Neighbor posted my property.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Our deed calls for center line of the road. When road was paved in 1992 (we've been here 40+ years) center line of the road moved a couple feet. On one end, we lost land,and on the other gained land based upon location of center line of the road. Doesn't make any difference, as we still pay taxes based upon the whole amount. FYI, we have paid more in property taxes over the last forty+ years than we paid for land and two houses along with improvements (wells, septic tanks, drives, etc. Best part is I get to pay property taxes on our labor, as we built it ourselves.

[Andrew Joiner]

Our deed calls for center line of the road. When road was paved in 1992 (we've been here 40+ years) center line of the road moved a couple feet. On one end, we lost land,and on the other gained land based upon location of center line of the road. Doesn't make any difference, as we still pay taxes based upon the whole amount. FYI, we have paid more in property taxes over the last forty+ years than we paid for land and two houses along with improvements (wells, septic tanks, drives, etc. Best part is I get to pay property taxes on our labor, as we built it ourselves.

Thanks for your Property tax input Bruce. Hard to believe how much the cost is over the years. We got into Property tax a bit here : https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....building-rules

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

it is also strange that your mortgage company did not require a survey. Seems like more and more mortgage companies are requiring surveys now.

In all the years I worked at the land survey company, there was not a single mortgage or insurance company requiring it. I think it happens more in States on the East side and not States in the middle or West side. There were a number of clients contracting us to survey a parcel they were in the process of buying and they mentioned it was a requirement where they used to live "back East" and assumed it was a requirement in our State too.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Relatives inherited a 91 acre property about an hour north west of Philadelphia. No buildings, and apparently never were any. Had been used for various things since colonial days. Mostly for charcoal for the nearby iron and nickel mines. Anyway, they apply for a mortgage and the back comes back and says a title search shows there is a lien on the property. So we ask what lien. Turns out the original settler paid the Penns for 70 acres but took 91 and never settled up with the Penns, and now the state, the successor in interest to the Penns. In order to get the state to release the line, the property had to be surveyed and the survey returned to the state land office whereupon the payment of 21 shillings (statutory price still on the books) the lien would be released. This was in the 1980's and the property was first settled in the 1740's. I actually went to a coin shop and got 21 shillings English money (12 cents each at the time) to pay the state. Mortgage companies here have been requiring surveys of even tiny postage stamp size lots no matter when last surveyed.. I think in part to protect the bank in the event the seller did something that affects clear title that is apparent to surveyors, drainage easements, infringements, etc. Such problems may no show up as frequently as here in the east. After all, out in the mid west and west, most land was sold by sections and quarter sections with straight line due north-south and due east-west boundaries. A friend has a property with two measured lines and one angle. From the center of road no 741, NE 237 ft to a point, thence SE 428 ft to the center or road no 741. the road makes the third side of a large triangle but there is no measurements along the center of the road, and the road has been changed three times in the past 140 years since the deed description was done. We have no idea if he now owns more or less than it was 140 years ago.

[Andrew Seemann]

Yuck, we don't deal with that stuff here. Jeffersonian survey since day one; none of that "150 paces from Old Man Jenkin's barn to the hollow oak tree and thence due north to the creek, etc" metes and bounds stuff. For the most part land was normally surveyed before it was sold, and , most land has been titled for less than 150 years with typically a clear record of ownership.

I seem to remember hearing in a college geography course that at one point there was something like seven times more land titled in New Jersey than existed in New Jersey.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Y
I seem to remember hearing in a college geography course that at one point there was something like seven times more land titled in New Jersey than existed in New Jersey.

In very early Pennsylvania (around 1730) a guy named Faulkner obtained a thousand acres of so and sold off parcels. Some he sold to four or five different individuals, both here and abroad. There is still a place called Faulkner Swamp.

[Steve Demuth]

Yuck, we don't deal with that stuff here. Jeffersonian survey since day one; none of that "150 paces from Old Man Jenkin's barn to the hollow oak tree and thence due north to the creek, etc" metes and bounds stuff. For the most part land was normally surveyed before it was sold, and , most land has been titled for less than 150 years with typically a clear record of ownership.

I seem to remember hearing in a college geography course that at one point there was something like seven times more land titled in New Jersey than existed in New Jersey.

It can still get plenty complicated. Our place was originally platted as woodlots of 6 2/3 acres each (so six lots to fit a "40"). The property itself is a complex subdivision by the intersection of two almost diagonals on one 40 (cuts across 5 of six of the original lots), minus another angled cut where the county wanted a curve rather than a corner on the road, plus another 6 2/3 acre lot from a different 40 in a different section in a different township. Altogether it's a nice, compact blob on a map, but it takes a half page of legal description to describe it, and when I went to put in a fence so I could use some of it for pasture, cost me 1/3 of the price of the fence to find where the corners and actual road boundary were. It also didn't make my neighbor overly happy that the old fence post he thought marked the boundary wasn't actually where the surveyors thought it should be, and the new line ran right through the center of a valuable old walnut tree that he had believed was entirely (but just) entirely on his property. Fortunately, he and I get along reasonably well, and neither of us have an interest in cutting the tree at this point, so the fence goes around the tree, leaving it on his side.

[Tom M King]

The county that our county was originally a part of (in another state now) was formed in 1720. The English Crown decided, at urging of Governor Spotswood, that the best way to cut the French off from joining their properties from the North, and South, preventing westward expansion by the English, was to populate the territory with English. Anyone could get a thousand acres that wanted it, with a few unenforced rules.

Not only could you get the thousand acres, but if you could count your fingers, and toes, you could register as your own surveyor. Now, as you can imagine, some of those self-surveyed property lines grew, for some odd reason. When the next person came along, and decided they were good with the first surveyors version of that property line, it doesn't take much imagination to see how this went.

A couple of centuries later, some family will want to sell off a hundred, or few acres. By then, they were dragging chains for surveying, so the left over parcel might be significantly larger than what is registered with the County.

There are still many parcels around here that have never been surveyed by modern methods, and we don't intend to ever have it done. Ours did not belong to my family for that time before we came here, but I see no need to argue with the old surveys. It was what was left over from having small parcels cut off from it.

All our property lines are state roads, except for one small one, and I have dibs on that piece.

[Jim Becker]

The oldest portion of our current home was part of a very large estate that Wm Penn transacted to another family named Paxton, to the best of my knowledge. That was after the land was, um...appropriated...from the local natives, one tribe of which still exists on the top of the mountain behind our home and who run a very successful security company. Our particular 3.82 acres is shaped like the state of Louisiana and was "fun" for the surveyor to lay out when that was necessary in 2007/2008 as part of our home addition project. Only one corner had an existing marker remaining and three other corners were in the middle of a rocky area of forrest. The 410' of frontage is on a state highway which "back in the day" was a dirt road, but is now a very busy stretch of road because it's a designated route for oversize transport as there are no bridges, etc.

[Brian Deakin]

I live in the Uk and I have had issues with my neighbor constantly over the years edging the line of the boundary over
With hindsight I believe the best option is to try to resolve the issue when it first occurs and put in place evidential markers of the boundary line
Additionally it is worth making a video record of the boundary lines
The difficulty even in the Uk is it can cost tens of thousands of dollers to go to court and even though the principle may be important to you going to court could in the uk

(1) Risk failing with you claim and having to pay the neighbors costs
(2) Winning your claim ,having to pay court costs but being unable to recover any costs from the neighbor
(3) The judge seeing the claim as frivolous if it is a small amount of land and throwing the claim out
(4) The judge in my case deciding could simply draw a line half way between the two properties

[Donald G. Burns]

I owned a house out in S. California that was in a neighborhood where the lots were on a hillside and the next lot up was about 20' higher than ours. I owned most of the slope, but the house builder was lazy with making the property lines and the slopes follow the same line. One day the upper neighbor put in a block wall along the top of the slope (no problem), and I asked if I could maintain the full slope with plants and water it since he wasn't interested in maintaining his slope area. Later on I put a retaining wall in along the back of our property and also the far side of our lot (our down slope). After leveling our property I gained a lot of flat back yard, but the neighbor on the far side (down slope) said that I encroached on their land. I had had a survey done before building our wall and then had the wall installed 1" in from the property line. Neighbor raised a stink and got the homeowners association involved and in the end was told that I was correct. The down slope people did all kinds of nasty things like pulling out the property survey markers. During all of this process the first neighbor (the one above me) found out where his property line was since we had to survey from his line across my property to find the far side's correct line as part of the process. He found out that about 1/3 of the slope was his and his rear yard could have been made a whole lot larger too if he'd gone to his property line. Soon there after he was transferred and sold his home. I continued to maintain the slope, but did tell the new neighbor that part of the slope belonged to him. I did nothing to claim it for the 20 years we lived there. When we sold I don't know if new people knew they did/didn't own the slope since we didn't meet them. So sometimes good walls make for bad neighbors too.

A solution to bad neighbors can also be to grant a license to do only certain things on your property and if you withhold the license for a period of time you can show ownership and allow non-adverse use. An example might be a license (not easement) to cross at a certain place to reach public land and a gate that you close once a year for a day or week. But DYODD and you find out the laws of your state.

[Jack Llewyllson]

Sheesh ...

<some snipping here>

In 23 years, I have had to sue three neighbors over property line disputes. Came home from a three day weekend 20 years ago, to find a neighbor put a fence part way across my pasture. I don't understand how people don't care what they do to other people's property. I never put up a fence or cut down a tree without making sure I was on my own property. Cost me a fortune to have my farm surveyed.

I feel ya, Perry.

For 30 years or so, Mom's been telling me stories about a bequest for a property in the state where she lives (south of my state). It's a small cabin/house/actually a former real estate office on one of two long, narrow lots. It sits on the SW corner of the southern lot, near a street. Along with my siblings and many friends, I have a lot of history at that property, which she purchased about 50 years ago. Mom's been telling me for most of my life that I will inherit both lots. After my eldest daughter was born, she changed the will to split that bequest between the two of us. Other siblings are in line for other bequests.

About 20 years back, she had it surveyed after people encroached on the street edge of the northern lot.

About ten years ago, a neighbor built a shed that clearly encroaches on the northern lot's northern boundary. I advised her to write him a letter. He responded that he'd really rather not move the shed, and she agreed to let it stand. Subsequently, he erected a property line fence that deviates around the shed, on Mom's side, where he's encroaching. Whether that correspondence still exists is unknown to me.

I have NOT been looking forward to a property line dispute.

Mom's now in failing health, alert but without much energy. Her mind is no longer reliable, nor has it been for a few years now. I've recently seen a copy of the only known extant will, which dates back to the early 1990s. It names me as the beneficiary of the cabin lot, but assigns the northern lot to my brother. The northern lot has most of the timber, while the southern lot has the cabin, a swamp covering about half the land, and a septic tank that would surely not be permitted under current codes.

My brother is an embezzler and a welsher. He's lost several million dollars worth of real estate in Idaho and Nevada due to not paying the notes (in some cases) or the fees (in others), or after being successfully sued by partners. He "made his bones" by stealing both money and property from our father, who is now dead and who divorced our mother long ago.

These days, I counterbalance the dread of having my pestilent brother for a neighbor against the relief of letting him knuckle it out with the next neighbor. For our part, my daughter and I are considering condemning all or part of the cabin lot as a nature preserve. The land, small as it is, supports a rare blue butterfly species and some endangered peeper frogs in the swamp.

The only legal disputes more sordid and angry than property clashes are will challenges. Both of them spin up rage and underlying personal issues faster than instructing one's spouse to "just calm down." I'd like to stay as clean of both as possible.

For this little house wherein I'm sitting to type this, here in a little suburb of Seattle, we "solved" our only-ever neighbor dispute (i.e. an angry old woman with mental health issues, with whom we share a fence line) by building a tidy little shop, 22 feet high, that blocks the two-way view between our back decks quite admirably.

So G-d bless shops. After dogs and motorcycles, they're the world's next-finest mental health affordance.

Life is short, and many property disputes exceed the spans of those pursuing them. Insofar as it can be avoided, I do not wish to play.