What's the cost of having a electric pole relocated

[Tammy]

I am buying property & there is an AEP power pole right in the center of my yard. Anyone no the cost to have it moved to a different spot. I think the pole powers 3 different homes

[gfretwell]

The only real answer will come from the power company. That also implies they have an easement there so you could be limited on what you can build anyway.

I would start with a call to their engineering department.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Thousands. It is not just a matter of digging a hole and plopping it in the new spot. Wires may have to be replaced or extended. Easements may have to be done, engineering study and plans, then a crew with a couple of trucks and a few linemen. It won't be easy.

[passerby]

I think it's almost a guarantee the two other homeowners would not want to pay for it. However, if you haven't signed the contract yet, you may be able to get something from the seller to put towards the project. And it is a *major* expense.

They keep saying it's seller's market now but all regions are different. Maybe in your area the seller would be more agreeable. May also be useful to find out how the pole ended up in the middle of that property in the first place. Was that a subdivision? I mean, it's not common to have a pole literally in the middle of a yard. Perhaps there's more to this situation that you even know about. Definitely do more research about the property.

[Paul Drahn]

They probably have a recorded right-of-way that covers the pole location. My former home in Redmond, Oregon, has a power company right of way for 60 ft. from the edge of the street. All other properties along the power line have similar rights-of-way, but that didn't stop anyone from building out on the right-of-way. The city/county was oblivious to the building restrictions. Probably the same for your future home.

Have you realtor check the deeded restrictions for the property.

Paul

[gfretwell]

There are actually 2 main classes of this kind of thing. A Right of Way is generally along the street and you do not own that property. An Easement is property you own but you are restricted in what you can do there and whomever has easement rights can do whatever they need to access that easement

There is also another issue with power lines, You really can't build under one unless it is very high up even if it is your property. Simply moving the pole may not make that area buildable. They probably would not let you build in the easement no matter what.

This really sounds like it is making that lot more trouble than it is worth.,

[micky]

The power company might well have a bigger easement already than the spot where the pole is located. Call them first, explain that you are supposed to put a deposit on the property in the next couple days, and maybe they can get back to you with a price sooner than you'd expect.

AEP is the Arabian Emirates Power company, right? I don't know much about their customer service, but the only way to learn is to ask.

I agree with passerby that there might be more to this than meets the eye.

Are other poles on the same street in the middle of people's yards? Maybe they can just move the pole closer to the street?

Is there a house built on your property already? Maybe the parents owned all one big lot, gave half to a kid and his wife, then they both were moving and they realized there was enough land in the middle to build a third house. So a pole that was once on the border between two lots ended up in the middle of the new third lot.

[micky]

If the realtor isn't as fast at this as she could be, you can prob ably go to the County Clerk's office, or maybe it's called the Register of Deeds where you are and look at the deed to the property, and everything related to it.

This is all public information.

People who work for title search companies and do this for

In my case, the deed doesn't describe the property. It only refers readers to a plat, a map of all 100 houses the builder built over two years. If I look at that, it shows the utility easements, including parking lot drainage, utility (which includes sewer, electric, telephone, and water). It doesn't show where they buried the wires and pipes that go to each home. We don't have poles so it can't show them. But this all varies from state to state.

I used to go to the county courthouse to see this stuff, and it was a dollar a page to print it iirc, but in the last few years, it's all gone on computer at their office, and soon after that, it went online so I can look at plats from the whole county, the whole state, without leaving home.

I'm not sure about deeds without plats, but the people who work in that office in Baltimore County were very helpful to me and I'm nobody. They're probably helpful where you are too.

[Paul Drahn]

You are correct. It is an easement. A right of way is in effect until it is abandoned, the it is divided equally to property owners on each side. The property I mentioned has two electrical easements. Second one enlarging the first. Another easement is for an irrigation canal.

Don't call the power company. They don't know anything about easements. Only their lawyers.

Paul

[Tony Hwang]

Hmmm, For me, I won't bother purchasing that property. Easement(utility right of way) is pretty HARD to deal with. Even if pole can be relocated, it does not end there. Recabling, even other poles have to be realigned and, who knows what else is involved.

Finding where the underground cables, gas line, water pipes, etc. is easy. Just call your local "One call does it, Call B4 you di" outfit. Their service is free.

[Tammy]

The deed I have only states there is a telephone pole at the beginning of the property. Absolutely no where does it state a electrical pole is located anywhere on the land or any kind of easements except for the telephone pile.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Then all you need is a chainsaw!

[micky]

Usually (almost always) the pole is put up and owned by one utility and used by it and others**. Around here I think it's the phone company. So I'd go out there and look at the pole and see how many and what kind of wires are on it. If you can't tell, post a picture somewhere, and a link here, and we can probably tell. Take pictures of the wires going into the houses too. If there are 3 almost identical wires, or if they come from a box about the size of a small refrigerator, that's electricity. The phone only takes what looks like one wire.

Or, if you are only going by the deed, the pole might not be there at all.

If you don't live where the property is, the real estate agent should be willing to do this for you, and these days, to take pictures I would think.

**I have a friend who in the 80's used to be in charge*** of the telephone pole database for the city of New York. While there are no poles in most of Manhattan and large parts of Brooklyn, there are plenty of poles in the much of the rest of the city. Someone else was in charge of the tree database. Despite the novel _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_, which, before we got there, gave both my brother and me separately the idea that there was only one, NYC has over a million trees. ***This wasn't all he did. I think after he made some changes to the computer records, it only took a couple minutes of time most weeks.

[micky]

Right. The homeowner, in this case, owns the property, and the utilty owns the easement, the right to use the property in limited ways.

And, maybe by implication, the homeowner doesnt' have the right to use the property in a way that will interfere with the utility, or in the case of a right of way, whoever owns the streets (the city or county)..

OTOH, this last limitation is often ignored and no one gets upset if it doesn't cause a problem. For example, the guy I bought my house from planted bushes above the utility easement, and the drainage easement too, to delineate his property line. No one minds but if OT3H they ever need to dig up the bushes to do something to a utility line, they don't have to ask me and my complaints would mean nothing. OT4H, when they put in FIOS, they put their plastic connection box (about 20 x 14 inches) right next to my bushes (on my neighbor's land) and they ran the cable under my bushes without hurting them. And everyone has a sidewalk going to their door which crosses the utility easement. And the FIOS people ran the cable under all of the sidewalks too. They're not being especially nice because the Public Utilitiy Commission requires this.

WRT right of ways, when we moved into a suburban house near Indianapolis almost 60 years ago, some people including our seller had planted bushes almost all the way to the two-lane street we lived on, and a few trees almost as close. While others kept their planting back 20 feet, off the right of way that the county still owned. They didnt' want the county to widen the road and chop down everything they had planted, but it looked funny. 56 years later, the road is still two lanes wide, and even though there is loads of home construction north of there, people take Meridian St. (which is 6 lanes) or the Xway to get to those homes. So it looks like the road may never be widened. (But many streets do get widened.)

But she doesn't need to know about the easement. She needs to know what it would cost to move the pole, and the lawyers don't know anything about that.

BTW, Tammy, have you tried Google maps street view to see a bit of what the pole looks like?

I remember now that we had a telephone pole at the side edge of the property halfway back from the house to the rear boundary, My mother screwed in a big eye, and put one end of the clothes line on it. No one complained. (We had a dryer too.)

[Tony Hwang]

Hmmm, It is in the master plan when the sub division was developed. I don't know how old the neighborhood is. Also your property land survey map shows easement or utility right of way. Also blue print for the house. At least where I live. Our house sits on a corner lot with two sides having 5 feet wide utility right of way from sidewalk. If they dig up there to work on the gas line, they suppose to restore every thing the way they were like lawn, shrubs, things like that. All the utilities are under ground. No poles, nothing overhead in this neighborhood.

[gfretwell]

You may need to look at the county plat for the easement. As I said before, the real answer will come from the utility company engineering department.

[athiker]

4 poles cost me 18K+

[=]

That's right and there's probably a utility rate schedule approved by the state utility commission that covers such things as pole relocation costs. Much of that information is on line these days; but you have to hunt through it. As others have said, start by calling the utility company. They may ask you for the pole number which should be a tag or a series of metal numbers nailed onto the pole.

Tomsic

[Joyce Harris]

replying to Tony Hwang, Joyce Harris wrote: We don't live in a subdivision. We own 2 1/2 acres of land in Loganville, GA. We built a $450,000.00 home on the land. Our home has underground utilities. When we built, I didn't realize the pole would remain. It should be on the edge of our land but it is at least 30 feet from the edge.

[Joyce Harris]

replying to athiker, Joyce Harris wrote: Our utilities are underground on our land to our home. That one pole is an eye sore.