What Is an Easement Survey?

An easement survey is a survey that locates and maps the easements affecting a property: the recorded rights other parties hold to cross, use or run infrastructure through your land. A licensed surveyor pulls the easement documents from the title commitment and county records, plots the written descriptions on your parcel, and locates the physical evidence on the ground, such as utility poles, manholes, drainage channels and access drives. The deliverable is a sealed drawing showing where each easement legally sits relative to your boundary. Expect roughly $500 to $1,200 for a standalone residential easement location, less when it is folded into a boundary survey, and $2,500 to $10,000 for a full ALTA survey that plots many easements at once. Our easement survey cost and ordering page breaks the pricing down by scope.

What does an easement survey show?

It shows three things a title report alone cannot. First, the location: an easement recorded as "a 20 foot utility easement along the westerly line" becomes an actual mapped strip on your parcel. Second, the conflicts: whether your shed, driveway, pool or planned addition sits inside that strip. Third, the gaps: easements that exist on the ground but not in the record, such as a neighbor's gravel drive that has crossed your land for 30 years, and easements in the record with no physical trace. A good easement survey lists each easement by its recording instrument number so you can tie the drawing back to the document.

What are the common types of easements a survey locates?

How much does an easement survey cost?

Locating one or two recorded easements on a residential parcel typically costs $500 to $3,000, depending on the market and how much field work the easements require. Complex cases run $2,000 to $8,000: many overlapping easements, a full title-exception plotting exercise on a commercial site, or an easement whose written description does not close or contradicts what is physically there. The single biggest cost lever is whether the surveyor also has to establish your boundary, because an easement can only be located accurately relative to a known property line.

Is an easement survey the same as a boundary survey?

No, and this is the distinction that saves people money. A boundary survey determines where your property lines are. An easement survey maps the use rights crossing the land. They are related because you cannot place an easement precisely without the boundary, which is why most surveyors deliver easement location as part of a boundary survey rather than as a standalone product. If you are already ordering a boundary survey, ask the surveyor to include plotting of the title exceptions and location of visible easement evidence. That add-on is far cheaper than a second mobilization later.

When do I need an easement survey?

Five situations account for most orders. You are building something (an addition, pool, shop, fence or driveway) and need to know whether it lands in an easement, because utilities can and do require removal of anything built over their lines. You are buying and the title commitment lists easement exceptions you cannot picture. You are selling or refinancing and the title company wants the exceptions plotted. You are in a dispute with a neighbor over an access road or a shared drive. Or you are the one who needs an easement created, in which case a surveyor writes the legal description that gets recorded.

Can I build a fence or shed on an easement?

Sometimes, but you need the easement holder's rules, not a general answer. Many utility easements permit a fence but require the owner to remove it at their own expense if the utility needs access, and most prohibit permanent structures and deep-rooted trees outright. Drainage easements are usually stricter, because anything that changes the flow path creates liability. The practical sequence is: locate the easement with a survey, read the recorded easement document for the exact restrictions, then ask the holder and your local permitting office in writing. If you are hiring a contractor to work inside an easement, confirm they carry current coverage and ask for a certificate of insurance before work starts, since damage to a buried utility inside an easement gets expensive quickly.

Can an easement be removed from my property?

Rarely, and not by ignoring it. A recorded easement runs with the land and survives a sale. It can end if the holder formally releases it in a recorded document, if the easement's purpose is permanently abandoned and the state's abandonment standard is met, or by a court order. Each of those routes is a legal process, not a surveying one. What the surveyor contributes is the evidence: where the easement actually is, whether it was ever used, and whether the physical use matches the written grant. That drawing is often what the attorney builds the case on.

What happens if an easement is not on my survey?

Two possibilities, and both matter. It may be an unrecorded or prescriptive easement, established by long, open use rather than a deed, which a records-based survey would not find but a field surveyor might spot as a worn track or a set of utility markers. Or the survey scope simply did not include easement location, which is common on cheaper products such as a mortgage or location survey. Read what you were delivered: if the drawing says it does not show easements or was prepared without benefit of a title report, it is not answering the easement question. That is a scope limitation, not an error. Our guide on how to read a plat of survey covers the notes to look for.

The bottom line

An easement survey turns the vague easement language in your title commitment into a mapped strip on your parcel, and it is the document that tells you whether you can build where you want to build. If you are also unsure where your lines run, order it together with a boundary survey rather than separately. Describe your property and what you are trying to do in the matcher on the Surveyors.io homepage to compare up to three quotes from license-verified local surveyors within about 24 hours, or start with the property line survey page if the boundary itself is your first question.