I have an easement on my property to allow my neighbor who owns the lot behind me access to his property as well as the fire marshal and other city utilities. This is because the parcel behind me is land locked.
In the past two years my neighbor has purchased a parcel right next door to me giving him access and frontage to the road and has built a home on the property.
My rear neighbor has over a 100 ft of frontage and his own driveway to his home and clearly no need for the easement. The firemarshal and the city utilities agree that there is no need for them to use my easement.
The issue I am up against is that I want to sell my house and would like to have the easement released. My nieghbor dosen’t want to release for some unknown reason. He is just hard to get along with.
I don’t know where to go except a lawer and don’t want the costs associated with it. Is there a way that I can have this easement released through the city or any other method? What is the proceedure for doing this?
You can call your attorney to verify the laws concerning easements in your state, but probably, unless your neighbor agrees to release the easement, you’re stuck. The good news is that the easement shouldn’t cause a problem with your sell. The easement shouldn’t be causing you any problems, such as parking, etc. Again, verify your laws, but easements are not the same as deeded right of ways. With a DRW, the other party actually “owns” that right of way exactly where it is laid out. Though you can’t remove an easement from your property, you can usually have an easement moved if the current one is posing a problem.
I had an easement on a property once that went nowhere. My parcel was landlocked and originally, the person that owned the land behind mine (also landlocked) also owned the land with road frontage. However, the land below mine was sold off to someone else, creating three separate parties. By the time that I got ahold of this, all original persons concerning the easement had been dead at least 10 years. The county here said “tough luck, can’t fix it. The good news that no one will complain about you blocking it.”