Weird land survey

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Jungle

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You might remember my other thread about property lines. I decieded to get a survey done as to settle the matter with the neighbour. I called around a few places, i was thinking to avoid the 'in town' surveyors, i called one place and they recommended the 'in town' place.
They said it would be about 3 hours @ 150$ so i'm think $500 is okay. I don't hear from them for a while so they say they are trying to fit me in. Then one day some truck is out front, i don't notice much but them eating lunch. I did ask them to let me know when they come. About an hour later i hear the guys yells something or other and i realize they are the surveyors. From what i could tell they weren't doing much.
After 3 hours of them looking busy they finally put the stakes in, i was shocked to see it was worse than i had imagined, they are giving them 1 foot around their shed! Then he says something about squatting rights and last property to register. He says they have 54', 4' extra by the deed, which is what i thought. Then he says but them have right of use or something. Then i explain how the other owner used their driveway to get to the back of the house to park, due to the big tree in the way of the drive way.
Then he says they have to check with the office and i should not build a fence or anything based on the stakes. So a few weeks go by and i email them and send them the maps i have from the aboutmyproperty.com They finally email me again saying not to build a fence. Then i notice the stakes are gone.
Now about 3 weeks later i get an email form them saying i own 950$ and they will send me the full report when they get payment. WTF?
I don't feel like paying for this crap survey. I just ask them a simple question if the neighbours shed was over the line. Why do they become the court, lawyers and jury? I wonder if they will put a lean on the house? Is their some way to fight them? I never signed any contract agreement. I have no idea what they are charging me for, a survey of the line based on squatting? The previous owner used their driveway to access the back so the space should be 50/50
 
I would go talk to the head guy in their office about the bill. As far as the other stuff, they are not the final word, that would still be up to the courts but they will give their best advice if they can.
Did they put in steel stakes?
 
They put the stakes in when did the survey, then a week later they took them out. When he put them in said, don't put the fence up until the surveyor in the office checks everything. Strange, like i said. The guy was saying things like, 'well you just flipping the house? You go back to Toronto today?" etc.' you want to get along with your neighbours...' which i thought was weird.
Basically i think it is a good old boys club and it was a big mistake to hiring someone locally. They are just like every other company i have dealt with up here, childish scammers who think it is open season from people from TO.
I should have just put the fence up and let them take me to court, which they wouldn't do since they are cheap and broke people.
The emailed he sent with the invoice and he said once i sent payment they would give me the full report, and i guess put the stakes back in. I don't think they will change the stakes any further, if they put the stakes on the deed line, sure i would be happy to pay.

It is a complete waste of time and money because they just put it where anyone would guess the line is. What are they doing for 3.5 hours, two guys? Just wasting time. I can understand if they put it on the deed line but this is just sort of what they think it should be. They could have just told me, hey they have squatting rights for the shed and charged me one hour would be fair.

Like i said Stan used THEIR driveway for years to access the back, i just don't understand how i can lose the driveway now, there is only 8 ft left for anyone to drive a car back there which isn't enough.

I think i am just going to ignore it and put up a metal fence, so the neibs don't destroy it. If they keep on trying to bill me i will report them to BBB and open a complain. Since i have no survey and stakes, how can they bill me? Also no signed contract of service.
 
That is interesting, sounds like with the electronic titles the squator right end too.

The holes are still fresh, so nobody stamped them out, i put stick in the hole, it's still there. It's the exact same place i put the temp fence. I guess i have will have to call this surveyor see what he says. There seems to be some issue on the other side of the property with 'an extra 2 feet of land' which would be in the other neighbours front lawn. Basically he said the 50' maybe 52' maybe it is worth the money to get an extra 2 feet on the other side, his lawn is all open anyways, i think is not very pretty to have fence on an angle. There is a gas pipe there so it not like i could put a drive way on that side.
 
I would think that the surveyor is a little afraid of being called for court as a witness for property fight. So I would think you want to know what your rights and your niehbours rights are before you talk to them and I would not build a fence before talking to them.
Perhaps if they are looking at having a fence there they might be interesting in renting a couple feet and you would feel better about having a fence well in on your side of the line.
The surveyor used a city site plan to no where to find your property and the shape of it and you should be able to get a copy of that from the city, they also use pins located in the subdivision to start from and in older areas sometime, they have to survey some distance and take some time to find legal pins.
That site map should be part of the package if you pay the bill.
 
Jungle -

Was the surveyor a Registered Land Surveyor or just a guy with a transit?

He should have looked at the legal description and went off a known point with a back sight to determine bearings and locations of the corners.

Dick

Dick
 
He's was registered surveyor. I didn't pay the bill and haven't heard from them so i assume it is forgotten. There is a complaint board i think they don't want to deal with.

The problem is they did all this research over the simple question of the shed. They should have just said the shed has squatting rights, that where the property line is, if you want i can do the whole property for $x,xxx.... instead they tried to jam me with a high price for a simple question. What were they surveying for 3 hours? Nothing, a line beside the shed that never existed. A squatter line.

Now I still have to the fence on the other side to complete, not only that but the back neighbor has put his fence 2 feet over, if you can believe it. That is according to the old surveys notes, but since i never paid i never got the notes.
So now the new survey i found will charge $500 for the two left side corner property pins. Or $1000 for all four pins, or $1300 with documentation.
With the left neighbor there is no fence only grass but apparently in the deed i get another 2 feet. Again i don't have the notes. It's another weird thing with the property and better to have a survey. I figure $500 is worth it.
Now i wonder with the back neighbor who just sneaked in the fence last October, he should be libel to me for the survey fee if his fence is over the line? I think it's safe to say most of the neighbors are tricky like this around here.:hide:
I am thinking to go over and make him sign an agreement that if his fence is over the line he will pay the survey fee. If he doesn't sign the agreement means he just wasting my time.
 
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When we bought the house we were given a plat.

Based on that I thought the neighbor to the east was not mowing all of his lawn and that he was a jerk.

Then the neighbor on the other side showed me his plat and it disagreed with my plat.

So I went to the courthouse and found two plats.

Then I rented a metal detector and found three of the four iron posts which were now 2" underground after 50 years.

So I wrote a letter to the licensing agency about the lack of Due Diligence of the surveyor on the first plat, but heard nothing. Methinks the regulators are buddies with those to be regulated.
[ame]http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=theory+of+capture&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8[/ame]

BTW, the neighbor to the east is still a jerk, possibly due to

"(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations"

His wife too, so maybe this is a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_à_deux
 
I think you need a lawyer more than a surveyor and I didn’t think I would ever say those words let alone give that advice.

Around here almost all lending institutions will require all this in advance of a loan, just as they would look for attachments on the property and no sale would go thru until everything came back clean.
 
You need to find out what the property rights are for your state. Adverse possession, aka 'squatters rights" varies quite a bit state by state. Fence location is usually governed by local building codes. Some allow them on the property line and some require setbacks off the property line. I went through this before and it gets expensive if it goes to court. Always get a survey before buying, especially if there are obvious encroachments on a property.
 
From various comments in this thread, I get the impression that you are viewed as an outsider by many of the locals...or you may be unnecessarily defensive. Did you just parachute into this community or did you scope it out before buying? And why did you buy there?

Now don't get me wrong. You have a right to defend your boundaries, but the local culture seems a lot more casual than what you expected.

Also, be careful about how much you invest in that fence. Even a metal fence can be damaged, defaced or destroyed. May be better to just plant a row of thorny roses along the driveway.
 
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It still sounds a bit hooky but if you can get to where you are sure you are right and the land should be yours. At that point you could go to a laywer anjd he will charge you $X and tell you how difficult it might be but if you give him a retainer of $X he will start looking into it and then you have to decide whether it is worth the fight when yoiu may are may not win in court and the cost of the case could be more than the land is worth.
Or you gather up a few friends and in one busy day you pick up the shed and move it and build a solid fence down the propety line. Now the nieghbour has to pay for survey and pay a laywer and make the tough decissios.
 
Nolo Press has at least one book on "neighbor law". Your library might have it.
 
just a thought: If you bought the house recently and there was no "irregularities" found in the title search, then you should have no problem getting this issue straightened out legally.

On the other hand, if it has been passed into the deed, and you (or your lawyer, or your realtor) didn't notice it before the closing, then you may be SOL.

Of course, I am assuming that you bought the property recently, because this is the kind of dispute that doesn't just pop up all of a sudden....
 
Unfortunately there seems to be some 'squatting' type of rules i am starting to think the surveys are probably right about it at least in the sense it would not be worth the effort. I asked the surveyor at the time how it could be possible i could lose 5' that they could have 55' and me only 45' What he said was that i can still claim 50' going the other way. I had sort of forgot about that, because now i will have problem with that guy. Since there is no fence on the left side of the house, it is all open.

The other thing is there are 'unique' features of the property, means there is 2' extra feet allowed for some reason at the time. So what i gather is that i can measure 52' from the new property line they drew. I can see this old man is going to freak out because he's losing about 7'. But he was there at the time last year when the surveyor came and agreed about the 2'.

I wonder if can anyone access the land deeds? It would be good idea, i take it all you need is the property number? Has anyone done it? Considering the expense of land surveys it seems better to just put the fence up as best as i can because even with a survey nobody is gonna happy.
 
Just got off the phone, land office search is $8 per property. I don't know why i didn't think of this before!:beer:
 
I wonder if can anyone access the land deeds?
You'd be surprised what is in the public record.

I had a crooked attorney who let slip that I and anyone could go to the courthouse and look up the divorce hearing transcripts & records of another crooked attorney.
Those records were 4" thick and that second crook was not happy that I now had something on him besides just my opinion. He promptly lied to a judge to get those records sealed.

My mortgage company is trying to bluff me out of at least $50 and I had to take a trip to the courthouse so I had the knowledge to block their attempt.
 
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