Manvel Sellers: Read Your Easements Before You List

When you sell a Manvel home, the title company issues a title commitment for the sale, and its Schedule B is where recorded easements and deed restrictions show up. Reading your own recorded documents before you list lets you answer a buyer's questions early instead of learning about them during the contract.

What Schedule B lists, and what it leaves out

According to a March 2025 Texas Real Estate Research Center article, deed restrictions come first in Schedule B, under B-1, and recorded easements follow in later subsections. An easement recorded against your lot does not end when you sell; it passes to the next owner the same way it passed to you.

City and county rules generally do not appear there. Flood elevation rules are one example. Manvel's city rule puts the lowest floor of a new or substantially improved home in zones A, AO or AE two feet or more over base flood elevation, and outside the city limits Brazoria County has applied a two-foot standard to new construction since May 2005. A buyer who plans to add on will want to know which set of rules covers your lot.

A before-you-list checklist

• Check which city your Brazoria Central Appraisal District account names, since a mailing address can mislead. Meridiana lies partly in Manvel and partly in Iowa Colony, and the City of Manvel reports more than 550 homes there carrying the other city's ZIP code. Pomona is in Manvel's extraterritorial jurisdiction, outside the city limits.
• Pull any written easements from the Brazoria County clerk's property records.
• Mark any easement that crosses the part of the yard a buyer might fence or build on, so it does not surprise a buyer close to a contract deadline.
• If you are buying your next home too, ask for that commitment as early as the title company can issue it, and keep both closing dates on one calendar.

When you sell and buy at once

Your sale and your purchase are separate transactions, and each gets its own commitment. On the house you sell, the easements become your buyer's concern; on the house you buy, they become yours. If your next home will need flood coverage, start the quote early: the City of Manvel says a new flood policy can take as long as 30 days before it is in force. Put that date on the same calendar as the title work.

The full background is in Easements and Title Commitment Exceptions on a Manvel Lot.

Selling in Manvel? Send me the address with the Contact me button on this page, and I will reply within one business day. Houston Properties Team and I will send back the city and taxing units listed on your parcel's appraisal district record.

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