Neighbor removed the old survey pin, what should I do?

[Zachary Hoyt]

I live in a little town with many very nice people in it, but unfortunately some of my immediate neighbors do not fall under that heading. A semi-retired surveyor who has found the corners for a lot of people in the hamlet came by a couple of weeks or so ago to try to find the corner of my lot. The lot is a bit under 1/4 acre on a street corner, so there are two pins along the streets and one corner is covered by the streets. The back corner is the one that no one seems to know where it is.

Both my neighbors came out and yelled and cursed at the surveyor and his helper and threatened to call the police (though none came) when they saw him measuring for the corner. One corner had a rebar pin he had put in himself about 5-10 years ago, and he recognized the little cast iron cap on the top of the rebar with his name on it. He wouldn't take any money when he left, and said he was sorry I had such terrible neighbors and that he would look into the corner question further since there seemed to be a discrepancy in the measurements.

I was gone for 5 days to visit my sister in Massachusetts and got back yesterday. Today I was taking laundry off the clothesline and happened to notice that the nearby corner pin was not visible. I took a closer look and it is indeed gone. It was sticking out a few inches from a steep bank, and the neighbor on that side has been cutting the weeds around it to allow more visibility from his driveway. This has been the case since I bought the place two years ago. I guess maybe he didn't know what the pin meant till he saw the surveyor looking at it and measuring from it, and he didn't like where it was.

I am going to ask him if he knows what happened to the pin as soon as I see him in the yard. I can't prove that he removed it, though it's hard to imagine why anyone else would. He has a lot of security cameras, and KEEP OUT type of signs, so it's unlikely that anyone would have casually wandered into his driveway and done anything with it. I am wondering what the proper steps are that I should take in a situation like this. I'm not trying to change the location of the lines, I just want to know where my edges are so I can landscape accordingly. If anyone has advice about what to do in this situation I'll be grateful to hear it.

[Bill Dufour]

Talk to your surveyor. He will know the law in your state. I would be surprised if the one who removed the pin does not have to pay for a full re-survey. The cops will need to be called in fast before he erases the video.
Bill D

[Ed Aumiller]

Do not know about NY... but in VA if someone does something on your land for a certain amount of time (in VA 15 yrs), such as mowing the grass WITHOUT your consent or approval, they can go to court and claim the land under the Adverse Possesson law... (Not sure of the proper name of law)...
Recently had one of our neighbors who almost claimed land on a next door neighbor but hopefully she prevented it..

NY probably has a similar law where if they use it for so long, they can claim it...
I know PA has a similar law (or did) because when I was in High School in the 1960's, a path we had taken to school for many years was closed off and the court said it now public land and could not be closed..

Ask your surveyor about it...

Also put up a camera to monitor the stake after the surveyor replaces it...

[Larry Frank]

I had a neighbor pull the older pins. I was putting in a fence so got new survey with pins. I also drove a 6 ft steel post next to the pin on my side of the line. The neighbor had been there for a year or so and had extended a shed without knowing where the property line was. Unfortunately for him, his shed extended a foot or so on my property. Being the nice guy I am, I told him to remove the part on my property. He screamed and swore but removed it. He also yelled at the surveyor.

I had my fence built and it was 200 get of 6 ft white vinyl fence to keep him from staring into my yard. He was most unhappy and called the zoning folks and complained loudly. Too bad, it was all proper...

[Curt Harms]

SWMBO being a retired Real Estate Broker and having seen property line disputes planted peony bushes along the edge of an irregular bit of our lot while the surveyor stakes were still in place.

[Stan Calow]

And take photos with reference points so you can go back to locate where the pin was if it's removed again.

[Jim Becker]

I agree with the advice to first ask the surveyor for advise on how to proceed...it's likely he's seen things like that happen over the years given your description of him. And I also agree with not delaying on this. I'll also suggest that when the pin is replace, that it should be something that goes really deep so it would require a major piece of machinery to remove...like several feet long as someone spoke about already on their own property.

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As an aside, on the street we live on now, many properties have stone/concrete "monuments" that mark the front lot boundaries. Some are missing and I suspect it's because folks doing landscaping or building had no clue about what they were and removed them thinking they were "just a rock" or old construction debris. I doubt them being missing is willful like in your situation, however. The one at our one front corner is actually scared from getting hit by something at some point and was slightly cocked out of level. When I had our property surveyed before building the shop (I needed to be sure of the boundaries to insure I was within setbacks) the surveyor actually worked for a bit correcting the monument so it was back to perpendicular and "on the spot".

[Tom M King]

Concrete survey markers are not very expensive but some more trouble to put in. I've never known of anyone to remove one of them. I like state roads for property lines.

https://secure.fltgeosystems.com/woo...QaAtUeEALw_wcB

When you're paying a surveyor anyway, it's worth the extra cost.

https://www.berntsen.com/Surveying/C...rete-Monuments

[Mike Soaper]

Not as nice, but I've seen a car's driveshaft with the universal joint end up used as a marker

edit: don't think I'd recommend them due to rusting away

[glenn bradley]

I am thankful for my wonderful neighbors every time I read one of these stories.

[Bill Howatt]

I have heard of people deliberately taking out the markers - it's almost as if they think without a marker there is no boundary.
I would, as suggested, take a picture of the location of the removed marker with GPS coordinates and also contact a surveyor to see what should be done.

[Jerry Bruette]

Your county courthouse may have a survey map on file from when the last survey was done. I have one for the property where my house is. All the pertinent information, angles and measurments from one monument to another are one the map. If I think someone moved one of my survey markers all I have to do is referennce the map and it tells me where all the markers should be and the relaionsship to the other markers. The markers on my propeerty are an iron pipe of a certain weight, #'s per foot, and they are wrapped in lead.

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

I worked for a surveyor company for a number of years pulling records. Prior to working for a surveyor, I had to deal with a "Good Neighbor" claiming he "stepped out" his property line and he knew better than the surveyors with their high tech equipment and calculations. He repeatedly removed the survey pins and pipes and it was such a far distance from my house there was no way to see him doing it. (Among MANY other things he did wrong in his calculations, he "stepped out" at a 90° angle from the road when in reality the property line was at a 78° angle from the monument.) He even claimed his renter's horse removed the two foot long 1" wide pipe that had been set there back in the 1960's. Pretty amazing feat for a horse to do that with a field fence in front of the pipe. So glad I don't share a property line with that jerk anymore!

Adverse Possession is a bit more complicated than just using said property in dispute. Depending upon the County and State rules, it's a long drawn out legal battle requiring a lot of proof on both sides.

Depending upon the County and State rules, there is no legal penalty for removing survey pins, markers and monuments, or there is a very minimal fine.

Check with your County or State for recorded surveys on your property and surrounding properties. If there is no Survey of Record on your property, that is your next step to have a survey performed. Depending upon your location and size of the property involved, that can be hundreds or thousands of dollars. Go with a licensed surveyor instead of a civil engineer. Let the surveyor know of the problems you are having with the neighbor, he/she can then take pictures of the corner markers as further proof. There are more permanent markers that can be installed, at a higher fee, that can be more difficult for your bad neighbor to remove.

I heard stories from the surveyors on all the different types of corner markers & monuments they found over the years. Axles, brake drums, Model T parts, carved wood fragments, train parts. You name it.

Lastly, as with every profession, not all surveyors are good and accurate. When I was pulling records, there were certain names from the 1960's-1990's that were known to have bad calculations. The survey crew knew of certain names that were always dead-on accurate that they could rely on their monuments and calculations. It seems the civil engineers from the 1950's through 1980's in my region made drastic errors in their plat calculations. Those miscalculations caused quite a few lawsuits and unhappy homeowners.

[Dan Friedrichs]

Depending upon the County and State rules, there is no legal penalty for removing survey pins, markers and monuments, or there is a very minimal fine.

That surprises me. I thought touching a survey marker was universally a super bad thing to do (right up there in terms of consequences with cutting down a neighbor's tree).

Looks like it's illegal in NY, and he has to pay to have it resurveyed: https://www.nysapls.org/page/30

[Zachary Hoyt]

Thank you all for your advice. I contacted my neighbor down the street whose stepfather is the surveyor who was looking for the corner and he says he will let him know. The neighbor said the surveyor was planning to come back anyway to locate the rear corner, and now he'll just have to locate the roadside one too. He should also know what is the best way to proceed about the marker being removed, so instead of speaking to the neighbor who removed the pin I'll just wait and see. It's all a bit frustrating, but that's life sometimes, and the surveyor certainly has a very good reputation around here and has been doing that work for more than 40 years.