sure about the details of your construction project, your lender can help you go over them. AmeriSave has information on what to look for when doing a title search, and the prequalification process can help you get started.
Most residential properties have standard utility easements along their lot edges, so they don't usually affect value at all. Easements that make it harder to build or use space can lower value by 2% to 10%, depending on the size and location of the property. Conservation easements can lower the value of a property on the market by a lot, but they often come with IRS tax breaks that make up for the loss. AmeriSave's mortgage process includes an appraisal that takes into account any easements. You can also look at current rates while you think about your options.
The most reliable way is to hire a professional to do a title search. Title companies look at recorded deeds, plat maps, and county records to find any easements that are connected to the property. A land survey will show where those easements are on the lot and what their boundaries are. You should also ask the seller directly about any known easements, whether they are recorded or not. Getting prequalified is a great way to start the buying process, and title review is a standard part of AmeriSave's loan process.
Yes, but there are certain legal steps that need to be taken. The most common ways to end an easement are for the easement holder to give up their rights in writing, for both parties to agree to end the easement, or for a court to say that the easement is no longer needed. An easement also ends when one person buys both properties. Deeds that include express easements are harder to get rid of and usually require the easement holder's help. Get help from a lawyer who specializes in real estate. The AmeriSave Resourcer Center has more information about property and title.
A right-of-way is a type of easement that lets someone cross someone else's property. All rights-of-way are easements, but not all easements are rights-of-way. Easements can be used for a wider range of things, such as putting in utilities, limiting development, or getting to a body of water. Rights-of-way are all about getting through and getting to places. Both come up when you search for a title. AmeriSave's home buying guides can help you learn more about what to expect at closing. You can also start a prequalification to get things moving.
A prescriptive easement happens when someone uses someone else's property openly, continuously, and without permission for a set amount of time, which varies by state from 5 to 20 years. A reasonable property owner should be able to see that the use is obvious. If you find someone using your land without permission, giving them written permission stops a prescriptive claim because it changes their status from trespasser to allowed user. A full property survey can show signs of prescriptive use. Use AmeriSave's prequalification tool to help you figure out how much a property is worth, and check out the AmeriSave Resource Center.
Conservation easements can give landowners who meet certain requirements big tax breaks. The IRS lets people deduct up to 50% of their adjusted gross income for qualified conservation contributions. If they don't use all of their deductions, they can carry them over for 15 years. Farmers and ranchers who meet certain requirements may be able to deduct up to 100%. The deduction is the difference between the property's value before the easement and its value after. These are complicated arrangements that need a professional appraisal and legal advice. AmeriSave has educational materials on buying a home, and the mortgage calculator can help you figure out how to manage your money.
An easement can limit how you use the part of your property that is covered by the agreement, but it doesn't take away your rights as the owner. You still own the land, pay taxes on it, and can use it in ways that don't get in the way of the easement's purpose. You can't block a neighbor's driveway easement across your lot, but you can landscape around it. Check the recorded language of the easement for details on what you can do with it. You can plan your purchase with confidence using AmeriSave's Resource Center and loan options page.
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