What is an easement? A QLD property owner guide

Quick answer: An easement is a registered right for someone else to use part of your land for a specific purpose – a driveway, a drain, sewer or power lines – even though they do not own it. In Queensland easements sit on the title, they run with the land, and they pass to you when you buy. Most are harmless. A few will stop you building where you wanted to.

Spotted the word easement on a title search and wondered what you are actually buying? You are not alone. Here is the plain-English version.

What is an easement?

An easement gives one party the right to use a defined part of someone else’s land for a set purpose. The classic example is a neighbour whose only access to the road runs across your driveway. The land stays yours. Their right to cross it is registered against your title and survives the sale.

Two pieces of jargon worth knowing. The land that carries the burden is the servient tenement. The land that gets the benefit is the dominant tenement. On a title search you will see the easement recorded with a registered dealing number and, usually, a survey plan showing exactly where it runs.

What are the common types of easement in Queensland?

• Right of way – vehicle or foot access across your land, often to a landlocked lot behind you.
• Drainage and sewerage – stormwater or sewer infrastructure running under the property, frequently in favour of the local council.
• Electricity and services – powerlines, substations or underground cable, usually benefiting Energex or Ergon.
• Support and party wall – common in townhouses and duplexes where structures rely on each other.
• Easement in gross – benefits an authority rather than a neighbouring lot. Most utility easements are this type.

How do I find out if a property has an easement?

A title search shows registered easements on the second page under encumbrances. That tells you one exists and gives you the dealing number, but it does not tell you where it runs or how wide it is. For that you need the registered easement document and the survey plan.

This matters more than people expect. A title search that simply says “easement” is not enough to know whether it crosses the back corner or runs straight through where you planned the pool. Ordering and reading those documents is part of what we do on every purchase.

How do you do an easement search in Queensland?

Three documents, three fees, and you need all three. These are statutory fees current from 1 July 2026 and they are not subject to GST.

1. A current title search ($25.71). This tells you an easement exists and gives you the dealing number, the lot that benefits from it, and the survey plan that defines it. A typical entry reads “Easement No 123456789 burdening the land to Lot 1 on RP 145762 over Easement A on RP 123457”. What it will not do is draw the easement or tell you what it permits.

2. An image of the registered dealing ($50.16). This is the easement instrument itself, and it is the only document that tells you the purpose, the rights granted and who is responsible for what. Nothing else answers those questions.

3. An image of the survey plan ($27.56). This shows where the easement actually runs, how wide it is, and which part of the block it takes out.

Members of the public can order all three online from Titles Queensland. Approved search distributors pay lower statutory rates, but Titles Queensland frames those channels as being for legal and property professionals.

Most people stop after the title search. That is the mistake, because knowing an easement exists tells you almost nothing useful. For what else that search does and does not cover, see what a Queensland title search shows and misses.

Is there a free easement search in Queensland?

Partly, and it is worth knowing exactly how far free gets you.

Queensland Globe is free and carries an Easement Parcels layer drawn from the state cadastral database. It will show you the easement polygon, so you can see its shape and roughly where it sits on the block. That is genuinely useful and it costs nothing.

What Globe will not show you is the easement’s purpose, who benefits from it, the dealing number, or the terms. Those fields do not exist in the layer. It also will not draw the layer until you zoom in past roughly 1:100,000.

Two traps. An easement over the whole of a lot does not need a survey plan, so there may be nothing for Globe to draw even though a registered easement exists. And a plan can designate a “proposed easement” that was never granted – section 83A of the Land Title Act 1994 says the designation does not create an easement and is not evidence of an intention to create one.

So free tells you something is probably there and roughly where. It cannot tell you what it is, who holds it, or what it lets them do, and there is no free way to read the instrument.

For underground services generally, Before You Dig Australia is free and worth using before any excavation. Note that Brisbane City Council expressly says Globe, BYDA and its own community maps will not be accepted as evidence of a pipe’s location in a build-over application.

Can you build over an easement?

Usually not, and this is where easements stop being a technicality. You generally cannot build a permanent structure over an easement without the consent of whoever benefits from it. A council or utility will rarely agree, because they need access to maintain what is underneath.

Sheds, pools, decks, extensions and even some fencing can all be caught. Buyers regularly discover this after settlement, once plans are drawn and money is spent.

There is a hard legal backstop most buyers have never heard of. Section 65 of the Building Act 1975 says an assessment manager must not approve a building development application on land subject to a registered easement unless each registered holder of the easement has consented to the building work. A private certifier legally cannot sign off your extension over an easement without that consent.

In practice that means a formal referral. For sewer and water, Urban Utilities runs a Build Over Asset referral, which wants architectural plans, engineer-certified drawings showing clearances, a title search obtained within the last six months, the survey plan and the easement dealings. For stormwater in Brisbane, the council is the referral agency and responds within ten business days of a complete lodgement. Neither is a formality.

One absolute worth knowing: Urban Utilities will not permit buildings or their footings over pressure water infrastructure. That is not a negotiation.

How close can you build to an easement in Queensland?

There is no single setback distance from an easement boundary in Queensland, and anyone who quotes you one number is guessing.

The distance that applies to you comes from three places: the terms of your registered easement, the Queensland Development Code where infrastructure is involved, and the asset owner’s own standards.

Queensland Development Code MP 1.4 is mandatory statewide and covers building over or near sewers, water mains, stormwater drains and combined sanitary drains. It stops applying once you are more than 3 metres from the infrastructure centreline for a house or class 10 structure, 5 metres for a larger building, 5 metres for driven piles, or 10 metres for ground anchors. Within those distances its acceptable solutions include footings at least 1 metre from the connection, no excavation within 600 millimetres of the pipe wall, and a clear zone 1.5 metres wide and 2.4 metres high along the infrastructure.

The asset owner’s standards can be stricter. Urban Utilities applies clearances that vary by asset type, pipe diameter, material and footing type, ranging from around 0.6 metres to 5 metres. Bored piers near a small sewer main sit at 1 metre. Driven piles are 5 metres from all sewer and water assets. Do not rely on a single figure you read somewhere.

Powerlines are different again, and those distances are statutory. Schedules 4 and 5 of the Electrical Safety Regulation 2013 set minimum clearances that must be maintained vertically or horizontally. An unroofed deck needs 3.7 metres vertically from a bare low voltage line and 4.6 metres from high voltage up to 33kV. Energex makes the point plainly: council building approval does not guarantee anyone has checked the distance to the powerlines, and if a breach is found after construction the owner wears the cost of fixing it.

What are the easement rules in Queensland?

Five that matter for a homeowner.

The instrument governs. Almost everything about an easement – the purpose, the rights, the obligations, who pays for what – comes from the registered document, not from a general rule. This is why reading it is not optional.

It runs with the land. An easement binds every future owner. Buying the property means buying the easement.

You cannot create one by long use. Section 182 of the Property Law Act 2023 says no interest can be created by prescription or through the doctrine of lost modern grant. Decades of driving across a neighbour’s land creates nothing in Queensland.

You cannot build over one without consent. Section 65 of the Building Act 1975, as above.

A court can impose one, but it is expensive. Section 180 of the Property Law Act 2023 lets a court impose a statutory right of use where it is reasonably necessary for the effective use and development of your land. You have to show you made reasonable attempts to obtain it by agreement and that the other side unreasonably refused or could not be located. Compensation is payable, and the costs of the proceeding fall on the applicant unless there are special circumstances.

Who is responsible for maintaining an easement?

It depends on the terms of the registered easement document, which is why reading it matters. As a general rule the party with the benefit maintains the thing they use – the driveway, the pipe, the line – and must make good any damage caused by accessing it. The owner of the burdened land must not obstruct it.

Be careful with general rules here. There is no statutory default in Queensland allocating maintenance between private neighbours, and no automatic obligation to make good damage. Well-drafted easements deal with both as express terms, which means the answer for your property is in your document rather than in the law.

There is one statutory rule, and it runs the opposite way to what most people expect. Under section 85B of the Land Title Act 1994, if your land is burdened by an easement in favour of a public utility provider and it is not a public thoroughfare easement, you may be able to recover from that provider a reasonable contribution towards the cost of keeping the easement area in a condition appropriate for its enjoyment. That right can be excluded or amended by agreement, which is another reason to read the instrument.

Where the document is silent, a court can order it amended to include terms about use, repair or maintenance under section 181 of the Property Law Act 2023.

Can an easement be removed?

Sometimes, and it is rarely quick. An easement can be surrendered by agreement with the benefiting party and removed from the title, or extinguished by court order where it no longer serves any purpose. Both routes cost time and money, and neither is something to assume you can do after you buy. Treat a problematic easement as permanent when you are deciding whether to sign.

The practical routes are worth naming. Surrender by agreement under section 90 of the Land Title Act 1994, using a Form 10. The step people forget is that every registered mortgagee and lessee of the benefited lot has to consent. Merger, where one person ends up owning both lots – but the easement is only extinguished if the owner asks the registrar to extinguish it or a single title is created, so simply buying the other lot does not do it. Or a court order under section 181 of the Property Law Act 2023, where the grounds include that the easement is obsolete, that it impedes a reasonable use of your land, that it provides no practical benefit of substantial value, or that the benefit has been abandoned.

Does an easement reduce property value?

Often not at all. A narrow sewer easement along a back boundary on a large block affects very little. But an easement that sterilises the buildable part of the land, or a right of way that puts a neighbour’s traffic beside your bedroom window, absolutely affects both value and saleability – and it will affect it again when you come to sell.

The question is never “is there an easement”. It is “where does it run, how wide is it, and what does it stop me doing”.

What should a buyer do about an easement in QLD?

Before the contract goes unconditional: get the title search, get the registered easement document and the survey plan, overlay it against the site plan and anything you intend to build, and ask whether the easement is consistent with what you were told at the inspection. If an easement is not disclosed and it should have been, you may have rights – but they are far easier to exercise before settlement than after.

Easements are one of several things that can sit on a title. For the full picture of what else can burden a Queensland property, see our guide to what appears on a QLD title search.

Frequently asked questions

Buying in Queensland and want someone to actually read the easement document rather than tick a box? See our fixed fees or get in touch.

Does an easement transfer to a new owner?

Yes. A registered easement runs with the land and binds every future owner. Buying the property means buying the easement.

Can I fence across an easement?

Only if it does not obstruct the right being exercised. A fence across a right of way will usually be a breach. A fence along the edge of a drainage easement is often fine. Check the easement terms.

Is an unregistered easement enforceable in Queensland?

Sometimes, but not for the reason most people expect. Queensland abolished easements by long use: section 182 of the Property Law Act 2023 says no interest can be created by prescription or through the doctrine of lost modern grant, so decades of driving across a neighbour’s land creates nothing on its own. What can still bind you is an easement that was left off the register by mistake, because section 185 of the Land Title Act 1994 makes an omitted or misdescribed easement an exception to indefeasibility. A court can also impose a statutory right of user where land would otherwise be unusable. It is one reason a title search alone is not a complete answer.

Who pays to repair damage caused by accessing an easement?

Generally the party exercising the right, but the registered document governs it. Read it before you assume.

How do I do an easement search in Queensland?

Order a current title search ($25.71) to confirm an easement exists, an image of the registered dealing ($50.16) to read its terms, and an image of the survey plan ($27.56) to see where it runs. All three can be ordered online by members of the public through Titles Queensland.

Is there a free easement search in Queensland?

Queensland Globe is free and shows an Easement Parcels layer, so you can see the shape and position of an easement at no cost. It does not show the purpose, the holder, the dealing number or the terms, and there is no free way to read the easement instrument.

How close can you build to an easement in Queensland?

There is no single statutory setback from an easement boundary. The distances that apply come from the easement terms, Queensland Development Code MP 1.4 where sewer, water or stormwater infrastructure is involved, and the asset owner’s own standards. Powerline clearances are set separately under the Electrical Safety Regulation 2013.

Do I need consent to build over an easement in QLD?

Yes. Section 65 of the Building Act 1975 prevents an assessment manager approving building work on land subject to a registered easement unless every registered holder of the easement has consented.

Can you get an easement by using land for 20 years in Queensland?

No. Section 182 of the Property Law Act 2023 abolishes the creation of interests by prescription and by the doctrine of lost modern grant.