We purchased a home that has a 20 ft driveway easement but the owner of the subservient property installed a permanent structure bottlenecking the driveway easement down to 10 ft and now fire rescue cannot reach us with a pumper truck. My title company missed this, is it on them to rectify the situation ?
Is the title company on the hook?
byu/Unfair_Category9960 inRealEstate
Posted by Unfair_Category9960
5 Comments
>a 20 ft driveway easement
What documentation supports this? Was there a separate easement agreement in your closing docs, or was it listed on the deed? If there was a separate easement agreement, was it recorded? Or is it noted in the plat map?
Or was it just something they previously allowed but now are not?
It’s listed on the deed and property survey
It’s described in the deed and on property survey
oh man this is a nightmare situation and honestly yeah the title company should have caught this during their search. easements are literally one of the main things theyre supposed to identify and verify before closing. i went through something similar where a neighbor had encroached on our utility easement and our title company ended up having to pay for the legal fees to sort it out since they missed it in their initial report. definitely contact them first and see if they have title insurance that covers this kind of stuff because most policies do. if they push back you might need to get a real estate attorney involved but dont let them wiggle out of this one. the fact that it affects emergency access makes it even more serious than just a regular boundary dispute
Title guy here. When was the structure built? Was it already there when you purchased? I see below the easement was part of your deed and shown on the survey. Was the structure shown on the survey?