Where is the right of way in front of my home?
The answer to this is best found from the plat you have of your property. The Public Works Department at City Hall has some of the subdivision plats in the city where this information can be found. A rough rule of thumb we use is, if you are on a concrete street that ends in a cul-de-sac, your right of way is likely 50' overall. You can typically find where your property starts by roughly measuring half the overall distance from the centerline of the street. In the case of a 50' right of way, that is 25' from the centerline. Most of our concrete streets are 26' wide. If you do the math, half of 26' is 13' and that leaves about 12' of the grass area past the curb as area of your front yard that you do not own, that is within the city's right of way. Now in the case of most asphalt streets, the right of way varies and you are best advised to find this information from a record plat of your property. We again use a rule of thumb that the right of way in these areas is 40' overall. As much of the asphalt pavement is about 24' wide, the math usually leaves us about 8' of yards to be within the right of way for these city streets.

Show All Answers

1. What is a "right of way" and who owns it?
2. What is the policy in regards to dumping materials on roads?
3. What is the start time for construction, heavy equipment or blasting?
4. Where can I address a utility or service outage issue?
5. My neighbor is building too close to my property, what do I do?
6. Where is the right of way in front of my home?
7. Well if this right of way area is not mine, yet my yard goes to the curb, why should I cut the grass here if it is not technically my property?
8. What is the difference between a right of way and an easement?
9. Can easements ever go away?
10. Why would I ever want to grant an easement to someone to place something through or along my property?
11. I need to know where my property ends and the right of way starts. Who can do this?
12. What would such a survey cost me?
13. Where can I get names of surveying companies?
14. Who is responsible to maintain a driveway apron? This is located within a right of way.