Reading Your Survey: Easements and What You Cannot Build On

What an easement actually is

An easement is a right held by someone else to use part of your land for a specific purpose. You still own the ground. What you cannot do is interfere with the purpose, and that limitation binds every later owner, which is why easements survive sales and why they are recorded rather than merely agreed.

Easements arise in several ways: granted explicitly in a deed, reserved when the land was subdivided, created by a plat, taken by a public authority, or established by long continuous use. The first three appear on a survey or a title commitment. The last one frequently does not, which is why a visible path across a corner of a lot deserves attention even when nothing is recorded.

The types you are most likely to have

Residential lots typically carry a small number of easements, and they are easy to identify once you know what to look for.

• Utility easements — a strip, commonly along a lot line or across the front or rear, within which a utility may install and maintain lines. Structures are typically prohibited; fences, and sometimes paving, are contested.
• Drainage or storm-sewer easements — carrying surface or piped drainage. Obstructions that redirect flow are prohibited, and grading inside one may require approval.
• Sanitary sewer easements — usually the most restrictive, since access may require excavation with machinery at any time.
• Access or ingress-egress easements — granting a neighbour the right to cross, typically to reach a landlocked parcel or a shared drive.
• Maintenance or setback easements — a strip reserved so that equipment can reach a structure or a slope.
• Conservation or buffer easements — restricting clearing, filling or building near a stream, wetland or steep slope.

The single most consequential detail is width and location, and the survey is the document that gives both. A utility easement along a rear lot line is usually manageable; one running through the middle of the buildable area is not.

How to read it on the document

Easements appear on a plat or survey as dashed or dotted lines, usually with a label giving the holder and the width. The width is stated in feet and may be given as a total strip or as a distance either side of a line.

• Find the legend first. Line styles mean different things on different surveys, and the legend is what makes the drawing readable.
• Look for the recording references — book and page, or instrument number. Those are what you order from the title company or the recorder.
• Note whether the easement is described as exclusive or non-exclusive, and what it is for.
• Check whether the easement overlaps the buildable area, not merely whether it touches the lot.
• Look for a scale bar and a north arrow, and confirm the drawing is of your lot and not of the subdivision as a whole.

If the drawing is a plat of the whole subdivision rather than a survey of your lot, it shows the easements that were created when the land was divided but not necessarily what has been recorded since. Both documents are worth having.

What you generally cannot put in an easement

The consistent prohibition is on permanent structures, because a structure blocks the access the easement exists to provide. Beyond that, practice varies.

• Buildings, additions, garages and accessory structures — almost always prohibited.
• Pools and pool equipment — usually prohibited, and expensive to relocate.
• Deep-rooted trees over a sewer line, which is both a practical and sometimes a stated restriction.
• Fences — permitted in some jurisdictions and prohibited in others. This is the most common point of disagreement.
• Paving and driveways — frequently permitted where the utility can still excavate and restore, but not universally.
• Filling or regrading within a drainage easement, which can redirect flow onto a neighbour.

Where the improvement is permitted, it is usually permitted on the condition that the utility may remove it without liability for damage. That is the reason to keep a fence out of an easement even where one is allowed.

Why a permitted structure can still be a problem

A planning department checks zoning: setbacks, coverage, height. It does not usually check title. A fence, a shed or a pool can therefore be fully permitted by the city and still sit inside an easement, where the utility is entitled to remove it at your cost.

This is not a hypothetical exposure. Utilities exercise easement rights routinely when a line fails, and the cost of removing and rebuilding a structure under time pressure is far higher than the cost of siting it correctly.

When the survey you have is not good enough

An old survey tells you what the boundaries were when it was prepared. It does not tell you what has been recorded since, and it does not reflect improvements added by later owners.

• Before any project near a lot line — a fence, a setback-sensitive addition, an ADU.
• When a visible feature, such as a fence or a driveway, does not match the drawing.
• When the survey predates a subdivision, a lot-line adjustment or a recorded easement.
• When you are buying, if the seller’s survey is more than a few years old.
• When a neighbour disputes the line. A current stamped survey is the document that settles it.

The cost of a survey is small relative to any structure you might have to move, which is the reason it is worth ordering early rather than after a disagreement.