Updated September 28, 2026
Your building shares a driveway with the sixplex next door. Nobody has thought about it in twenty years because it's never been a problem — until a title search for your sale turns up the recorded easement, and the buyer's attorney has questions you've never had to answer before.
A meaningful share of pre-1978 LA multifamily buildings were built on narrow, deep lots where a single driveway serves two adjoining parcels, or a rear parking area is reached only by crossing a neighbor's land. These arrangements are usually formalized as a recorded easement — a legal right for one parcel to use a defined portion of another for access, parking, or utilities. Some are decades old and precisely documented. Some are informal, undocumented arrangements that have simply worked by mutual habit for years.
A recorded easement runs with the land, not with the person who granted or received it. When you sell, the buyer takes the property subject to the same easement — bound by the same obligations and entitled to the same rights you had. You can't extinguish an easement simply by selling to someone new, and you can't sell your way out of an easement dispute with a neighbor; it transfers along with the property, unresolved.
Whether the easement is actually recorded. An easement everyone has honored informally for decades but never recorded is a materially different risk than one properly documented in the chain of title. Unrecorded arrangements are harder to enforce and easier for a future neighbor to dispute.
What it actually grants — and to whom. Access only, or access plus parking, or access plus utility lines? Granted to a specific adjoining parcel, or written more broadly? The scope matters more than most owners realize until someone reads the language closely.
Maintenance obligations. Recorded easements sometimes specify who pays for driveway repaving or repairs, and sometimes say nothing at all — which itself becomes a point of negotiation between owner and neighbor over time.
Whether it's exclusive or shared. An easement that grants a neighbor the right to park in what you've always used as your own spaces is a different disclosure than a pure access easement with no parking component.
If a driveway has been shared for years with nothing recorded, that gap surfaces during title and survey work, not after. A buyer's lender will generally want it resolved — either formalized as a recorded easement, or clarified as to which parcel actually owns the disputed strip — before funding. Waiting until you're in escrow to have that conversation with a neighbor you've shared a driveway with for two decades is not the position you want to negotiate from.
Pull your title report and confirm exactly what's recorded against the property regarding access, parking, and utilities shared with adjoining parcels. If nothing is recorded but an arrangement exists in practice, decide before you list whether to formalize it — a recorded, clearly worded easement is a much easier fact for a buyer to underwrite than an undocumented handshake arrangement a title company flags mid-escrow. This is the same pre-listing discipline covered in how to sell an apartment building in Los Angeles: the goal is a buyer discovering nothing that the seller didn't already know and disclose.
An unresolved or undisclosed easement dispute is exactly the kind of issue owner's title insurance is built to cover if it surfaces after closing — but a known, pre-closing issue has to be addressed before a clean policy issues, not insured around silently. The same document review that catches an unrecorded easement is part of what a well-negotiated purchase and sale agreement assumes has already happened.
A shared driveway or a decades-old utility easement is rarely a dealbreaker. What makes it a problem is a seller who's never actually read the recorded language, facing a buyer's attorney who reads it for the first time during escrow. Know exactly what's recorded, what it grants, and to whom, before a title report tells you for the first time at the worst possible moment.
Does a shared driveway easement transfer automatically when I sell?
Yes. A recorded easement runs with the land and binds the new owner on the same terms, whether the easement favors your parcel or burdens it.
What if the shared driveway was never formally recorded?
It's a bigger risk than a recorded one. A buyer's lender will typically want it resolved — formalized or clarified — before funding, so address it before you list rather than during escrow.
Can I remove an easement before I sell?
Only with the cooperation of whoever holds the benefit of it, or through a legal process to extinguish it. You cannot unilaterally remove a recorded easement just because you're selling.
Michael Sterman is Senior Managing Director Investments at Marcus & Millichap.
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