Easements and covenants: what you inherit when you buy

Two invisible features follow Queensland land through every sale: rights that other people hold over it, and promises its past owners made about it. Lawyers call them easements and covenants; buyers meet them at settlement, sometimes too late to care¹².

Both attach to the title, not to the person who agreed to them. When the block sells, the new owner inherits them automatically - which is why checking for them belongs in your contract stage, not after moving in.

Easement or covenant? The quick difference

The two get confused constantly, so anchor the vocabulary early:

• An easement grants a right: someone else may use part of your land for a defined purpose such as drainage, powerlines or access.
• A covenant imposes an obligation: owners promise to do, or refrain from doing, something - commonly about buildings, materials or use.
• Easements benefit identifiable authorities or neighbouring lots; covenants benefit whoever holds the advantage of the promise.
• Both bind successors in title automatically. Neither disappears because the new owner disagrees with it.

Getting this straight matters because the remedies differ: easement disputes usually concern interference with a right, while covenant disputes concern breach of a restriction.

Easements: other people’s rights across your land

An easement lets a third party use part of the property for a stated purpose. Common Queensland examples:

• Sewer and water mains along rear boundaries, granting the utility access for maintenance.
• Stormwater and drainage easements carrying runoff between blocks.
• Electricity transmission corridors with clearance rules beneath powerlines.
• Right of way / carriageway easements giving a neighbour access across your driveway to their rear lot.
• Support easements in older terrace-style subdivisions.

Practical consequences are bigger than the strip’s size suggests. You generally cannot build a shed, pool or extension over a sewer easement without approval - often refused outright. Fences may be excluded from parts of the boundary. A right of way means strangers’ cars crossing your frontage lawfully, forever.

Covenants: promises that stick to the dirt

A covenant recorded on title binds owners to do, or not do, something. Restrictive covenants might preserve building character, limit heights, mandate materials, or prohibit certain uses. They appear most often in master-planned estates and older prestige subdivisions.

Enforcement sits primarily with whoever benefits - developers, successor bodies, or neighbouring owners - and the practical bite varies enormously between estates. In community titles, similar restrictions live in the body corporate bylaws instead, governed by the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 (Qld), so unit buyers should read those bylaws with equal care.

Finding them before you commit

Queensland’s disclosure regime now does much of this work for you. The seller’s Form 2 disclosure statement under the Property Law Act 2023³ (Qld), section 99, must disclose title matters including registered encumbrances - see our Form 2 guide . Your own checks should still include:

1. Title search and plan - read every registered instrument, not just the summary.
2. Contour and services search with the council for infrastructure overlays.
3. Survey, ideally, confirming where easements physically sit - plans drift from reality, fences drift further, and a drainage line running beneath the pool you planned is better discovered on paper than by an inspector’s shovel.
4. Body corporate records where applicable, covering bylaws and approvals history.

If disclosure was deficient, buyer remedies under the new property law framework exist - our property practice assesses termination and compensation options regularly. The disclosure regime has raised the baseline, but it protects against concealment rather than ignorance: a buyer who never reads the documents still owns every easement the documents described.

Living with them afterwards

Most easements are tolerable once understood: keep the corridor clear, expect occasional utility crews, design around the constraint. Problems emerge when owners forget:

• structures built over easements can be ordered removed at your cost;
• obstructing a right of way invites injunctions;
• breaching a restrictive covenant can bring enforcement action years after purchase; and
• insurers and lenders ask about encumbrances during refinancing.

Practical housekeeping helps enormously. Keep easement corridors accessible so crews never need forced entry, photograph the area before and after anyone else’s works, and disclose encumbrances freely when you later sell - they surface on title searches regardless, and candour prevents renegotiation games at offer stage. Developers sometimes release restrictive covenants administratively as estates mature; asking costs nothing and occasionally unlocks a stalled renovation plan.

Neighbour disputes about shared driveways and drainage lines are among the most common matters we see - see also boundary encroachments and our neighbourhood-focused FAQs for adjacent issues.

Removing or varying an encumbrance

Encumbrances feel permanent, but the law offers exits - all difficult:

• Agreement. The benefiting party, often a utility authority, consents to release; the surrender is then registered on title.
• Merger. Acquiring the benefiting land extinguishes the easement as between common ownership.
• Court application. Statutory pathways allow modification or extinction in defined circumstances - obsolescence, unreasonable obstruction, or consent of those affected - though this is litigation by another name.
• Abandonment. Almost never succeeds; decades of non-use rarely persuade a court that a registered right has died.

Budget expectations realistically: contested applications cost more than most renovations, which is why negotiated outcomes usually win economically even at apparently generous prices.

The bottom line

Easements and covenants rarely kill a purchase, but they should inform the price and the plans. Read the instruments, measure twice, and negotiate before signing rather than litigating after settlement. For deeper reading, browse our property resources and contract law resources .

Unsure where you stand? Contact Bell & Senior Lawyers for a free initial chat.

Notes