Easements

When the owner of a property wishes to use a strip of land or a portion of an adjoining land owner’s property, that right to use someone else’s real property is defined as an Easement. The owner granting the easement (Grantor) retains fee title to the easement area subject to the right of use granted to the beneficiary (Grantee) of the easement. Below is a list of typical easements that are created by recording a deed that legally or pictorially describes the real property. We prepare the legal description and the Exhibit or Plat of Easement as may be required by the owner or his representative.

There are various forms of easements such as, Perpetual, Exclusive, Non-Exclusive, Prescriptive, Necessity, Floating, Indefinite, Negative, Express, Implied, etc. Typically, easements either benefit a property or burden a property.

These are some of the various easements we usually prepare Exhibits or Plats for:

Access (Ingress & Egress, Right-of-Way): Permission by an owner/entity to certain individuals, or general public, to travel across his land to get to another place or a road.

Avigation: An avigation easement grants aircraft the right to fly, land, or take off in unobstructed airspace above a parcel of real property. Such an easement often prohibits the property owner from installing structures that exceed a specified height. The easement also provides for outcomes typically associated with aircraft by allowing for the right to make noise and generate dust.

Conservation: The easement is either voluntarily donated or sold by the landowner and constitutes a legally binding agreement that limits certain types of uses or prevents development from taking place on the land in perpetuity while the land remains in private hands. Conservation easements protect land for future generations while allowing owners to retain many private property rights and to live on and use their land, at the same time potentially providing them with tax benefits.

In a conservation easement, a landowner voluntarily agrees to sell or donate certain rights associated with his or her property – often the right to subdivide or develop – and a private organization or public agency agrees to hold the right to enforce the landowner's promise not to exercise those rights. In essence, the rights are forfeited and no longer exist.

An easement selectively targets only those rights necessary to protect specific conservation values, such as water quality or migration routes, and is individually tailored to meet a landowner's needs. Because the land remains in private ownership, with the remainder of the rights intact, an easement property continues to provide economic benefits for the area in the form of jobs, economic activity and property taxes.

A conservation easement is legally binding, whether the property is sold or passed on to heirs. Because use is permanently restricted, land subject to a conservation easement may be worth less on the open market than comparable unrestricted and parcels available to develop. Sometimes conservation easements will enable the landowner to qualify for tax benefits in compliance with Internal Revenue Service rules.

Light and Air: Permission by an owner/entity to certain individuals, for the exclusive or non-exclusive benefit of real property described in terms of air rights unoccupied by structures to allow for free and unobstructed views and air flow.

Reciprocal Parking: Permission by an owner/entity to certain individuals, or entity, to travel across his land and granting the right to park a motor vehicle.

Party Wall: A wall built along the property line separating two properties, partly on each lot or parcel. Either owner has the right to use the wall and has easement over that part of the adjoining owner's land covered by the wall.

Pipeline: Pipelines are constructed on land that the pipeline company either owns ("fee land") or on which it holds an easement. Pipeline Easements provide the pipeline companies with a permanent, limited interest in the land and enable them to operate, test, inspect, maintain, and protect their pipelines.

Mechanical, Utility & Communication: An easement over private ownership connecting to a public right-of-way granted to or owned by the city and acquired, established, dedicated or devoted for public utility purposes not inconsistent with the telecommunications facilities.

Railroad/Track Siding: A perpetual and assignable easement and right-of-way in, on, over and across a tract or parcel of land for the location, construction, operation, maintenance, alteration and replacement of a railroad and appurtenances thereto.