Protective Covenants and Conservation Easements

Environmental Vitality and Sustainable Living

We are often asked the following questions:

• What are Protective Covenants?
• What are Conservation Easements?

Protective Covenants

Protective covenants are established by the property owner and “run with the land” (that is, they remain in force no matter who owns the land or how many times it changes hands) and will typically protect the property in ways you have defined for at least twenty-one years.

These are proactive, defined limitations about what can happen on or with the property. These limitations are created to serve the interests of people and that of the environment—usually both—and they become a part of the deed to that piece of property.

Conservation Easements

Conservation easements can protect in perpetuity some portion of your land, or all of it, as you choose. Particulars are worked out with whatever land trust or conservancy you gift, sell or otherwise convey your development rights to. Since the right to develop that portion of your land covered by the easement then belongs to a not-for-profit conservation organization, such land is permanently protected, so long as the organization or its heirs stay in business.

You and the conservancy work out the particulars of what, if any, development you reserve the right to do.  All other development rights are conveyed to the conservancy, which by law cannot use them. Thus, the land and its environment are permanently protected.

In North Carolina, conservation easements result in both federal and state income tax benefits that last for years. Property taxes are significantly less. If land covered by such an easement is part of an estate, then upon the death of the owner, the estate tax may be significantly less. We can direct you to conservation easement tax experts who can definitively help with discerning more precisely what your tax benefit would be.

We can help you understand the tax and other benefits of such easements and how they can leverage your sale, purchase or retention of property.