How would you feel if you bought a home that seemed perfect, only to find out you couldn’t use the property like you thought you could?

One buyer bought a home with a good-sized yard that he thought would be perfect for his large dogs to roam free. Soon after the sale closed, he hired a contractor to construct a fence around the property. The day the work started, a neighbor showed up to inform the new homeowner that he couldn’t completely fence the property because of an easement that ran across his property.

An easement grants property rights to someone other than the property owner. Common easements are for ingress and egress, utilities and sewers. Easements must be kept unencumbered.

In the case above, the easement provided the neighbors access to their property. A fence could not be built over the easement because it would deny the neighbor their rights to access.

The property owner had to revise his fence design, which was disappointing. But, easements can be even more problematic, particularly if you assume there is an easement in favor of your property but there isn’t.

A homeowner in the Oakland Hills (Calif.) subdivided his property and sold off the lower half to a builder who constructed a new home on it. The homeowner then put his home on the market and entered into contract to sell it.

The buyer’s real estate agent reviewed the preliminary title report and found that there were no easements either benefiting or restricting use of the property. In particular, there was no sewer easement.

The agent asked the seller how the sewer line from the house connected to the main city sewer line. It turned out that the sewer line ran downhill across the portion of the property that had been subdivided and sold.

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