Easements and restrictions: what the decree does not cancel
There is a rule that helps you read any appraisal report: what is a person’s debt is cancelled; what is a feature of the thing remains.
Mortgages and attachments disappear with the transfer decree. Easements do not, restrictions do not, third parties’ rights in rem do not. Not because someone forgot about them: because they are not debts, they are how the property is made.
Of 13,474 auction properties with an analysis of the appraisal report, 5,008 have restrictions or easements flagged: 37%, more than one in three.
Easements
An easement is a burden on one piece of land for the benefit of another. At auction, three kinds are the most common.
Right of way. The neighbour crosses your land to reach theirs. If the easement exists, it still exists after you have bought, and you cannot lock the gate.
Pipes and cables. A water pipe, a drain, a power line passing under or over your property. It limits where you can build and where you can dig.
Rights of view and light. The neighbour’s windows overlooking your property that have acquired a right. They restrict what you can build and at what distance.
It is worth knowing that an easement can exist even without being registered, when it is apparent — that is, when there are visible, permanent works that reveal it: a beaten path, a manhole, an exposed pipe. It is one of the reasons why viewing the property is worth more than it seems: some easements are seen by walking, not by reading.
Public restrictions
These are limitations arising from the law or from administrative measures, and they have nothing to do with the debtor.
Landscape. The property is in a protected area: every intervention requires authorisation, timescales lengthen and some things cannot be done.
Heritage. If the asset is under protection, besides the limits on works there may be a right of pre-emption for the State on the sale.
Planning. Permitted use, building ratios, road or railway buffer zones, hydrogeological restrictions.
None of these is cancelled. Some weigh heavily on the value, others very little: it depends on what you want to do with the property.
Third-party rights
These are the most insidious, because they do not limit use: they take it away.
Usufruct. If the asset is burdened by a usufruct in someone’s favour, you buy the bare ownership. The property is yours but you can neither use it nor collect its income as long as the usufruct lasts — often for the usufructuary’s whole life.
Right of habitation. Similar in practical effect: someone has the right to live there.
Undivided shares. This is not a restriction in the strict sense, but it produces the same kind of problem: you buy a fraction and become co-owner with people you did not choose, with everything that deciding things together involves.
When the appraisal report talks about bare ownership or a share, the low price you see is not a discount: it is the price of something different from what you are imagining.
How to read them in the appraisal report
Prejudicial formalities have a dedicated section. The part almost everyone skips is precisely where these items are, because it looks like a technical list of registrations.
The method is simple: for each item, ask yourself whether it is someone’s debt or a property of the thing. Mortgage, attachment, precautionary seizure: debts, they disappear. Easement, usufruct, restriction, right of habitation: features, they remain.
Also look at the deed of provenance. Easements often arise from a division between siblings or a sale between neighbours twenty years earlier, and the deed describes them better than the appraisal report.
If the appraisal report is old, an up-to-date search before bidding settles any doubt about what has been registered since.
How much they weigh on the price
There is no table, but there is a criterion: how much that restriction affects the use you have in mind.
A right of way along the side of the land may be worth nothing to someone looking for a home. To someone who wanted to build there, it is everything. A landscape restriction on a property you are buying to live in changes little. On the same property bought to renovate and resell, it changes the timescales and the permits.
The mistake is not buying a property with an easement. It is buying it without knowing it is there, or knowing but without having checked whether it affects precisely the thing you were buying it for.
Frequently asked questions
Are easements cancelled by the transfer decree? No. The decree cancels attachments and mortgage registrations, not easements or restrictions.
Can I have an easement extinguished after the purchase? Easements are extinguished in the cases provided for by law, for example through prolonged non-use or by agreement with whoever benefits from them. It is not something you can decide on your own.
If the easement is not registered, is it still valid? It can be, if it is apparent. Registration is not the only way an easement exists.
Bare ownership: is it worth it? It is a different kind of investment, not a home at a discount. It must be assessed on the expected duration of the usufruct, not by comparison with market prices.
How do I find out whether there are landscape restrictions? It is checked at the municipality and in the planning instruments. The appraisal report usually flags it, but confirmation comes from the technical office.
Data as at 15 September 2026, on active properties with an analysis of the appraisal report available. The filter by appraisal tag returns “the lots where our analysis flagged restrictions or easements”, not all those that have them. What emerges from the appraisal report, the deeds of provenance and the searches always prevails.