Easements (in VA in particular)

I've worked with utilities for 40 years.

It depends, but often you will find that conditions on the ground require easements to be over granted. In other words a fence 20 west of a boundary line gets an easement from the east parcel starting on the fence while ending the west parcel easement on the boundary line.

The calls are very important always call out the boundary and often the occupation lines. Protect your client, if you can't figure out the boundary without massive expense then be sure and capture enough ground to cover it no matter what happens.

I will even write a long easement through a number of tracts in sequence and have each landowner sign for the entire length. They get paid on their portion, usually a bit more than what they actually own.

Go over it with your client, of course, the best way is to figure out each boundary line and stop/start the easement on it. We are doing that now for a massive boring project in downtown getting ready for street re-construction.?ÿ?ÿ

Usually that is unnecessary. You need to survey enough to locate where the easement enters and leaves each property with respect to their corners, and of course any line that that the easement follows or parallels.?ÿ

Often that will only require locating the nearest?ÿ two corners of each line the easement intersects, but of course sometimes that will require tying in other more distant corners.?ÿ

As a landowner, I will fight to have an EXACT DESCRIPTION?ÿ of the part of my land on which I will have limitations as to what I can do on that land FOREVER.?ÿ If that means making the entity needing the easement to take me to court, so be it.?ÿ Surveying it properly will cost them one heck of a lot less than fighting with lawyers.

This BS of finding a known point on say the north line of the northwest quarter and a known point on the west line of the northwest quarter and then writing something like "All that part of (my four acre tract) being impacted by an easement 50 feet in width and being 25 feet either side of a center line described as follows:?ÿ Beginning at a point on the north line of the northwest quarter...........................and ending at a point on the west line of said northwest quarter being............................"

That is blatant horse droppings and tells the landowner nothing they can see, touch, feel on the ground with certainty and where their perpetual limitations begin and end.

The surveying profession needs to stand up and demand complete boundary surveying of all easements, regardless of the end use of that easement.

@holy-cow I agree, but for some reason many surveyors don't see any options between a complete survey of the servient parcel and the paper pushers descriptions that you described.

Thanks for the feedback, all.?ÿ Most of the time, I see disclaimers like "complete boundary survey not performed".?ÿ I also almost always see attorneys require complete metes and bounds calls on easements, as opposed to something like "25 feet along the western property line, or referenced to a centerline or baseline..?ÿ If you don't actually do a complete boundary (of at least the intersected lines), then how do you accurately establish the points along the existing property line perpendicular(ish) to the long axis of the easement and turn this into an accurate metes and bounds?

In VA, if you establish a new corner on an existing line, you are required to establish both ends of that line.?ÿ It seems to me that it would be a reasonable extension of this logic to establish each end of any property line a proposed easement crosses.?ÿ I do not see that the regulations here require this standard of care, though.?ÿ If you follow this to its conclusion, it essentially results in a complete boundary survey of every lot in areas with "small" lots relative to the easement size and width....?ÿ This could get very expensive, really quickly.

It seems to me that the established "standard of care" I've seen is generally closer to the line of thinking that the easement is defined more by the centerline of the utility, and less by the metes and bounds.

The cost of a true boundary survey of each tract is miniscule relative to the benefit derived by the benefit holder over the life of said easement, which may far exceed 100 years.

On a similar vein, all utility and street/highway maintenance work should require a land surveyor be involved to locate and replace any survey monuments that would be within the path/area of the intended work.?ÿ This is another area where the surveying profession needs to make their collective voice heard.

@holy-cow?ÿ

I agree 100 percent. ?ÿThe problem is who will enforce it? ?ÿEspecially when it is a private entity. ?ÿSomebody has to pay for the enforcement. ?ÿUltimately that burden will fall on the consumer or the taxpayer, more likely both. ?ÿAs a landowner maybe I should defend and protect my own interests. That can be as simple as telling the contractor to replace the corner monument that I have maintained.

@holy-cow?ÿ For 20+ years I surveyed for and prepared easement forms for utilities, mostly sanitary sewer lines and water lines.?ÿ While I agree that a complete boundary survey is preferable, surveying a 100 acre parcel to obtain an easement 200 feet long would be cost prohibitive here.

The "sketches" that I prepared and the written easement called for "beginning where the line enters said property and ends where the line exits the property and is centered on the line hereinafter installed".?ÿ We did stake the lines so the property owner could see exactly where the lines were to be (+/- how close the contractor could install the line).

Andy

Just tossing this discussion out there to be chewed upon.

There is a big difference between a small, short easement and one that runs across four states.

Ripping out survey monuments that landowners paid to have installed is pathetic.

This BS of ..... writing something like "All that part of (my four acre tract) being impacted by an easement 50 feet in width and being 25 feet either side of a center line described as follows:?ÿ

I disagree.

The solution to this problem is fully monumenting the run of the easement. Then you know just where it is.?ÿ Tying the writing easements to each and every property it crosses creates a nightmare when it comes time to recover the easement (or right of way). If we are talking large acreages the issue is less of a headache, but if the easement runs across several lot sized house sites - oh brother.?ÿ

I recommend that the easement be written just as you say it should not be, tie it to section lines and monuments where possible, and monument it well. Include monument calls in the description.?ÿ?ÿ

"The solution to this problem is fully monumenting the run of the easement. Then you know just where it is."

Ah, but, you don't know where it is if you are the landowner who acquired the property after the easement went through.?ÿ It is incredibly important to know on small tracts as the easement frequently represents a significant fraction of the entire tract.?ÿ Placement of new buildings or in-ground pools could be a no-go situation, depending on exactly where the easement is located.

On large rural tracts, the survey is much easier, but still extremely important to the landowner.?ÿ You may be tying up quite a number of acres, which in some areas of the country are extremely valuable.

The amounts paid for easements become laughable in the future.?ÿ I can think of an instance where eleven pipes run with standard petroleum products or fiber optic lines side by side in an easement for which the landowner was paid 20 cents per linear foot of easement crossing the property (not 11 times that amount) in 1929.

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@andy-bruner this is only done because landowners don't know any better. It just kicks the can down the road and transfers the cost of the survey from the easement holder to the servient estate owner.?ÿ

Just tossing this discussion out there to be chewed upon.

There is a big difference between a small, short easement and one that runs across four states.

Ripping out survey monuments that landowners paid to have installed is pathetic.

What's the difference? Is it less important to know where one is than the other??ÿ

Who is ripping out survey monuments?

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A ten-foot easement just inside the back lines of identical lots in a typical rectangular block is one thing.?ÿ A one-hundred foot wide easement curving through a 40-acre tract is quite another.

In the?ÿ first situation, the landowner can guess fairly well where the burdened area is located but the contractors will manage to rip out every survey monument existing along those back lines because they haven't bothered to know where that easement exists IN FACT.?ÿ Few, if any, survey monuments may be near the location of the second situation, but, the area burdened needs to be well defined.

@aliquot?ÿ You truly enjoy bickering, don't you??ÿ You must not own much real estate or never leave your desk.

@aliquot Manholes make pretty dang good monuments for the center of an easement.?ÿ 10 feet (or 30 feet for construction easements) on either side of the line between the manholes isn't too difficult to determine.

If you are being paid say $100,000 to design and stake a sanitary sewer line it becomes a bit difficult to tell the client that the cost of surveying for the easements will be $250,000 because I've got to locate and resolve property lines on 100 properties up to hundreds of acres each.

We had one client that (after a contract was signed) demanded that a surveyor's seal be placed on every easement sketch.?ÿ When told that the additional cost would be approximately double the contract amount they reconsidered their demand.?ÿ In Georgia, if you place your seal on a drawing, you certify that the survey meets all the requirements of a legal survey.?ÿ To certify that I would have to locate every corner of every property that the line crossed, no matter how small or how large.

Of course the VAST majority of our work was rural/suburban.?ÿ Work within an urban environment is a totally different story.

Andy

@andy-bruner?ÿ

Manholes make great monuments. Unfortunately they usually have offset tops.

@holy-cow I must ve missing part of the discussion.?ÿ What am I bickering about? When did we start talking about monuments being taken out? Whoever is putting the infrastructure in clearly should be responsible for replacing the monuments.?ÿ

The cost of locating an easement is a cost of doing business. Surveyors shouldn't be aiding multinational corporations in strong arming landowners.?ÿ

I would bet good money, that I own more land then you, although I just sold the only small urban lot I have ever owned if that's what you are talking about.?ÿ

I've worked on many-mile long easements.?ÿ It would be almost impossible, and insanely expensive, to survey each and every boundary that it crosses.?ÿ

The plat shows the easement tied to monuments found and set, and approximate boundaries are shown.?ÿ The easement on each property is usually described as a distance each side of the centerline, with approximate length and area given.

As said above, the easements are usually staked, and/or the evidence of its location is obvious for a time, that the landowners should be able to see where it is.

@jph As said above, the easements are usually staked, and/or the evidence of its location is obvious for a time, that the landowners should be able to see where it is.

This has been my experience too. Well, maybe not so much with aerial or microwave easements, but by and large they don't affect the landowner trying to put a pond, pool, home addition or ADU on the ground.

Not to mention that if a landowner down the road really needs to know exactly where that easement is, they can...get a survey.

When I did oil & gas work on a large scale in Texas, in addition to the black & white easement exhibits that went along with the descriptions in the easement conveyances, I often worked up color-coded GIS maps with orthorectified aerials underlaid. I would send those over to the client land managers as a courtesy in addition to the recorded documents, so the landowners had a better idea of where things were. Yeah, we disclaimed the heck out of that document, but they helped the landowners get a good idea of where things lay. Better than that sketch in the recorded doc anyways.

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Not to stir the pot even more, but this is another reason why, as new civil signals come online and autonomous GNSS improves, and as we move toward a 4D global reference frame, I foresee the coordinate controversy raising its head more and more often. If I can publish coordinates on an easement line that a landowner can use their cell phone to get within a foot of, requiring resurveys every time they want to stay ten feet away from that easement for a home project is going to start to look like protectionism on our part, and not protection of the public either. [putting my flame-retardant suit on]