Easement
This entry is the 2nd in a 3 part series based on terms that impact the ownership of your property. Encroachment, Easements, & Encumbered are all terms that may pop up when your attorney is doing an opinion of title for Title Insurance When you have an issue with one of these terms, it could impact your ability to use the property as you see fit or sell it to another buyer. While they may not render the property useless, they will certainly impact how the property is handled when it comes to others. Today we are discussing easements.
To the sky and back
When you own a property, its 100% yours to the top of the sky to the core of the earth. If you’ve read any of my previous post you know this is a topic that comes up frequently. Its a really important concept to grasp. You own all of the rights that come with the property. This is called the bundle of rights and you can learn more in Episode 40.
Whats in an easement
An easement is when you give part of your rights to a property for use by someone else. You still own the property fully, but you’ve given away part of your bundle to someone else.
An example of an easemeny may present itself this way. Lets say you own a piece of property in a community. Your property is the tip of a pennisula to the river and is the only property in the subdivision that has water access. Wnen the developers put together the covenants and original plats and deeds, your deed may have included an easement for other property owners to be able to use your property to gain access to the water.
Another example would be when a utility company is granted access to the property to maintain power or communications lines. You may have seen the little green boxes that are in one corner of a lot inside a subdivision. The boxes are owned and maintained by the utility companies but you still retain ownership of the property itself.
A third example may be the owners of a piece of land that has no road frontage being given a driveway easement to access the property. All of these examples can complicate things with title and deed and is just one of the reasons you should get a survey completed before you list or buy a property. A property title search may also discover any issues that are present with easements.
So what about my bundle of rights
When you own the property you have the bundle of rights but in our examples above you have given away the right of exclusion. You can’t deny access to someone, if they had been granted an easement.
More content online
I greatly enjoy creating these videos and content and there is getting to be quite a collection on my web site. If there’s a concept you’d like to know more about, please let me know and I can make sure to get it done in a future episode. I’ll be creating 70-100 in the coming months and I’d love to help fill in some gaps of knowledge. Check it out at chriswhitehurst.com or on YouTube. Until next time….
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Chris Whitehurst
Rose and Womble Real Estate
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