The Expert Podcast

…So are mineral rights for real estate attached to a property deed. Well it depends Some properties have mineral rights and some have them split off and owned by somebody else You might own a home and own the property but find out that the rights to any minerals gas oil that's underneath the surface might already be sold to somebody else long before you bought the property. And they might have even the access to the property They might have the right to be able to. bring equipment out to your property to mine that. material or to extract that oil and gas how would you know Well, in order to do that you need to run a title search and now there are three or four different types of a title search. the most common is what's called a current owner search that searches who's the current owner and all records from that current owner forward. Which is normally what's done When a piece of real estate is transferred they run a current owner search It's the cheapest fastest way to do a title search But if mineral rights have been split off from that property, It may not show up on a current owner search. If let's say a farmer that owned a hundred acres sold the mineral rights to some mining company or oil company, and then subdivided the property later. Each deed after that would not show that transfer of mineral rights to the oil company because it happened before the deed was split. So how do you determine that you have to run What's called a chain of title search going back 50 60 years to see if mineral rights were split off because even at that mineral right chain. Transfer. XYZ oil company to Exxon to mobile to whoever. Those do not run with the surface land And you may find that the records have been long since split off and they're in different deed books. So if you're interested to make sure that your property you're considering purchasing has mineral rights, you want to run a. Chain of title back to where mineral rights would have been split You may find they run with the property and if they do, there will be no record of them being split. This also holds true for other types of non standard vesting for example timber rights He may have timber rights for extracting, you know cutting down trees and making lumber from a property. You may have. water rights. Riparian rights that give somebody downstream or even somebody next door. the privilege of extracting water from your property whether it's through surface streams or, underground aquifers. So those are things that sometimes don't always run with the land. A property deed is simply a record of a transfer of one type of right from one person to another. If some of the bundle of rights were split off prior a current owner search may not show that So if having knowledge of those mineral rights on real estate, as part of a title search is important, make sure you're getting the correct type of title search to determine if those rights still run with the land, or if the subsurface rights have been separated and somebody else owns. them even without your knowledge the other type of right to keep in mind it happens. more frequently in modern times. Is air rights So you may have. A company that does let's say cell towers it has the right to put a cell tower on your property. and have the ability to access it through an easement. that wasn't a type of, property right That existed even 20 years ago, but cell tower and other air rights. are a new type of split off property bundle that may affect the ownership and use of a piece of real estate…