So long story short. My mother is trying to sell her assets because she needs to buy a house for her retirement years — so she is selling her land. This land is undeveloped commercial land zoned LMI (light manufacturing industry, 1 acre).
We had a buyer, who backed out at the last minute because they contacted the city and requested a plat of the land. This plat shows an area for a drainage easement going through it diagonally (picture here). Once the potential buyers saw it, they backed out — and rightfully so! We had no idea about the easement (call it partial ignorance on my mom’s part).
Anyway, ever since, we’ve been trying to get to the root of this easement. Whether we can get it terminated or not. We found out the city has no idea about this easement, they don’t own it or anything. We contacted a realtor, and a lawyer, and they couldn’t return any information on it. The lawyer only stated seems like its been sold that way through previous buyers of the land, and it was always just included in the sale — perhaps even unbeknownst to the buyers — since our county’s parcel map site makes no mention of it. And the original owner is passed away at this point.
Fast forward to today, I talked to a real estate attorney today who looked at my situation and confirmed there is no actual recorded easement there. What exists on the city plat is the only mention of it anywhere. He also stated, it maybe best that i get a surveyor involved, for them to “re-survey” the land. Then they can confirm no easement exists, and also i could perhaps do two things: use the results of their survey to bring to the city to remove the easement on the city plats, or two, find out how to re-direct the easement if we can’t remove it, to perhaps make it more enticing for any buyers if they want to buy it and build on it. So i contacted a surveyor, explained my situation to them, and they will return my call.
We are in hail mary stages here, so we are desperate to know if we are on the right path to a solution. I am trying to get my mom her house, because she isn’t loving where she is staying right now – and does a good job of reminding me. And I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of this easement thing for more than a year now. Can anyone please throw some insight my way?