What is an easement? The QLD buyer's guide, with real numbers

A while back I was reading one of our own reports for a house in Tanah Merah, an ordinary 3-bed brick place on 600 square metres in Logan. Nice flat block, no flood drama on the lot itself, tidy street. Then the title facts: a registered easement over about 148 square metres of it. Thats 24.6% of the lot, plus a high-voltage transmission easement taking roughly another 178. The backyard extension the listing photos were selling? Suddenly a serious question.

Nobody mentions this in the open home. Its sitting on the title the whole time.

So heres the plain-English guide to easements: what they are, what they mean under Queensland law, whether you can build over one, and how to actually check a property before you sign. With real numbers from the Queensland cadastre, because we hold the states easement mapping data and almost nobody who writes these explainers does.

What is an easement?

An easement is a registered right for someone who does not own your land to use a defined part of it for a specific purpose. A drainage easement lets council run stormwater pipes through that strip. An access easement lets your back neighbour drive across it to reach their lot. You still own the land. You pay rates on it, you mow it. You just cant treat that part as fully yours, and generally you cant build anything permanent on it.

The numbers version, from the state cadastre we ingest: Queensland has 303,463 registered easement parcels mapped over its 2.3 million freehold lots. When we ran a random sample of 11,515 freehold parcels against that layer, about 13 percent had at least one easement physically overlapping the lot, not just touching its boundary. Roughly one lot in eight. This is not some rare title curiosity, its a normal feature of suburbia that most buyers have never once thought about.

And the mapped easement parcels are mostly small. The median one in Queensland is 96 square metres, and a quarter are under 43. Think a strip down your side fence, not a paddock. Which is exactly why they hide so well in a backyard photo.

Easement meaning under the law

The legal shape of it, still in plain English. An easement has two sides:

• The burdened land: the lot the easement sits on. If thats your block, you own the land but someone else holds a right over that strip. Lawyers call it the servient tenement.
• The benefited side: whoever holds the right. Sometimes its a neighbouring lot (their driveway crosses your land, so their lot benefits). In Queensland it can also be a public authority or utility with no neighbouring land at all, thats how council sewer and power easements work.

Two things follow, and both matter to a buyer. First, a registered easement runs with the land. It doesnt expire when the house sells, you inherit it at settlement whether you noticed it or not. Second, because its registered, it is genuinely findable before you buy. It is not hidden. Its just sitting in a registry most people never look at.

One honesty note on scope: the concept is the same across Australia, an easement in Sydney or Perth works the way described here. But land titles are state systems, every state runs its own registry and its own rules on the details. My examples and data are Queensland, where Titles Queensland keeps the register. If youre buying elsewhere, same questions, your states titles office.

What an easement changes when you're buying

The lot size on the listing is not the land you can use. Thats the whole story in one sentence.

That Tanah Merah block: 600 square metres on the title, which in Logan is a normal family block. Take out the registered easement and nearly a quarter of it carries a "generally cant build over it" condition. The land still counts in the lot size, still shows up in the marketing, still gets mowed by you. What it wont do is hold your extension, your pool, or in some cases even your shed without an approval.

Where do these easements come from? Mostly subdivision. When Queensland blocks get split, the new lots routinely need drainage runs, sewer connections and shared access strips, and each of those becomes a registered easement on somebodys title. When we read around 600 Brisbane subdivision plans in full, an easement turned up on about half the newly created lots, the most common encumbrance in those plans by far (the full numbers are in what actually happens when you subdivide a Queensland block). Across ALL Queensland freehold lots the rate is about one in eight. On freshly subdivided ones its every second lot. New estates are where easements concentrate.

Does an easement hurt the price? Depends entirely on where it sits and what it carries. A 1.5 metre drainage strip along the rear fence of a big block changes almost nothing about how you live there. A wide access easement running past your front door, or a transmission corridor through the middle, shapes everything you can do with the site. I wont give you a percentage because our data doesnt support one, and anyone who quotes you a universal "easements knock X% off" number is making it up. The honest framing: price the land you can actually use, not the land on the title.

The types you'll actually meet in Queensland

• Drainage easements. Council stormwater. Typically a strip about 1.5 metres wide running across or along the back of the lot. The most common flavour in the suburbs.
• Sewerage easements. The public sewer main, usually about a 1 metre strip. Comes with the strictest build-over attitude, because when the main needs digging up, it needs digging up.
• Access easements (rights of way). One lot drives across another. This is the battle-axe block pattern, a strip around 3 to 4 metres wide down the side of the front lot. If youre buying the front lot, part of "your" land is effectively the neighbours driveway.
• Transmission easements. High-voltage lines with a no-build corridor underneath, wider as the voltage goes up. These are the ones that reshape acreage blocks. The Tanah Merah place had one of these stacked on top of its ordinary easement, 110 kV line 34 metres from the house.

Heres an insider detail worth knowing: the states cadastral mapping tells you where easement parcels are, with startling precision. What it mostly wont tell you is what each one is for. Of the 303,463 easement parcels in the mapping layer, 303,286 carry no purpose or name at all in the mapped attributes. The purpose, and who benefits, lives on the registered survey plan and the title dealing. So the map answers "is there an easement on this block", the plan answers "what does it do to me". You usually need both, and our reports link the plan for exactly that reason.

Easement vs covenant vs encumbrance: which one is on your title?

Buyers mix these up constantly, and fair enough, they all live in the same title search.

• An easement is someone elses right to USE part of your land. Physical, mapped, sits on a specific strip.
• A covenant is a promise about WHAT YOU DO with your land. What you can build, materials, fencing. In new estates its usually the developers covenant. No strip on a map, it binds the whole lot.
• Encumbrance is the umbrella word for dealings registered on title that limit you, covenants and some statutory instruments among them. When our Ripley research found 269 parcels carrying a registered encumbrance in one estate suburb, that was mostly developer covenants, not easements.

Practical difference: you can often live happily with an easement you know about, its just land you dont build on. A covenant binds your choices on the whole block, and heres the trap, the title search only lists its dealing number. You have to order the actual dealing document to know whats in it. Most buyers never do. Order it.

Can you build over an easement?

Sometimes, with approval, and never by right. The standard Queensland position:

• Fences, gardens, lawns, generally fine.
• Sheds, carports, decks, concrete slabs: usually need a build-over approval from council or the relevant service authority, decided case by case.
• Habitable rooms and pools over a sewer or drainage easement: expect a hard conversation, often a no.

The logic isnt bureaucratic spite. Theres a pipe under that strip and one day someone has to dig it up. So approvals, where granted, come with conditions, commonly that the structure is removable, and if the authority needs access, removal is your cost, not theirs. Treat any easement strip as land you may not be able to build on until youve confirmed otherwise in writing. Weve covered the same rule from the subdivision angle before: it is conditional, and it is never guaranteed.

If your plans depend on that strip, get the build-over question answered before you go unconditional. Not after.

How to find easements on a property

All of this is public. Heres the checking order I actually use:

• Read the seller disclosure. Since August 2025, Queensland sellers must hand you a disclosure statement with a current title search attached before you sign. Registered easements appear on it. Actually read the thing.
• Look at the free state cadastre. QLD Globe shows lot boundaries and easement parcels for any address, free. It tells you where, though usually not what for.
• Order the title search and the registered survey plan. Titles Queensland, a small fee each. The plan shows the easement marked out (Easement A, Easement B) with dimensions, and the dealing tells you the purpose and who benefits.
• Or put the address into Property X-Ray. We run a free data hub for QLD properties, and the report reads the easement layer for the exact lot: whether one overlaps, how many square metres, what percentage of your lot thats claiming, with a link to the registered plan. The Tanah Merah numbers at the top of this post came straight from that panel. Fair warning on limits: like the state map, we can tell you where and how big, the purpose still lives on the plan.

Where Queensland's easements actually are

Because we hold the whole state layer, we can answer a question I have never seen answered anywhere: which suburbs carry the most registered easement parcels? The top 200 are below. The CSV under the table goes further, every one of the 2,774 Queensland localities with at least one, plus the median easement size in each.

Part of this list is just suburb size. But look at whos on it. Buderim, hilly Sunshine Coast, water has to go somewhere, so drainage easements everywhere. Then Upper Coomera, Pacific Pines, Ormeau, Peregian Springs: master-planned growth corridors, which is the subdivision story from earlier compounding for decades. Steep ground and new estates. Thats where easements live.

FAQ

How do I check for easements on a property for free?

Two free layers before you spend anything: QLD Globe shows the mapped easement parcels on any lot, and a Property X-Ray report reads the same state layer for an exact address and tells you the overlap in square metres. For the purpose of the easement youll still want the registered plan from Titles Queensland, which costs a small fee.

Can you build over an easement in Queensland?

Fences and gardens generally yes. Structures generally only with a build-over approval from council or the service authority, granted case by case and often on condition the structure is removable. Pools and habitable rooms over sewer or drainage easements are frequently refused. Confirm in writing before you commit to plans that depend on the strip.

Do easements reduce property value?

Sometimes, and it depends on position and purpose rather than a universal discount. A narrow drainage strip on the back fence of a large lot changes little. An access easement past the house or a transmission corridor through the block genuinely constrains what the site can be. Value the usable land, not the title area.

Can an easement be removed from a title?

Rarely, and not by you alone. It generally takes the benefited partys agreement to surrender it, registered with the titles office. Where the benefited party is a council or utility with infrastructure in the ground, treat removal as effectively impossible and plan around the easement instead.

Companion reads: what actually happens when you subdivide a Queensland block for where easements come from, retaining walls and drainage problems for what sloping-block water does to a purchase, and our Ripley deep-dive for what estate covenants look like at suburb scale.