One of the last hurdles you’ll encounter when you’re in the process of buying a home is the title search. It may seem like a mere formality, but problems revealed by a title search can sideline the sale or purchase of a home. Fortunately, in most cases, those problems sound more alarming than they are, and easements generally fall within that category.
Let’s take a look at what easements are, what a prescriptive easement is and what an easement means for you as a new homeowner.
A prescriptive easement, also called an “easement by prescription,” is a property right acquired when a person – lawyers call them trespassers – uses a property that they don’t own in a way that is called – again, by lawyers – open, adverse and continuous. Sometimes you’ll also hear the words “hostile” or “notorious,” words whose legal meanings are different from our conversational use of the terms. The trespasser’s use of the property must continue for a period of years as defined by state law.
Easements by prescription are created when a trespasser – a person without an ownership interest in the property and without the permission of the property owner – continually and openly uses a portion of another person’s property for a specific reason, generally as a shortcut or to access an attraction like a lake or a school.
There are several types of easements. There are easements that allow public services and utility companies to access your property as needed.
You can also sell an easement to someone. For example, suppose you have a lakefront home, and your neighbors across the street need lake access. You could sell them the right to use your property for the specific purpose of gaining lake or dock access. That easement would be recorded with the property and would turn up on a title search when you sell the property.