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Do Property Lines Include Sidewalks?

Authored by:

Founder & CEO

Jason W. Estavillo
25+ years of practicing law. Founder of Estavillo Law Group. Juris Doctor degree from the Golden Gate University School of Law. Licensed to practice in California and Maine, and admitted in each of the United States District Courts within California and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Reviewed by:

Estavillo Law Group
At the Estavillo Law Group, we have 50 years of combined experience inReal Estate and Foreclosure law. We offer a big firm experience at a small firm price. Most large law firms have become so big it translates to an enormous overhead. At our firm, we are committed to delivering the highest quality results while keeping our client costs down.

Do Property Lines Include Sidewalks?

When someone buys a house or property, does their property lines encroach or incorporate the sidewalks that are in front of their house or around their house? And the answer to that question is it depends.

But how do you determine whether or not it’s part of your property line? And if it is, who’s responsible for the sidewalk maintenance? And if it isn’t, who’s responsible if something does happen? When you buy a piece of property, there’s a deed of trust that’s recorded against the property that gives a legal description.

One way to ascertain what you own is to have a survey done, and the survey will describe the legal description of the property. The surveyor will come and mark where the property is.

With regard to sidewalks that could be potentially an easement whereby you’ve given up the rights to that strip of land to allow public access to go over it. So that’s where you have to look at the deed of trust as well. And it’s interesting when you have a sidewalk and then there’s a strip of land on the other side of the sidewalk, but it’s not part of the house side of the sidewalk that could be your responsibility as well.

And that strip of land that’s between the two is the sidewalk might not be your responsibility to maintain, it might be the city’s. But ultimately the way to figure that out is to look at the legal description.