It seems to me that if the easement has been recorded for the other 3 properties, there shouldn’t be a way it can be repealed without permission of the affected parcels.
After all, someone built the first house, then someone built the 2nd house, then the third. Why shouldn’t you be able to come along and build a 4th?
The way the parcels actually run the easment road dead ends at my property line so my worry is, say a developer comes in and buys the front three parcels, since he owns them all, and all of the easment road, can he block me in since I have no actual ownership of the easment, or would all of the deeds be notated in some way to prevent them from blocking me in unless they bought me out too.
A deeded easement is a legal right to make limited use of a specified piece of land. You should have a deed (either the deed to your otherwise landlocked parcel or a separate instrument) that awards you the right to make use of that easement road to access your property, and their deeds or at least their property abstracts should show their title encumbered by that easement. The other landowner has no more right to deny you the use of that road than your neighbors to deny you the right to use the street in front of your house.
If you do not have a deed, you have what is called a prescriptive easement, which essentially means that you have the right to traverse the neighbors’ properties to access your own, in a manner established by them. The only substantive difference between a deeded and a prescriptive easement is the fact that the “underlying” property owner, the one whose land is encumbered by the easement, may choose to move the area he authorizes you to cross for good reason, e.g., he wants to build a garage or dig a well exactly where you are accustomed to cross his land, and if he chooses to do so, he must provide you with another means of access.
The only ways to extinguish an easement are by mutual agreement of the easement holder and the landowner of the encumbered parcel, or by a formal court case brought by him in which you can object and probably win if your sole means of accessing your property is across his.
I’m not a lawyer or an expert on easements, but as a civil engineer, I have been involved with them peripherally. (Actually I was just reviewing one in a town’s land records the other day.)
Anyway, it’s my understanding that if an easement is property recorded in the land records and/or the deed(s), that it cannot be repealed by subsequent owners, so long as the easement is written that way.
For example, the easement that I was reviewing the other day is actually a driveway easement as well, and it reads this way:
“[Grantor], for the consideration of One Dollar and other valuable consideration, received to its full satisfaction of [Grantees], does hereby grant, bargain, confirm, and sell unto [Grantees], their heirs, administrators, and assigns forever a perpetual twenty-foot wide driveway easement across Lot [A] to Lot ** for the purpose of ingress and egress…”
Sounds pretty permanent to me.
Anyway, if it were me in your situation, I would first track down a copy the actual easement and see what it says.
Then, as in any situation involving real estate, I would retain an attorney specializing in this area. Real estate transactions are generally the largest transactions any of us are ever involved in, and the few hundred dollars spent for a competent attorney is money well spent, IMHO.
Yup. I’m an attorney, and wouldn’t dream of commenting on this without seeing the document or documents that create the easement. You can safely assume that anyone who says otherwise is not giving you reliable information.
See an attorney licensed in your state. (Preferably one who has some real estate experience beyond doing a few routine residential closings.)
I will say that in general that the key issue goes beyond determining whether the easement is recorded against the servient estates (the properties over which the easement road runs). You must also establish that it runs in favor of the owner of the property that you wish to buy.
Easement rights don’t usually extend to everyone in the world. They tend to be limited to the owners or certain specified properties (easements appurtenant), or to a limited number of identifiable persons (easements in gross).
This is general information and not legal advice. There are lots of other issues to consider. See an attorney licensed in your state for advice you can rely on.
Note that easements can expire after a given set of time. Our property abuts a narrow strip to provide access to a commons area. The strip was surrounded by an easement (if people wanted to develop the commons area). But that easement was specified for 20 years and it’s long over.
So, Yet Another Thing to Check is to see if the easement expires.
You should also check to make sure you can get utilities access to your property.
Many great posts, I am looking for general info since I in many cases dont even know what exactly to ask for.
My RE agent is basically claiming that anything to do with an easment road is a bad idea and that there are hundreds of cases where people are later blocked out of their property. From the sounds of his stories these people didn’t bother to ask, had expiring easments and didn’t know, or had easy informal permission situations (for example crossing parents property to access own, parents sell, new owner refuses access.)
I am waiting on info from city planning still, hopefully they can point me at the proper department/agency to get copies of the easment documentation.
Many years ago I took a real estate course at college and seem to remember something to the effect that if your property is surrounded by other properties they had to allow you access to it. Is this incorrect? It somes unreasonable that you could be an island of land surrounded by, say four other landowners, and they could each have you arrested for trespassing if you tried to access your own land.
There are some special situations (involving the circumstances of how the landlock came to exist) where this might result, but it is not true as a general proposition.
Why is this unreasonable if the other landowners did nothing to create the situation?
Well, I guess it depends on the order of things. If someone bought a piece of property after being told that it is surrounded by other properties and the only access is by helicopter then it would be reasonable. However, I would imagine that this type of situation more frequently develops as land is subdivided and sold and if so it seems exceptionally unfair and unreasonable to not allow someone ingress and egress from their land if they previously had it for whatever reason.
The law generally presumes that people have a clue.
In other words, before you buy property, do some basic investigation. Are there restrictions on title? What’s the zoning? Do you have legal access? If you are unfamiliar with these concepts, and wish to buy property, hire a lawyer to help you.
Also, I don’t follow your train of thought about landlocks “develop[ing] as land is subdivided and sold”. Assuming you mean “subdivided and sold by someone other than the person who gets landlocked”, how that would work? How would that process eliminate previously-legal access?
Criminal? Please explain.
We don’t even know the owner of the property described in the OP ever had any rights in an “easement road”. But let’s assume that he did, and they were somehow “taken away” or interfered with. How would that be anything other than a civil matter?