Easements on Arizona Land: How to Find and Read Them

What an easement is

An easement is a right to use land owned by someone else for a defined purpose. The owner still owns the land under it but cannot block the use the easement allows. Easements are usually recorded and usually run with the land, which means they bind future owners, not just the people who signed them.

Easements cut both ways. Your parcel may be burdened by an easement that lets a utility or neighbor cross it, or it may benefit from an easement across someone else's land, most importantly for access.

Common types on Arizona land

Access easements

A right to travel across one parcel to reach another. For rural land these are often the only legal route from a public road. Our guide on verifying legal access covers them in detail.

Utility easements

Strips reserved for power lines, water, gas, sewer, telephone or cable. Subdivision plats often reserve them along lot lines. Arizona's minor land division statute, A.R.S. 11-831, describes the utility easement it requires as eight feet wide, dedicated to the public for sewer, electric, gas and water utilities. Utility easements are a burden on the land they cross, but an easement that brings power to your property line is also a benefit; see our guide to checking for power near land.

Drainage easements

Areas reserved for stormwater to flow, often following a wash. Building in or blocking a drainage easement is usually prohibited, and these areas often overlap regulated floodplains. See our guide to flood zones on Arizona land.

Other recorded rights

Pipeline, ditch and road right-of-way grants, and older reservations in patents or deeds, can also show up. Read each one; the document says what it allows.

Where easements are recorded

Recorded easements live with the county recorder in the county where the land sits. They appear as:

• Standalone easement documents or right-of-way grants.
• Language inside a deed ("together with" or "subject to" an easement).
• Lines and notes on a recorded subdivision plat or survey.
• Covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&Rs) that reserve easements across lots.

Most county recorders offer an online document index, for example the Maricopa County Recorder's document search and the Pima County Recorder. Searching by name can work, but older easements may be indexed under a long-gone owner's name and described only by legal description. That is why a title search is the reliable way to find them.

Reading a title commitment

When land is sold through a title company, the company issues a title commitment before closing. The part that matters for easements is the list of exceptions, usually in Schedule B. These are the recorded matters the title policy will not cover, and they typically include:

• Taxes and assessments not yet due.
• Recorded easements and rights-of-way, each with a recording reference (document number or book and page).
• Recorded restrictions and CC&Rs.
• Matters shown on a recorded plat.
• Standard exceptions for things that only a survey or inspection would reveal, such as unrecorded easements or boundary discrepancies.

How to work through the list

1. Ask for copies of every exception document. The commitment only names them. The documents themselves say where the easement is and what it allows.
2. Locate each one on a map. Some easements are described as a strip along a boundary, others by metes and bounds. If you cannot tell where an easement sits, a surveyor can plot it.
3. Note who benefits. A utility company, a neighbor, the public, or your own parcel.
4. Check for access. Make sure the commitment shows an easement or road that actually connects the parcel to a public road, if the parcel does not front one.

Unrecorded easements

Not every easement is in the records. Arizona courts recognize easements by prescription. In Spaulding v. Pouliot (2008), the Arizona Court of Appeals stated that a party claiming one must show the land was actually and visibly used for ten years, that the use began and continued under a claim of right, and that the use was hostile to the title of the true owner, with reference to the ten-year limitation statutes in A.R.S. 12-521 and 12-526.

In practice: if you see a well-worn road, a pipeline or a power line crossing land with no recorded document behind it, someone may have rights there anyway. Whether they do is a fact-specific legal question, so talk to an Arizona real estate attorney before relying on, or fighting, an unrecorded easement.

How easements affect value and buildability

• Usable area. A wide utility or drainage easement through the middle of a parcel can leave less room for a home site, septic system and setbacks. See whether Arizona land is buildable.
• Access. A good recorded access easement can be the difference between a buildable lot and a landlocked one.
• Utilities. An existing utility easement may make power easier to bring in.
• Privacy and use. A neighbor's driveway easement across your land is permanent traffic you cannot stop.
• Disclosure. Arizona's seller affidavit for rural unsubdivided land, under A.R.S. 33-422, asks about access, road maintenance and title encumbrances, so easement questions come up in most rural sales.

Easements rarely make land unsellable, but they do change who will buy it and what they will pay. If an easement or access problem is the reason your parcel has been hard to move, see selling hard-to-sell Arizona land; First 48 Offers reviews these parcels case by case.

General information, not legal, tax or survey advice. First 48 Offers LLC is a real estate investment company that buys land. It is not a law firm, brokerage, surveyor or title company. Arizona statutes, county procedures and agency boundaries change, and every parcel turns on its own facts. Verify anything important with the county, the agency named, or an Arizona attorney before relying on it.