Easement
Also called: utility easement, drainage easement, access easement, right of way
A legal right for someone else to use part of your land for a specific purpose — a utility line, drainage, access to a neighboring parcel — without owning it. Easements are shown on the plat and survey, run with the land through sales, and restrict what you can build in the strip they cover.
The most common residential easements are utility easements — typically a 5- to 15-foot strip along a lot line or the street where the power, water, sewer, gas or cable company can run and service lines — and drainage easements along swales or creeks. Access easements give a landlocked parcel a way to the road across a neighbor.
You still own the land under an easement and usually pay taxes on it, but you can’t build anything permanent there that would interfere with its purpose. A shed or fence in a utility easement can be removed by the utility, at your expense, when they need access. Pools, additions and retaining walls in easements are a routine source of failed permits and failed closings.
Easements are listed on the plat, in your deed or title report, and on any boundary survey. Finding out where they run is one of the more useful outcomes of a survey — or of reading the plat carefully yourself.