rhondahonda
Junior Member
CALIFORNIA (LA County)
I recently bought a house that shares a driveway with the neighboring property. Driveway is on neighbor's side, with a reciprocal express easment granting 4' on either side. I want to build my own driveway and fence part of it off, but need to amend or extinguish the easement to do this. More details below:
- Approx 85% of the driveway is on the neighbor's property including the approach (we park on a concrete slab).
- A longstanding easement appears on the deed - we grant the neighbors 4' onto our property; they grant us 4' onto their property.
- 4' is sufficient for us to arrive on the driveway and park in our slab; 4' onto OUR property is NOT necessary for the neighbors and I don't know why they would have been granted such a recipricol agreement.
- The reason (presumed, not stated) for the easement is that there used to be an enormous tree blocking what would be the approach to our cement parking slab. The tree has since died and there is now room to create our own driveway alongside the neighbor's driveway.
- in order to improve our curb appeal, we want to erect a fence and plant a strip of vegetation along our property line; this is presumably prevented by the easement.
- Once our new driveway is built, the neighbor's driveway would be slightly narrow, but certainly adequate size; we're willing to grant an easement of 1' or so for goodwill and build our fence with respect to a 1' easement (i.e. 1' inside our prop line).
- the owner of the neighboring property is absentee; the front and back houses are rentals.
Any insight you could give me, or directions you could point me toward, would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
I recently bought a house that shares a driveway with the neighboring property. Driveway is on neighbor's side, with a reciprocal express easment granting 4' on either side. I want to build my own driveway and fence part of it off, but need to amend or extinguish the easement to do this. More details below:
- Approx 85% of the driveway is on the neighbor's property including the approach (we park on a concrete slab).
- A longstanding easement appears on the deed - we grant the neighbors 4' onto our property; they grant us 4' onto their property.
- 4' is sufficient for us to arrive on the driveway and park in our slab; 4' onto OUR property is NOT necessary for the neighbors and I don't know why they would have been granted such a recipricol agreement.
- The reason (presumed, not stated) for the easement is that there used to be an enormous tree blocking what would be the approach to our cement parking slab. The tree has since died and there is now room to create our own driveway alongside the neighbor's driveway.
- in order to improve our curb appeal, we want to erect a fence and plant a strip of vegetation along our property line; this is presumably prevented by the easement.
- Once our new driveway is built, the neighbor's driveway would be slightly narrow, but certainly adequate size; we're willing to grant an easement of 1' or so for goodwill and build our fence with respect to a 1' easement (i.e. 1' inside our prop line).
- the owner of the neighboring property is absentee; the front and back houses are rentals.
Any insight you could give me, or directions you could point me toward, would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.