A deal can look clean on paper and still stall at the lender’s desk. Often the holdup sits in one spot on the map: a utility easement. When a lender reviews an ALTA survey details, the strips of land reserved for utilities get a hard look. This article walks through what lenders check near those easements and why it matters for your commercial deal. Know it early, and you keep your closing from slipping.

Utility Easements Can Affect the Use of Commercial Property

A utility easement is a strip of land where a utility has the right to run and service its lines. Power, water, sewer, gas, fiber. The land stays yours, but the utility can enter to install, repair or replace equipment. That right doesn’t go away when the property sells.

An ALTA survey maps those easements against the actual boundaries. Lenders read that map closely. The easement marks off land you can’t fully control. You often can’t build on it, block it or plant heavy landscaping over it. For a commercial site, that reserved strip can shrink your usable area in a real way.

ALTA surveys follow the 2026 ALTA/NSPS Land Title Survey standards, the national rules that lenders and title insurers count on. Under those standards, a buyer can ask the surveyor to add Table A Item 11, which pulls in extra evidence of underground utilities from client plans or a private utility location. For a site where buried lines are the concern, that add-on is worth requesting.

Lenders care because the loan is tied to the property’s value and use. If an easement cuts through the middle of a lot, it limits where a building or lot expansion can go. A site that looks like a clean rectangle may carry a corridor the owner has to keep open. That changes what the property can do, and a lender wants to see it before funding.

Easement Locations Are Compared With Existing Improvements

This is where the ALTA survey earns its keep. The surveyor plots the easements and then plots the buildings, pavement and other improvements on top. Lenders look at how the two line up.

Sometimes an improvement sits right inside a utility easement. A corner of a building might clip the strip. A parking row, a loading dock or a storage pad might sit over a line. That’s a condition a lender flags for a closer look, because the utility could have the right to reach that ground, even with a structure on it. The survey’s job is to make these overlaps visible, so no one finds them with a shovel later.

Trouble spots show up in a few common places:

• A building or addition that crosses into the easement area.
• Parking or drive lanes that sit over a buried utility corridor.
• Fences, walls or signs placed within the reserved strip.
• Stormwater features or pads built across an easement.

None of these means the deal is dead. They mean someone has to review the risk. The lender wants to know whether the improvement can stay, whether the utility could force access and what that would cost the borrower down the road.

Survey Findings Can Be Compared With Title Information

The ALTA survey doesn’t work alone. It’s built to be read next to the title commitment. An ALTA survey exists so a title insurer can remove the general survey exception from the policy, and that’s why the survey and the title work together.

The title work lists recorded easements in its exceptions. The surveyor takes those recorded easements and, where they can be plotted, draws them on the map. Lenders and title professionals then check both sides. Does every recorded utility easement show up on the survey? Does the survey show a utility line that has no easement on record? Gaps like these get raised for review.

This comparison is a due diligence step, not a legal ruling. The surveyor shows location and physical facts. The lawyers and title team decide what a given easement means for rights and risk. A good ALTA survey gives everyone the same clear picture to work from, so the legal review starts on solid footing.

Planned Development Can Make Utility Easements More Important

An easement you could ignore today can block your plan tomorrow. If you’re buying to expand, rebuild or change the use, the reserved strips matter even more. Your future footprint has to fit around them.

Say you plan to add a warehouse bay or a second building. If a sewer easement runs across the open part of the lot, that’s exactly where you can’t build. A lender reviewing the loan looks at your proposed use next to the existing easements. They want to see that the plan actually works on the real property, not the version in your head.

Timing matters here too. Utility easements often can’t be moved without the utility’s sign-off, and that process can take months. If your plan needs a line relocated, a lender wants that risk on the table before closing, not discovered mid-build. A borrower with big plans and a lot full of easements is a different risk than one buying a finished, stable site.

Questions About Utility Easements Should Be Addressed Before Closing

Every easement question has a deadline, and it’s called your due diligence period. That window is when you dig into the survey, ask about anything odd and get answers on record. Miss it, and you may be stuck with a surprise after you own the place.

Bring the right people in early. Your lender tells you what conditions they need cleared to fund. Your title professional explains the recorded exceptions. Your attorney reads the legal weight of each easement. Your surveyor confirms what’s physically on the ground and can update the map if something looks off. Line those four up, and most easement questions get answered fast.

Raise anything unresolved before you close, not after. A structure sitting in an easement, a utility line with no matching record, a planned building that lands on a reserved strip. Each one deserves a straight answer while you still have leverage.

For commercial deals in Cleveland, Ohio, the ALTA survey is your best tool for spotting these issues early. Read it next to your title work, walk the flagged spots with your team and settle the utility easement questions before the money moves. That’s how you keep a good deal from turning into a costly cleanup.