Sort of MMR: House with utility easement

kmurphy2131

This isn't really MM related (other than being a big purchase) but this is the most active board on the nest.  We looked at a house tonight that is perfect for us, meets all of our needs and is exactly what we have been looking for. There is one catch - there is a natural gas line easement on the property.  Does anyone have a house with a utility easement? Or know much about them?  

We are of course working on getting some information about the easement - location, what it limits in the house/yard, what the stipulations are etc  But I'm curious of general thoughts on them.

CuriousKiddosMama

The house I just sold had an electrical utility easement. It was really no big deal, mainly it meant if they ever needed to access my fenced in yard to complete repairs or do maintenance they could without permission. In the 8 years I owned the house, I don't believe they ever did anything.

blondie42107

I would really look into it before making a decision. Depending on where it was located on the property, how much of your property they have access to and what happens when repairs, etc are needed. If equipment needs to come in, depending on how big the easement is, they could easily end up in your yard and cause damage to grass, landscaping, etc.

kmurphy2131

CuriousKiddosMama said:

The house I just sold had an electrical utility easement. It was really no big deal, mainly it meant if they ever needed to access my fenced in yard to complete repairs or do maintenance they could without permission. In the 8 years I owned the house, I don't believe they ever did anything.

I have seen a lot of people saying that in my researching, and then there are all the horror stories I am reading too.  I am thinking that it may just be that more people are going to rant about issues, and most people won't rant about a non issue.

kmurphy2131

blondie42107 said:

I would really look into it before making a decision. Depending on where it was located on the property, how much of your property they have access to and what happens when repairs, etc are needed. If equipment needs to come in, depending on how big the easement is, they could easily end up in your yard and cause damage to grass, landscaping, etc.

Definitely one of my concerns is how much of the land they can use, even outside of the easement.  My dad is good at reading property plans and I'm sending him the plans (I don't understand it), and our realtor is going to contact the town to get some information.  

The yard is currently a big flat grass only yard.  We are not gardeners and really don't have any intention of becoming them, so I am not too worried about landscaping.  But I would hate for my entire backyard to be a mud pit...mostly because everyday would be bath day for the dog! 

englishtrish1

The house we own in Florida has an electric company easement, it runs the entire width of the back yard. They came in twice a year to trim the trees to reduce the risk to power lines during hurricanes. They always called to let us know when they were coming and repaired any damage to our lawn

jtmh2012

I've had electrical easements on two properties.  Never saw them.  Since you're not big landscaping people the only impact would be possibly trying to add say something like a pool or a shed or whatever.  While generally they'll "restore" the land after doing any work, pretty much all they do is grade it and put down cheap seed.

hoffse

Lots of residential properties have easements of one sort or another and people typically have no idea.

There is some risk of your yard/landscaping getting chewed up if they need to bring equipment in to fix something and there is no other access road, but I suspect that most of the ranting you read online is when things go wrong, and this is pretty rare.  Again, most people who have easements or covenants probably have no idea they even exist on their property.   

Even more properties have implied easements which aren't written into the deed or anything - they simply exist because they make sense to exist, or practice over time has implied that they exist.  For instance, say your house and your neighbor's house were originally one piece of land that got split.  There's every possibility that your neighbor might have to come on your property to access a point in the sewer or water line that's affecting her property.  That would be an implied easement, and the neighbor would probably have a right to enforce it.  Or you might have a piece of property that a neighbor has driven through every day for the last 20 years.  Eventually you've given your neighbor an easement, whether you realize it or not.

IMO easements are not a huge deal.  That's just me though, and I don't mind people coming onto our property if there's some reason for it.

brij2006

Easements aren't too big of a deal.  Just be sure to get everything in writing and know and understand exactly what their rights are and how they are able to access said easement.

Our farmland has easement rights through an adjacent piece of property in order for us to access ours (no road goes straight to it).  It is very detailed in the contract and we had our lawyer look over the easement with a fine tooth comb.  This was for us receiving an easement, but we have since needed to work with the other landowner in order to remove some trees and lay new rock on the easement for us to access our land easier.  

Keep in mind that they may need to eventually replace the current utilities and you will need to know and understand that it may affect how your yard looks or that heavy equipment will be brought in for a period of time. It's not a huge deal since a utility company would also be doing the same with all of the neighbors at the same time, and they will know exactly how to handle all of this.  But just know that you would have to be cooperative in that event because of the easement rights.

julieanne912

The house I grew up in had one.  We had an electrical transformer box in the back corner of our backyard.  The only time it was an issue was when it blew, and they had to get back there to replace it.  They originally thought they would have to take down some trees to get to it (which my folks were actually OK with as they were too large for the area they were in but were expensive to remove).  They eventually figured it out how to do it without harming the trees, but it made for a long sleepless night at our house since they were working all night to fix it (entire neighborhood's power was out because of it).  

In our current home, we have a natural gas outlot right next to our house, but not on our lot. There is a gas line running there.  So far they've never even been by to check it or anything, but I imagine if it ever did need repair they'd have to dig it up.  

As others have mentioned, many homes have all kinds of various easements.  A sidewalk could even be considered an easement for the city.  As long as a repair wouldn't significantly impact you or yoru home, I don't see an issue with it.

MommyLiberty5013

There is a gas easement in a lot of the neighborhoods in my suburb. On one street the gas company decided to enforce the easement and cut down and then ripped out beautiful trees that had grown up along the roadsides.

They did have to replant grass and remove the debris.

But, they cut into some peoples garden beds and definitely ruined the appeal of the neighborhood by removing mature growth trees.

If you look at our city or county plots and property plans, you can typical find out how far back any easements go.

I do know on our street there is a 6' easement from the street into the yards. So, when I planted two apple trees last year, I made sure they were outside of the 6' space.

kmurphy2131

Thanks everyone for your thoughts!  Our realtor called the town hall and they said we can put up a fence (which would be taken down if they did work) and they would regrade and put down seed.   No shed or pool but my husband hates sheds & I hate pools, so thats good. 

Almost everything I googled was people who has utility companies using eminent domain to put in natural gas pipelines through their yards.  So that is really a different/more heated situation then this one.  As @mommyliberty5013 mentioned, that can be a bigger problem once you have to take down trees etc but that doesn't appear to be a problem here.

It is a pretty big pipline I think - but I'm really not too worried about being close to a natural gas line.  If its in my neighbors yard, we wouldn't necessarily know about it and I would be equally close to it so I can't worry much about that.

short+sassy

When I was looking to buy my first home, one of the properties I drove past had an enormous piece of equipment in the backyard.  Like 14' high, 10' across, 6' wide.  It was even mentioned in the real estate description that the equipment belonged to Entergy (energy company) and could not be removed.  It was a pretty small backyard anyway and that thing took up half of it.

Needless to say, I took a pass on that house, lol.