Hey, how's it going? It’s Seth here from retipster.com.
In this video, I want to talk to you a little bit about, something that comes up
pretty commonly in a title search, or when you're getting a title insurance policy.
And that is easements.
So, an easement is when another person or entity wants to have access to a portion of
your property so that they can go onto it or pass through it whenever they want.
This can happen if somebody wants to put a path or a road through your property
and it's really common with local utility companies like a phone company or a power company
where they put their power lines and poles on your property.
And I had an interesting situation with this earlier this year on a property that I bought.
And I thought it would be a good opportunity just to show you what an easement looks like,
how to make sense of it.
This was my title insurance commitment.
And in every title, insurance commitment, there's something called Schedule B Part II
where the title company is spelling out
These are the things that this policy is not going to cover.
And they listed all this stuff.
Usually, this is where any easements will show up.
So a lot of the stuff is like boilerplate, but right down here, it gets a lot more specific about
we found these documents in the title search, and we are not going to ensure against these things
because these people have rights or access to this property in some way.
And I wanna show you what these documents look like in the actual title search documentation.
Most of the time, you as the buyer are not even gonna see this, unless you ask for it.
But this is what the title researcher is looking at to identify these things
in your title insurance commitment here.
So this first one right here, this warranty deed, let me pull that up quick.
So that's what this thing is right here.
And the reason I know that is because I can see it.
It says Liber 666, page 555.
And that's pointed out right here, Liber 666, page 555.
Now the next thing on this list, this release of right of way to the county of Kent as disclosed
by Liber 57, page 213.
So that's what this one looks like.
And I believe this one was put in place back in 1931.
Yeah. On July 25th, 1931
And this was done because the county was trying to establish
what they call a clear vision easement at this corner,
I guess, just so that people could see around the corner easier.
I'm going to show you more about this in a second, but this is the Topo survey that I had done.
And you can see where they reference this particular easement Liber 57, page 213
and they pointed out right here.
It's this line that goes through the corner right here.
So because of that, it kind of changed the shape of this corner and cut into the property,
but just pointed out that was the impact that this particular easement had on the property.
And you can also see that back when they did this, the county paid the property owner $250
for the right to do that.
So typically when an easement is going in like this, there's usually some kind of consideration
paid for the property owner to grant that easement.
So that's what that's saying there.
And then moving on here, right of away in favor of the Michigan Bell Telephone Company.
So let's pull that one up. And again, the way I can tell I'm looking at the right thing
is by the Liber and page number.
This one is 2121, and 446.
When I look back on this thing, it says 2121, page 446.
So it says this one was recorded back on January 4th, 1972.
So a little bit more recent.
And on this particular easement, you can see, it actually gets really specific about
what this right of way covers.
So it says centerline of said easement is 41.25 feet east of the centerline of
Lincoln Lake avenue.
And so now we're going to move over to this Topo survey.
And I usually don't order Topo surveys that go into this level of detail.
But I needed to in this case, because my plan was to develop this property
and I actually needed to know the different elevations.
So this one is quite a bit more detailed than I usually see them.
But as you can see on this survey, so this is Lincoln Lake right here, running north
to south and where it says X tele riser or telephone riser.
You see that one and then this one up here.
So that is in reference to that easement from Michigan Bell Telephone Company.
And that line you see right there is basically saying that they have an easement that comes
from the center of this road all the way to this point in the property.
And they can get there whenever they want.
And nobody can say anything about it because they have a right to do that.
So that's the impact that that easement had on this property in terms of what portion
I'm able to use.
So I basically can't really build anything
that goes beyond this easement because the Michigan Bell Telephone Company is allowed
to go anywhere in this space anytime they want.
And I can't have buildings there in their way.
That's one reason why an easement is important, not just to understand where people are allowed to go
but it also determines sort of like a setback that you have to follow
because you can't be building stuff there
if somebody else has easement.
Another interesting thing about the survey is that this thing showed up.
So this tiny little circle here with a line through it, as you can see from the legend over here
that is a utility pole and there's another one right here and another one right here.
And when my civil engineers saw this, they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Why is that there?
And what does the easement say about how close we can put buildings to these utility poles?
And at first, I was like, I don't know, like, does it really matter?
And they explained to me that it actually does matter a lot because anytime you see
a utility pole like this, or for that matter, like an electrical box or a telephone riser
coming out of the ground, anytime you see that, that means that there is probably
an easement in place.
And if there isn't one, there should be one because people or a company can't just like
start putting stuff on your property like that.
If they don't have permission to do it.
And when I talked to my surveyor about it, I was like, why didn't you guys put something here
to indicate where the easement line is?
They said, well, that wasn't in your title insurance commitment.
So we had nothing to go by.
And the surveyors said, sometimes this happens where the title company or the title researcher
just literally misses it.
Like they should have caught it. And they didn't.
So they told me to go back to my title company and said,
Hey, title company, there's clearly a power line going through this property
and you didn't find any easements.
Please look again until you find it.
And so I gave them a call and they agreed that they probably missed something.
So they spent about a day going back to try to find it.
And they told me flat out, there is no power line easement on your property,
but we did find one on the neighboring property.
And then they gave me this thing right here, which is the power line easement from the neighbor
which is sort of helpful, but also not because this isn't really the relevant document.
However, it is from the consumer's power.
And you can see what it says.
It's at least somewhat useful because it says right here, this party may locate said route North
of and not more than 120 feet from the centerline of the highway on the south side
which is this road down here.
So over here on this property, that easement goes 120 feet in from the center of the road.
But again, that doesn't apply to my property, it's the neighbors.
But I still thought that was really odd.
And my surveyor did too.
So he dug up some contact information he had from the power company and said,
call this person, tell them the situation, ask them if they have any easements of record in their files.
So I called them and they said, yep, we do have a recorded easement for this property.
You can find it in Liber 92, page 5.
And that was all they told me.
So I sent that back to my title company and said, Hey, here you go.
This is the exact place where you can find it, look it up.
And so they did find it and they sent me this and you can see right up there Liber 92, page 5.
So that is the document.
However, it's not legible.
You can't even read what this stuff says.
So it's like that also doesn't help me, even though this is the right thing.
So I had to call the consumer's power back and say, Hey, I got this, but it still doesn't
do me any good because I can't read it.
Do you have anything you can send me? And thank goodness they did.
And they sent me this, which is basically the same document, but you can at least read what this says.
And it does say pretty much the same thing as the easement on the neighbor's property,
which is that the easement extends 120 feet from the centerline of that road on the south side
which again is this one right here.
So now that I have this easement, I sent this back to my surveyor and said,
Hey, can you please update the survey so that this easement line is showing there and they did.
And they sent me this, which is pretty much the exact same survey, but you can see this
little dotted line now, which shows where that easement extends to.
And you can see that the power lines don't go beyond that.
So they're within the length of where that easement goes to.
So essentially this just means that wherever I want to put buildings on this property,
it can't go beyond this line, because it will then be encroaching on their easement.
And as we can see on the easement document itself, it is expressly understood that
no buildings or other structures will be placed under such wires and or over such cables
without the written consent of said second party, which is the consumer's power.
And that was the impact that that easement had on this property.
And there's a couple big lessons and takeaways from this that I learned and that I think
you should also be aware of, first of all, just the impact that easements have
because they basically create a new setback requirement beyond what the township or city or county
is going to require in the first place.
So for example, the county has a 20-foot setback, which is what this line is right here,
but that is not the effective setback because of this easement.
It goes way up here.
So if I didn't know this, I could have very well built a building in here that I would
have to like move or tear down because it encroaches on their easement.
And again, one simple way just to keep an eye out for this stuff, you don't have to
lose sleepover or anything, but just be aware if you ever see like an electric box
or a utility pull or a telephone box or anything like that on your property,
there is almost certainly an easement somewhere that goes along with that,
which is going to have some kind of setback requirement.
Sometimes it's not a big deal at all.
Kind of like this telephone over here that just pushed in 41.25 feet I think it was
so that didn't really have a whole lot of impact, but this one here sort of did.
And luckily we weren't planning on putting any buildings or anything like that here
in the first place.
So it didn't really catch us off guard that badly, but it would've been very easy to make that mistake.
And also another big lesson from this is that unfortunately, you kind of have to be smarter
than the people you hired.
Like it was totally my title company's job to catch this and put it in there.
And not only did they not catch it, but they like came out and said, there is no easement
for this power line on your property, which was also wrong.
And when I pushed them again, they still couldn't get me a document that I could read.
I had to go directly to the power company, which is way beyond what any property owner
like me should have to do, but I still had to do it.
So it's important just to know what to look out for.
And when there probably is an easement, even if your title company isn't telling you that there's one.
And even if your survey doesn't show one.
So I learned a lot through this.
If you're ever doing your own title search, or if you're just trying to identify
what an easement even looks like and how to make sense of what it's saying,
these are some examples of what easements look like.
I hope this was at least somewhat informative and I wish you all the best on your next title search.