Fire hydrants, storm drains and utility and telecom/telephone boxes are examples of what many houses have in terms of some sort of public easement running along the front of the property. Even if there is no sidewalk, often the first five or six feet from the road is a public easement.
For insurance purposes, a fire hydrant out front is considered a good thing, and they are so ubiquitous that you don’t really even see them.
My brother has a big green electrical box at the front of his yard. The previous owner planted a shrubbery around it, so with the other landscaping you don’t really notice that either.
The telephone and the cable companies often have boxes out front of family homes as well. And I usually notice these ones, mostly because they tend to get beat up and damaged maybe by snowplows of by people breaking in to steal cable. They are kind of flimsy and I don’t think the utility and telecom companies repair them often enough.
But to answer the question
But to answer the question, do these public things affect the desirability of a property? I would say, yes a little bit but not enough to dissuade a buyer who otherwise likes the property.
