An easement takes away a certain fraction of the bundle of rights a landowner possesses and hands them over to whomever buys out the initial entity in need of the easement.?ÿ Most landowners do not realize what they have lost by signing the easement documents.
We have a quarter section full of high dollars houses in the largest city in the county and every one of them is burdened by a blanket easement for that entire quarter for the installation of a petroleum pipeline more than 115 years ago.?ÿ No one knows if a pipeline was ever installed and, if so, where the heck was it put.?ÿ Every title insurance policy specifically refuses to cover anything arising from this easement.?ÿ Someday, someone will be digging deep in their yard for some reason and think they are Jed Clampett.?ÿ Wrong!
@rover83 "for a tine" is key. Before construction and often again years after construction the location becomes invisible. Even when "visible" it's only the assumed centerline that is visible. Your wlingness to trafer the cost of surveying to the landowners from the benifiting entity is telling. This amounts to a "tax" on the landowners. Yes they can get a survey, but the survey can be many times more expensive than if the boundary was properly surveyed to beig8n with.
Maybe I was lucky l, but when I demanded that the ROW for a powering across my property be fully surveyed the utility did it with little fuss. A neighbor is now faced with a $13,000 bill that I will never have to pay to locate the easement before building. It would have been even more expensive if they didn't have my monuments in one direction.?ÿ?ÿ
@holy-cow thankfully blanket easements are usually frowned upon now, but this is the kind of transfer of financial responsibility to the landowners that we should not be a party to.
Thanks again for the feedback.?ÿ I love hearing the different perspectives on the things that keep surveyors up at night.?ÿ (Or wake them up 😉
Continuing the discussion:?ÿ If you survey for a utility that, during construction, requires removal of a property corner (no other place to put the new utility except on the line, and through the corner) do you consider it your obligation to reset the corner if possible, once work is complete?
If the destruction is foreseeable, it is a whole lot less work and a lot more accurate to get reference ties ahead of the construction and slam the monument back in afterward, than for someone to survey the whole property later and come up with a location that may differ from the original.
Your wlingness to trafer the cost of surveying to the landowners from the benifiting entity is telling.
Yeah, I'm a corporate shill through and through...
I was under the impression that we were discussing the way it works rather than the way we would like it to work. I'm a proponent of monumenting these sorts of easement as @norman-oklahoma suggested upthread.
As I stated in my first post, I am in favor of making it possible for the landowners to locate their own easements within a foot or two when the technology becomes "reliable enough" (that metric is TBD of course), so that they can build improvements at a safe distance and not have to break the bank to do so. I for one don't think that landowners should have to constantly get resurveys.
When's the last time you saw a record of survey where the registrant monumented every single plottable easement on the ground? If we're going to shine a light on utility surveys, why not the surveys we do specifically for landowners?
Functionally the easements being discussed here are no different from a metes & bounds easement from a local water & sewer district. The scale is larger, but I see no compelling reason to treat them any differently. Can it be placed on the ground with the existing description (and exhibit)?
Yes, in a perfect world there would be full surveys of every tract, we would monument every single unmonumented corner, every single burdened property owner would get to walk their entire tract with the surveyor, etc. I'd like that too.
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Getting to that perfect world will require professional land surveyors to "protect the public" by demanding that easement creation require true surveys for each property being crossed.?ÿ Our DOT has certainly moved in that direction and is now an excellent source of survey information that helps us do a better job of surveying for our clients.
Our County was needing additional land from numerous landowners for a road improvement project.?ÿ Every tract was surveyed and every tract required a full appraisal by a licensed appraiser.?ÿ The appraiser would perform a full appraisal of the property prior to the easement versus the appraisal following the easement.?ÿ The County could not simply offer a fixed price per square foot or acre being taken.?ÿ There is a distinct loss of appraised value based on easements that do not in some way service the property directly.
I own one tract that had a pre-existing lease for natural gas on it.?ÿ However, the well, the road to it and the piping to a main pipeline is entirely located on other properties.?ÿ That is the only tract that is burdened by more than the typical water line, electric line, telephone line type of easement which are all along the front so many feet of my properties and BENEFIT my property more than they hurt.?ÿ If you want to quickly learn how valuable those easements are, check into what it costs to run a service line from the existing main line to your preferred location.?ÿ An example from the past year for a rural water line service was in excess of $23,000.?ÿ That is nothing compared to the electrical service cost.
Easement work for utilities or municipalities includes protecting your client. That means since the work is for the dominate estate care needs to be given to protecting the rights of that client. This doesn't mean the subservient estate isn't considered since both estates have a common interest.
However, when the two don't mesh then the client gets the main consideration, usually this means overwriting easements and paying the subservient estates a bit more for easements.
It's not the goal or even the right of the utility to solve any ambiguity or discrepancy encountered along the way. And you will encounter them, just look at "square 40" thread; what to do when that overlap is traversed by an easement??ÿ
Not the job of the utility or municipality to solve it, but there are ways to cover the utility.?ÿ
It's state law here that the easement needs to be described in such a way that it's placeable on the ground, blanket easements are forbidden except as a time limited construction easement. Protecting the client means that the easement is easy to follow and retraceable.?ÿ
@rover83 we don't generally monument all easements on a property we are surveying because our clients, the landowners, usually don't want to pay for it. It's entirely reasonable for them to decide that they will only survey them as needed. The considerations are entirely differnt when the survey is being done to create the easement. This is the time to get it done.
Easement work for utilities or municipalities includes protecting your client. That means since the work is for the dominate estate care needs to be given to protecting the rights of that client. This doesn't mean the subservient estate isn't considered since both estates have a common interest.
However, when the two don't mesh then the client gets the main consideration, usually this means overwriting easements and paying the subservient estates a bit more for easements.
It's not the goal or even the right of the utility to solve any ambiguity or discrepancy encountered along the way. And you will encounter them, just look at "square 40" thread; what to do when that overlap is traversed by an easement??ÿ
Not the job of the utility or municipality to solve it, but there are ways to cover the utility.?ÿ
It's state law here that the easement needs to be described in such a way that it's placeable on the ground, blanket easements are forbidden except as a time limited construction easement. Protecting the client means that the easement is easy to follow and retraceable.?ÿ
Easement work for utilities also includes protecting the public.?ÿ
Easy to follow and retractable for who? The multinational gas company, or the land owner who's land is worth less than the cost to hire a surveyor to follow it for them?
@andy-bruner I feel a little differently about easements that directly serve the landowners who are burdened by it. My comments were based on transmission lines, large diameter gas lines, ect...
Easement work for utilities or municipalities includes protecting your client. That means since the work is for the dominate estate care needs to be given to protecting the rights of that client. This doesn't mean the subservient estate isn't considered since both estates have a common interest.
However, when the two don't mesh then the client gets the main consideration, usually this means overwriting easements and paying the subservient estates a bit more for easements.
It's not the goal or even the right of the utility to solve any ambiguity or discrepancy encountered along the way. And you will encounter them, just look at "square 40" thread; what to do when that overlap is traversed by an easement??ÿ
Not the job of the utility or municipality to solve it, but there are ways to cover the utility.?ÿ
It's state law here that the easement needs to be described in such a way that it's placeable on the ground, blanket easements are forbidden except as a time limited construction easement. Protecting the client means that the easement is easy to follow and retraceable.?ÿ
Easement work for utilities also includes protecting the public.?ÿ
Easy to follow and retractable for who? The multinational gas company, or the land owner who's land is worth less than the cost to hire a surveyor to follow it for them?
WTH?
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@mightymoe what is the problem now? I thought you would have been with me on this since I am arguing for land owners' rights.?ÿ
A story from the land owner side of the picture: A high voltage transmission line was headed through an area that I own land in. The power company said they needed to take anneasment across the corner of my land. I insisted on a real survey of the easement they wanted to take. The result of the survey showed they didn't need any of my land. Thew edge of their planned easement was 1.5' from my corner. (Which I had to explain to their surveyor how to locate).?ÿ
Thanks again for the feedback.?ÿ I love hearing the different perspectives on the things that keep surveyors up at night.?ÿ (Or wake them up 😉
Continuing the discussion:?ÿ If you survey for a utility that, during construction, requires removal of a property corner (no other place to put the new utility except on the line, and through the corner) do you consider it your obligation to reset the corner if possible, once work is complete?
It's moren than an obligation, in many states its the law. Of course it is the utility company who is responsible though. They are obligated to pay you (or another surveyor) to replace the monuments they destroyed.
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