Easements and Encroachments on a Property |
| Information Center - Real Estate Law |
| Written by Anthony Reyes |
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Property easement can best be defined as the right to facilitate some fraction of a property for a specified purpose. A survey will help decipher the property boundaries that will prevent any issues from determining land ownership. An easement can allow another person to encroach on your property and even though the lines are declared within the survey, these boundaries may be crossed without the owner’s express permission. An easement can be included in the title or deed to the property. A prime example of an express easement would be if the power company wanted to run power lines onto a property or a neighbor might even want to enter an agreement to share common parts of the property that extend into both boundaries. A prescriptive or implied easement can occur if the use of a property continues over an extended period of time. A good instance of this would be if a neighbor has been crossing a boundary line for years then the said neighbor could have obtained a prescriptive easement that will allow him to legally cross the property line. There is also a “right of way” easement that is nothing more than the allowance of someone to cross onto the property in question. Many people forget when they are buying a house that they are actually purchasing the land the house is built on and the boundary that surrounds it. If you were to build a shed in your back yard and it was to encroach into the property of another person this could technically be handled in a legal manner. This is something that can be avoided with proper surveys being done and the use of specified easements. More times than not, people are not going to worry about a few yards here and a few yards there however, the same people who are okay with the encroachment might not always live there so it always be a good idea to get your bases covered legally and legitimately. This will ensure that down the road you are not going to wind up paying fines and going through a legal process that will run you ragged and cause nothing but problems if it is found that you are encroaching on someone else’s purchased property. |
