An easement is a recorded right for someone else to use part of a parcel for a stated purpose: a utility line, a drainage swale, a shared driveway, access to a parcel behind it. Ownership stays with the owner. What is given up is the freedom to build over it or block it, and the right runs with the land, so it survives every sale.
- It is a title question before it is a design question. It appears in the title commitment's exceptions, and a sketch on a listing is not evidence.
- Purpose is a limit. A utility easement does not hand the neighbour a driveway, and a driveway easement does not invite a transformer.
- Blanket easements, recorded with no described location, are the dangerous kind: the burden is real and the geometry is not fixed until someone fixes it.
- They can be released or relocated by agreement with whoever holds them. That is a timeline, and it belongs before the closing date, not after.
The same 50 by 150 lot, with a 10-foot utility easement along the rear line and a 20-foot rear setback.
The same 500 feet drawn across the middle of the lot would have cost the building its footprint. Where an easement sits decides what it costs.
The statutory side of easements is here; the one on a specific parcel is in the recorded instrument and in the title commitment: Chapter 704, Florida Statutes
Related terms
All termsRight of Way
A right of way is the strip of land held publicly for a street and everything that belongs to it: pavement, sidewalk, swale, and the utilities running beneath.
DevelopmentBoundary Survey
A boundary survey is a licensed surveyor's determination of where a parcel's lines actually run on the ground, built from the recorded description and from monuments found and set.
DevelopmentSetback
A setback is the mandatory distance a building must keep from its lot lines: front, sides, and rear.
Terms arrive with the writing.
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