Prescott Valley Arizona Real Estate Home Buyers Center.

Prescott Real Estate Easements

September 26th, 2006

Easements are the right for someone to use another’s land for a specific purpose or reason. As owners of real estate in Prescott, it’s good to know what one of these specific easements are called.

Prescriptive easements also called and easement by prescription is acquired when someone uses someone else’s land for a certain amount of time as its defined by state law.

Although these easements by prescription vary from state to state they share certain common concepts, we’ll discuss these and the specific information as it applied to Prescott and the state of Arizona and real estate.

Prescott Real Estate and Easements

There are four basic requirements for the creation of an easement by prescription:

• The property must be used without interruption for a period of 5 to 21 years
• The use of the property needs to be continuous, which can include the concept of tacking***
• The owner of the property must have not given consent to use the property - this is referred to as being adverse use
• The useage of the property must be notorious, this means that it’s visible and open so that the owner of the property can easily learn of it

Tacking*** refers to the successive use of the property by different parties through time. This tacking allows for a party not using the property for the entire period of time to establish an easement by prescription. In order for tacking to be allowed, the parties involved must also be successor in interest.

Arizona Laws and Easements by Prescription

In Arizona, prescriptive easements are tied to the concept of acquiring the title to a propety via adverse possession.

In cities like Prescott and Chino Valley Arizona, a person can acquire an easement by prescription across the land of another after ten years of continuous use.

The use must be:

• continuous
• open and notorious (so that everyone could see)
• hostile (without the permission of the land owner)

A lawsuit is needed to acquire and easement by prescription. If the court grants the easement, the claimant must continue to use the easement that was granted.

Because this type of easement runs with the land, it is transferrable when the property is sold. However, if the easement is not used for a period of five continuous years, the owner of the property, also known as the servient tenement in regards to this easement, can apply to the court to have the easement revoked.

Entry Filed under: Prescott Arizona AZ Real Estate Market