Easements in Real Estate: What Every Homebuyer Needs to Know
- Marketing Alpha
- May 2
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 28
Easement is a legal term, which means in Chinese that the land ownership belongs to you, but others have the right to use your land. Just search the disputes and problems caused by this term, and you will find that the cases are so complicated that it is dizzying. Of course, this is also a "pitfall" that many experienced investors may fall into.
In this article, Axis discusses with everyone what exactly “Easement” is.
Why should you pay special attention to easement when buying a house?
Easement is the right of a non-property owner to use the property owner's land. It most often occurs when public utilities such as electricity, natural gas, and water supply departments set aside an area on your property for them to send personnel to enter and exit for maintenance.
There is also a situation where maintenance personnel do not pass through, but there are pipelines passing through underground or cables passing through the air. Most of these areas are outside the boundaries of the building range on the land. This is a very common easement and will not affect the property rights. However, if it is a special easement, it may affect the property rights.
For example, when the city was first established, the municipal government developed a rainwater drainage design plan, which required that a portion of a piece of land maintain a certain slope to collect nearby rainwater and drain it to the drainage channel on the municipal road through this land. So when you buy a house, you will find an Easement in the property record for drainage of rainwater for the adjacent plot.
Generally, this easement is not noticeable. It may just be a record number on your property certificate, and it does not describe the neighboring land parcels. But when you plan to build an additional house, you cannot change the slope of the land due to the existence of the easement. This will make it very difficult to approve the additional project at the municipal level .
Easement passes through my house,
Does repair require demolition of the house?
Axis had a client who liked a house, but the property report showed that there was an Easement running right under the house! The client's first reaction was, would the municipal government have to demolish the house for repairs?
In order to help customers better understand the risks of owning such properties, we consulted the local municipal government and title insurance company. We have extracted their responses for your reference.
The professional from the property company replied: Maintenance and inspection of underground facilities can be carried out from fixed maintenance points in front of or behind the house. If repairs are required underground where the house is located, they will be negotiated with the homeowner.
The local municipal government responded that the diagram on the property report was not comprehensive and recommended hiring professionals to measure the land boundaries and pipeline locations to determine the relationship between the Easement and the house.
Axis Team recommends that when you want to buy a property, you should first find an experienced real estate agent to help you find out the clauses in the title deed that may make the property "unclean". For some properties that only have a recorder number, you need to go to the County Recorder Office of the county government (County Hall) to find out the content of the clause, and then ask the relevant government department to explain the clause, or ask a lawyer who specializes in property rights to check whether it has an "unclean" impact on the property rights.
There is another method of land title survey, called Title Survey. Buyers can hire a land title survey expert to thoroughly check the land within the property scope. At this time, if there are any non-property owners who have the right to use the land, he will mark it and draw it on the map of the land within the property scope. For example, if a non-property owner has the right to use (Easement) of a 2-meter-wide access strip along the side of the land, this strip (Easement) will be drawn on the land survey map, and then it will be marked who has the right to use.
Why can't I expand my house there?
For example, if the PG&E stopwatch is in your backyard, then the PG&E people can walk freely to your backyard to read the stopwatch, so the place behind the PG&E stopwatch is also an Easement. Recently, a friend of mine built an extension, and when he submitted the drawing materials to the city, he found that there was a PG&E Easement in the backyard, and it was impossible to pass the city's review. The plan to build an extension when buying a house was wasted, and the purchase value of the house could not be realized.
Another example is that a friend discovered when he was adding an ADU that 2,000 square feet of his backyard had been expropriated by the city for road construction. Although the road was not built, the easement was still there, so his ADU could not be placed where he had originally planned.
It can be seen that the problems caused by Easement can be big or small. Some may cause huge economic losses, while others, although the economic losses are not large, also bring a lot of troubles and lead to changes in plans.
Objectively speaking, many houses in the Bay Area have easements. This does not mean that you cannot buy houses with easements. Instead, you need to know the impact of the easements and whether they have any impact on the value of the house itself.
Professional brokers will even retrieve historical records and conduct in-depth neighborhood research to help clients find out why this easement exists and what impact it will have in the future.
There are many more topics about Easement. If you want to know more professional analysis, please add Axis Assistant (WeChat: AxisRealtyTeam) and join the Axis Realty group for consultation!
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