Guide · Easements

How to find easements on Florida property, and what a map cannot show

Easements are found in the county's official records: in the deeds in the chain of title, in the recorded plat, and in separate easement instruments that name the parcel. A title search pulls them together, and a survey places them on the ground. A parcel map shows almost none of them; the one kind mapped statewide is the conservation easement held by a public body, and even that map is incomplete.

Map Views · 31 October 2026 · Sources: Florida Statutes chapter 704, FDEP's conservation easement inventory, the county property rolls

What an easement is, and why maps miss it

An easement is a right someone else holds over your land: to run a power line, drain water, cross to a back lot, or keep the land natural. It belongs to the land, so it passes to each new owner, but it is not part of the parcel's outline. The property appraiser draws ownership for the tax roll; a right to use a strip of it does not change who owns it, so it rarely appears.

Step 1: read the deed and the plat

• The vesting deed. Read the last deed in full, not the roll's one-line legal. Look for "subject to" language and any easement granted or reserved by the seller.
• The recorded plat. If the legal description names a lot and block, the plat that created the subdivision is recorded by book and page. Read its notes and the strips drawn along lot lines and roads: utility and drainage easements dedicated when the land was divided often sit there.
• Older deeds. An easement granted forty years ago binds the land today. The deeds before the last one may carry it.

Step 2: search the official records for the parcel

The clerk of court indexes every recorded instrument by the names of the parties and the type of document. Search the owners' names, past and present, for instruments typed as easements, and read any that describe this land. Utility companies, the county, a homeowners' association and neighbours are the usual grantees. The difference between the clerk's records and the appraiser's is in official records vs the property appraiser.

Step 3: let a title search and a survey finish the job

A title agent searches the chain of title for you, and the title commitment lists each recorded easement it found as an exception the policy will not cover. Read that list: it is the best single answer to "what easements are on this land". A surveyor then shows where each recorded easement falls and notes what is visible on the ground, such as a power line, a ditch or a worn track, that no document explains.

The easements no record shows

Some rights over land are never written down. Under section 704.01 of the Florida Statutes, land that is "shut off or hemmed in" with "no practicable route of egress or ingress" can have a way of necessity across a neighbour's land, implied or by statute. A path used openly for many years can also become a right of way by prescription, settled by a court. Neither appears in a title search. A field visit, and a question to the neighbours, is how you find them.

Conservation easements: the one kind that is mapped

A conservation easement keeps land predominantly natural. Section 704.06 makes it perpetual, binding on every later owner, recorded like any other instrument, and held by a government body or a charitable corporation or trust. The Department of Environmental Protection keeps a statewide layer of the conservation easements submitted by cities, counties, the state, water management districts and federal agencies. We test each parcel's centre against it.

Two kinds show up. In Orange, Manatee, Osceola and Charlotte, the parcels are mostly small: subdivision preserves and the lots that back onto them. Statewide, 3,104 are residential common areas and 2,352 are single-family homes, so a house can come with a strip it may not clear or build on. In Highlands, DeSoto, Levy and Polk, the median parcel runs from 77 to 320 acres: ranches and timberland under easement, 576 of them coded as grazing land. The acres in the table are the whole parcels', not the easements'.

Where the map stops

• Only what was submitted. The layer holds easements public bodies reported. One held by a private land trust may be missing.
• The centre test. A Yes means the parcel's centre falls inside an easement. An easement over the back third of a lot can leave the centre out, so a No is not a clean bill.
• Every other easement. Utility, drainage, access and plat easements are not on our map, or on most others.

On Map Views

The parcel report's Conservation easement line reads Yes or No from that layer. Its sales list gives each deed's official records book and page or the clerk's document number, with the deed type, which is how you pull the deeds at the clerk; the legal description, and the county's fuller text where it publishes one, give the plat. The Conservation lands layer draws the state's managed areas, and the environmental resource permit layer marks permits already issued nearby. Note what the title commitment lists on the parcel. For a tax deed purchase, see what to check before you bid; for the boundary itself, property lines and surveys.

Easements are created by recorded instruments and, sometimes, by law and long use. The county's official records, a title commitment and a survey by a Florida-licensed surveyor are the authority on what burdens a parcel; our conservation easement flag is a first look from FDEP's inventory.