Boundry Question
 

I happened to look on the mapsite that the county assessor uses for figureing the property taxes by. It shows a huge dicrepency in our property lines. The builder/owner showed me where the corner state was and I never questioned it as it was marked with fresh orange tape just like the other bac k corner.The front has a concrete county marker on one corner and a pipe on the other. The map the assessor uses shows one back corner approx 75-100 feet over onto the neighbors property. There are three propertys on this piece of road. It shows ours at 1.12 acres and the other two at 1 acre. But ours seems to be the smallest!
I'm wondering if the builder/owner and the former owner of the other properety made a private deal and moved the corner stake. They both have proved to be very unscrupulous on other things. Now I wonder what to do. I would like to have what is mine as I am paying taxes on it. But it will drastically ruin the neighbors property value.It amounts to about a quarter of an acre,and the line cuts off his paved parkring and his shed he built on the back of his/my property!
Should I just let it ride and write it off or proceed and get it re surveyed and maybe mess up the neighbors life and maybe make an enemy.We are paying around $600+taxes a year on 1.12 acres,he is paying about the same but his house apraises for more than ours.

Refer to the metes and bounds in your deed. Measure it off. If assessor is wrong send him a nice letter informing him of his error. If neighbor has committed a trespass an attorney is probably the best bet to clear things up. I would talk to the neighbor first before using this route as it would be best for both parties to mutually agree. A surveyor might also be needed to clear up the controversy.

Do you have title insurance?

The maps you see are many times way off. The one the county had for me showed part of my property on the other side of the road. Most likely at some point your property was surveyed, check and see then get a copy of the plat from the company. You can do a survey yourself to see if the boundary is that far off.

If not you might want to see how much it would cost to have a survey done.

I agree that sometimes the county maps are off.If you are on the county gis website,you should be able to pull up an aerial photo with the boundaries marked the same as the regular map.That will show you if your boundary runs through the buildings or what trees are on your side.It just makes it easier to see if the boundaries are off.You can also measure your property with a tool on that website.Also Google Earth has a measuring tool on its website,that will help.Just copy what it shows to be wrong and show it to the county,or the surveyor.

Get a measuring tape and measure your property, compare that to the legal description. If you think one of the corners doesn't match the legal description, call a surveyor to check it out. I think probably you will find that the property lines on the county GIS website are off a bit or aren't lined up perfectly with the aerial photo data.

According to our county map I own half of my neighbors house. But we found the marker in front and know we own only to the edge of the driveway.

Spend the money and get the survey. If you and your neighbor get along let them know what is going on. If you can come to an agreement then you don't have much to worry about.

You can request a reappraisal from your county tax office.

My son worked for a survey company a few years ago. He was surprised that people would build a home on property without a survey. It was not uncommon for homes or septic systems to be built on another's property.

Surveying a lot isn't as cut and dried as you might assume. Pray that there is a registered survey mark somewhere nearby. A pipe driven into the ground is worthless.

50 years ago, a local farmer subdivided his shore frontage, creating a 66 feet wide private drive with lots on both sides. Now that the land is developed and some of the cottages are being financed with the Bank's money, these lots are getting surveyed. 100 feet wide lots are off by as much as 50 feet. Chain sawing half of your neighbor's encroaching cottage isn't a good way to settle, yet you can't force anyone to sell you half of their land just because someone built a house on it. To make matters worse, those property owners do not own to the center of the road as would normally be the case. In effect no one owns the land the private road is on.

In many places, land is divided into sections that are a mile square. In a perfect world, the section would be exactly that size and at perfect right angles. In one section, I own 1/4th of it, in the south east corner. In a perfect world, I'd have a parcel 2,680 feet on each side. However, this section is 60 feet too short along the south side. So, since I own half of that frontage, my half mile is 30 feet shorter than ideal.

My neighbor to the west, measured a half mile, starting from the west corner of the section. By his measurement, he owns 60 feet into my property.

To make matters worse, the property descriptions on the west half of this section use the number of feet from that SW corner of the section. Like, " The west 200 feet of Section 20" or "The east 200 feet of the west 400 feet". It goes on like that all the way to my property line. But those property descriptions detail more land than actually exists, so the last parcel gets shorted 30 feet.

One way to resolve this would be for each land owner to give up a bit of their land in an equal and fair amount, to share the shortage. But you can't force anyone to be fair.

Another situation, Gloria owned 80 acres for many years. A hunter bought an ajoining 2 acres. He built a big cabin on his 2 acres. Gloria discovered he had built on her property. He refused to move his cabin. She hired a lawyer and took him to court. The Judge ordered Gloria to sell the hunter, at a reasonable price, some of her 80 acres so the cabin was all on his land. She couldn't afford to appeal the decision.

It will matter how long you have lived there. And the other line holder. Get a survey of just that line in Question by the survey company that did the survey when you bought it. Then go from there.

I can tell you that the surveys in my area of southern Missouri date back to the 1800's, and most properties have NOT been resurveyed. It's a very laid back attitude toward "20 acres, more or less" as stated in the deed. Yes, we have title and title insurance, but no modern/recent survey.

It's just the way it's done in that part of the world.

In this county the tax maps are acknowledged as being inaccurate on each sheet. That's pretty much the way it is for rural land here.

Before we bought our property, the Seller paid to have the property surveyed. Thanks to her, we didn't have to spend the $$ for it. Also, thanks to that survey, we have more land as ours without an easement we would have had. Turns out there was supposed to be an Easement Driveway "Leg" connecting two Easement Driveways together, on our West property edge. Many years ago, it was mistakenly put on the property to our West. Now, due to Adverse Possession, that Easement now is on their land, instead of ours. We will be applying to get it abandoned off of our property as it isn't even possible to widen the current "Leg" or utilize the Easement where it would have been (power pole in the middle of it, also topography & 2nd growth trees are the issues). There was also an access use to the property owner's on our SW side. The SW corner was marked during the survey & I showed that to our new neighbor (who wants to fence his property). Had I not showed them the corner, they would have likely gone with the line made by the edge of the access used. The new owners are nice honest people who thanked me for giving them the information. They didn't want to make any mistakes. I am a Licensed Real Estate Agent who would never buy or recommend my Clients buy a property that wasn't surveyed! Further, I encourage them to read their Title Reports carefully. The Escrow Officer I use also scrutinizes them to insure there is disclosure about Easement Rights or other Uses that may limit the property use in some way. Title also flags issues. I have seen plenty of transactions close without Surveys.

My DH had a property when we met, and it just so happens that the neighbor's driveway is on his property. Before we prepare to sell it, we will have it legally surveyed and then offer to sell the neighbor the portion of property her driveway is on, which will make both of our properties worth more (she will have more property and we won't have that encroachment issue). We will be able to sell it more easily and she can then sell hers more easily. It is a win-win.

we had a legal survey done here and then we sent copies of the survey to the neighbors so that they knew..the survey showed that their driveway was half ours and half theirs..we ended up selling them the difference for around $100 bucks..so they had their driveway and the grass beside it..and that was all..

a legal survey is fairly expensive but still is your best bet to remove all doubts..have it permanently marked at corners and have the smaller stakes put in every 50 ' to make it easy to fence if you are fencing

That county assessor mapsite is just a general guide. A clue into how its inaccurate is that your parcel is the biggest but appears smallet, dont sweat that much.
BUT I wouldnt want to worry about it so get hold of the last survey for your lot and check it out.

Again I want to say, if you can read a compass and have a 100' tape (200' is better) you can do a good enough 'survey' to tell if the boundy markers are off by "75-100 feet".

You really need 2 people to do a halfway accurate measure if the land is hilly or sloped. Surveyors measurements are taken along a line of sight, not actual linear feet.

With such a small property you should get it surveyed. It won't cost much money. Do it. Get the survey recorded into the town records. Do it all up right and don't let this worry you in the long run.

Our property shows in various records as varying by +/-10%. That is pretty normal percent variance. I don't get ours surveyed because our land is so large that the cost is enormous. We have about 1,000 acres. With no gain I'm not going to spend the $5K to $10K to get the survey done. If it were $250 to $1,000 like it will be for your property I would do it in a heart beat and get those boundaries marked.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

It was interesting to read the posts on this thread to see what differences there are across the country. I understand vaguely there are "sections" and "forty acres" as a standard but we don't have them here "back east."

My land and surrounding parcels had been surveyed and recorded based on metes and bounds descriptions in the 1800's and early 1900's. These descriptions refer to trees as markers, or a creek or a spring -- things that don't exist any more. So the tax office cobbled up a tax map that looks like it was scratched on the back of old envelopes. I bought, by metes and bounds description, a parcel that had been sold two times by the same owner to two different people who, in turn sold it on again. Since this was all wooded land with nobody making a plat, and the tax office sure did not want to admit they were charging taxes to two sets of people on the same parceln which to add to the confusion, I believe was actually sold by the same widow three times to three different sets of owners with the mistake being perpetuated for over 50 years, just imagine how accurate the tax map was NOT!
As newer buyers such as myself had surveys done which were not just metes and bounds descriptions but were drawn up in plat form and recorded in the court, one would logically think the tax assessor would notice and correct the tax maps, right?
Ha ha, wrong! It's too difficult a can of worms for them to deal with. They just say weasel things like "The tax map is not a legal document." So the tax payer has to pay taxes correctly but the tax map does not have to be correct. Which in my case for sure it is very incorrect!!!
In other words, the survey plat as recorded in the court is the legal document. Here is an interesting thing I learned about Virginia which does not apply to all states. Virginia is called a "race state." As in, a race to the courthouse state. No kidding. The first one over the courthouse threshold with the document wins! In other words, when the widow sold the same parcel three times to three different buyers, the first one to record the deed would be the one with the valid deed, legally.
In Virginia there is also the concept of the "pocket deed." This was when a person bought a parcel and had a proper deed but did not have the money to pay the recording fees, so did not file the deed at the courthouse, or filed it maybe three years later. Or died and it was found in an old sewing machine drawer and finally belatedly recorded. Anyway, it seems amazing to me that unseen satellites or whatever they are can fly over my land and home and take photos so clear you can see my chickens in their yard and post this on the internet without my permission for anyone to see but still, despite the fact many tax dollars go into the preparation of the tax maps, they still look like they are scratched on the backs of old envelopes!

Oops, I think lots faster than I can type with the delays in the forum software. What I meant to suggest is that, if you did not get a survey plat of your land that was recorded in the court, by all means get one and record it! If there are survey markers, find out who the surveyor was. He might sell you a "blue" (certified) copy of the survey he did, or come out and verify and update the survey for you or he might have surveyed the adjoining parcel but at least he (or she) will have located boundary lines and easements. If there is a pending dispute it is especially important to record your plat, even if you are not in a race state! Recording a plat or document is a form of giving public notice. One of the persons you give notice to is the tax assessor, even if he/she is too pig-headed to admit it!

Only because people do it that way. I would never buy a piece of land which hadn't been surveyed by a licensed surveyor in the last 15 years.

When we bought our place here everyone looked at us like we were some kind of freaks because we would not buy w/o a survey. Well come to find out about 1/2 of our neighbor's backyard was ours and a good chunk of another neighbor's pig pen was on our property. We would have lost a couple of fair sized pieces of our land w/o that survey.

My FiL bought a property w/o a survey then when he got ready to sell it the buyers discovered the propane tank was on another lot and part of the other neighbor's yard wasn't really his. Was a big mess.

Get a survey and keep a copy of your plat.

We are talking about a chunk of land that's about an acre and the markers being "75-100 feet" off. A compass and 200' tape would be fine to check that little land for an error that large.