Find easements on your property
before you build

You can find easements on a California property by checking the preliminary title report from your purchase, searching the county recorder’s index, or ordering a recorded report. The recorder’s index is usually searched by owner name rather than address, which makes older recorded rights easy to miss. TruPoint Legal’s Recorded Easement Report pulls the documents indexed against your parcel, with your vesting deed and up to 3 recorded documents in one PDF, for $195, emailed the same business day.

Easements are sometimes written into a deed, but most California grant deeds only say the property is conveyed subject to matters of record, without naming them. Utility grants are usually recorded as separate documents, and lot-line rights frequently appear only on the subdivision map. That is why the report includes your current vesting deed and also searches the index for separately recorded documents against your parcel.

The report shows utility grants that were recorded as documents and indexed against your parcel, such as grants to an electric utility or water district. Public utility rights created on a subdivision map may appear only on the map itself, which is available through County Record Retrieval from $95 plus county fees. Your city or the utility can also confirm where its lines run.

The Recorded Easement Report costs $195 and includes up to 3 recorded documents in the PDF, with each additional document at $35. Clients already ordering a Chain of Title Report can add the search to that order at a reduced add-on price. California real estate attorneys commonly bill by the hour for records research, while this fee is confirmed before you pay, with no retainer.

The Recorded Easement Report is emailed as a PDF the same business day for orders placed by 4:30 p.m. Pacific, Monday through Friday. Orders placed later, or on a weekend or holiday, are delivered the next business day. When a recorded map or older document must be requested from the county recorder, delivery follows that office’s turnaround and we notify you.

No public records search can show a right of way that was never recorded. California law allows a prescriptive easement to arise from five years of open, continuous use without permission, and implied rights can arise from how a property has been used. Those rights exist outside the record, so a land surveyor or real estate attorney is the right source when unrecorded use is in question.

A recorded easement is a written grant of a right to use part of someone else’s land that has been recorded with the county recorder. Recording gives public notice, so the right generally binds later owners of the property. Common California examples are utility lines, shared driveways, access routes, and drainage paths created by deed, separate grant, or subdivision map.

The report compiles recorded documents, and what a recorded right permits, or whether it has ended, is a legal question for a real estate attorney or title company. You receive the recorded wording, dates, and document numbers in one PDF, which shortens that conversation. If the report shows a problem with your own vesting deed in California, TruPoint Legal can prepare the correcting deed you direct.

You do not have to own the property, because recorded documents are public records. Buyers, neighbors, contractors, heirs, and agents order these reports on property they are evaluating. You provide the street address or parcel number and the county, sign a short authorization, and pay the $195 fee before the search begins.