Is there any possibility that, by letting neighbor encroach and attach fence for X years (for sufficiently large X), that neighbor has gained an easement on OP’s property to continue doing so, by adverse possession?
(In plain English: After being allowed to do so for X years unchallenged, neighbor acquires a reasonable expectation that he may now do so indefinitely?)
Here’s an FAQ from a real estate firm about fences, and it specifically addresses neighbours attaching their fencing to yours.
I was wondering this too.
I have no time for asshat neighbors, and when you move into an established neighborhood, (i.e. You are the new guy), a lot of people seem to feel a need to assert themselves for some reason. I guess they want to piss on their space, and make sure you know where they think the property line is (from their POV, anyway).
Before doing anything, speak to your township zoning office and find out what the fence zoning regulations are in your town. These are written specifically for each municipality, and that is where I would start.
Next, if you are dead set against confrontation, hire someone to survey your lot and tell you where your property lines are. If the fence is on your property, and you want to take it down, you have that right (as long as there isn’t some rule in place that states after x amount of time, if your neighbor’s use of your fence without your objection gives him the right to have that fence in place… Which I doubt, but who knows?)
I sympathize with you. And IMO, a good fence IS a great neighbor. I have never had a bad experience with a fence. And once properties start to flip, the great relationship you used to have with your next door neighbor is gone as soon as they leave, and you are at the mercy of the new neighbor.
If you have assholes as neighbors (and it sounds like you do… Paint your fence without your permission? That’s an asshole.), and you take the fence down and they have a dog, don’t be surprised to see that dog in your yard taking his morning constitutional, and then you’ll have to deal with that.
What I would do is get your properly lines surveyed, and see what you are dealing with. Maybe a solution would be to offer your neighbor the fence you are planning on tearing down, PROVIDED HE MOVE IT ONTO HIS PROPERTY COMPLETELY. Give it to him for free, but only if he moves it before a reasonable deadline. Either that, or you are going to have it removed and he is on his own to provide a fence for his pets, or whatever he wants one for.
Stick to your local laws, and you can’t go wrong!
I’d be a little concerned right now with potential liability should one of your neighbors get injured by the damaged fence falling on them.
Definitely! Be careful, before you start causing problems with strangers.
Make sure you know whose fences sit on whose property. Maybe one of your neighbors wiill get angry, hire a lawyer, and a surveyor…and then it turns out that “your” fence which you tore down was actually 10 inches inside his property, and you had no right to touch it. You could end up with bigger problems.
Start with a professional surveyor who will mark the property lines.
About 10 years ago we had a survey done before we did some work improving the back yard. This was 5 or more years after we’d bought the place and moved in. For 1/2 acre of difficult terrain it cost about $300 and was money very well spent.
It turned out that when we bought both the seller and the existing neighbors had a consistent idea of where the lines were. Which understanding I “inherited” from them and accepted as the truth. Which turned out to disagree with the eventual survey by about 3 feet all around the multi-hundred foot perimeter of my lot. Stuff I thought was mine was really theirs and vice versa.
We were all on good terms and nothing bad happened before we sold the place. But if my buyer had been a jerk he could have required much of one neighbor’s driveway to be ripped out since it was on my land. We made damn sure a copy of the survey was included in our seller’s disclosure paperwork even if it didn’t exactly call out the neighbors’ encroachments.
All the houses were built by the same developer over the course of just a couple years. And still the developer didn’t manage to build according to his own plats.
Step one for the OP is a survey. You need to know to a legal certainty exactly where the boundaries really are. Then comes a knowledge of the local law. Given that info you can start to formulate a plan. Anything else is pure speculation until you have those facts in hand.
My bolding - why would that have been him being a jerk? If he bought a piece of property, he has the right to enjoy it however he pleases, within the law. If anything, you were a jerk for not explicitly telling the buyer that the driveway was partially on the property.
According to nolo.com, here’s what the standard for adverse possession is in Ohio:
actualliberal, if your fence has been there 21 years, your claim to the land inside the fence would be inarguable, as best as I can tell. (IANAL, and all that.) As far as the fence itself and the strip of land (presumably just a few inches wide) that it sits on are concerned, I guess it would depend on whether they’d regard your use of that strip of land as ‘exclusive,’ given that the neighbors are using your fence as their fence as well. But my uneducated guess is that you’d win that one, based on this case cited by this Ohio real estate law site:
Since nobody else can enter the land that the fence itself is on, you should be good there too.
But unless your neighbors started attaching their fences to yours more than 21 years ago, I’d say you don’t have to worry about their making adverse possession claims against you.
Anyhow, what to do:
You are strictly correct that a decent moral (and perhaps legal) case could be made that my buyer should have been fully apprised of all the details of our knowledge of the situation. But I’m pretty sure neither you nor I nor most other folks here have ever bought or sold a house with actual *full *disclosure of every detail of every wart known to the seller.
The view of myself and my neighbors was that the “traditional” boundaries we’d all been used to were close enough and resulted in net practical benefits to each of us individually and all of us collectively. The alternative of spending serious money to re-conform all our driveways and gardens to what’s ultimately just a line on a piece of paper at City Hall seemed pretty stupid. These were hillside lots at different heights and the traditional boundaries conformed to the terrace edges as graded; the legal boundaries mostly fell at odd places and angles along / across the slopes.
Had we really given a damn the least-bad solution would have been to re-plat the lots to conform to the reality on the ground. The complexity of that solution once you get HOAs & master-planned development corps involved was also cost & effort prohibitive. Not to mention the several mortgages, title companies, etc., that would be involved. Unsticking that tar baby would be the work of a decade even with the best of goodwill on all sides
There are embedded defects in real estate records allover the US, not to mention the rest of the world. This is just one more example of “No real harm; no real foul.” The fact none of the current owners had a hand in creating the initial mistake and nobody had an axe to grind over it made it easy to ignore.
My overall point in telling the story to the OP was to inform him that 1) surveys are pretty cheap, and 2) legal status may not match what you think the realities on the ground represent, no matter how long you’ve known those realities.
I could be speaking out of my ass, never having owned a home, but shouldn’t there be a plat of your property on file at your county courthouse? If so, it will be a public record, and it might help you figure out where your property lines are.
A surveyor will not just or even primarily draw up a plot of your land - they will put legally enforceable markings, such as an iron pin or monument, at the corners of your property and anywhere else you request. A plat alone is fine for knowing how long a property line is, and how much area you have, but not so useful for determining exactly where on the ground the line is. You need markings for that.
There’s also a pretty good chance that such markers are already present – a metal detector and a small shovel are useful.
Go to the apropriate county office and explain your issues.
It just needn’t be nearly as hard as everyone here is making it. They have the answers you need and are more than willing to share them with you. Make sure you get a copy of all applicable bilaws etc.( make numerous copies. )
Once you’re properly informed (you may discover your neighbours are/were perfectly entitled to built onto the existing fence, and to paint their side or attach stuff if they like, it’s so in my area!), you can take whatever decision you prefer knowing full well you are in compliance with all existing bilaws and that you have dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, as it were. Just knowing the actual facts should give you all the confidence required to move forward.
If you decide to take down the fence, compose a pleasant letter acknowledging that your fence has provided them benefit through many years but now they will have to address their fencing needs for themselves, you’re sorry for the inconvenience but you aren’t interested in repairing or replacing it at this time. Mention you have consulted the county and enclose a copy of the applicable bilaw and the number for enforcement should they have questions.
Done and done. Easy peasy!
According to Omar Little’s link, “The city does not locate property lines or mediate property line disputes resulting from misplaced fences.” Although as someone else mentioned the property may have already been surveyed in the past, though I would have no idea how to go about finding that information.
If it hasn’t been surveyed, I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and suggest getting a professional survey done. If you go to a lawyer for assistance chances are the first thing they will want to do is look at a survey, for all the reasons mentioned already.
It’s a good idea to have your property surveyed anyway. First, as this thread shows, it will be useful if and when you ever sell the property (full disclosure, etc). Second, sometimes things come up and having a survey in hand will make life easier. Example: a friend of mine got a letter in the mail a few years ago stating that FEMA had re-drawn the local 100-year floodplain map and his house was now inside the floodplain. He didn’t agree, but in order to avoid buying flood insurance he had to get his property surveyed. Turns out his house is above the 100-year floodplain—by 8 inches. Without a survey he’d have been on the hook for a $400/month flood insurance rider that he didn’t need. As it was the process took 6 months and during that time he had to purchase flood insurance. Cost him a pretty penny that could have been avoided from the get-go had he already had a survey.
Read this story. It’s a bit outdated, but I think it highlights some of the reasons a property survey is so important.
The bottom line is, I think you 1) need to have your property surveyed, and 2) talk to a real estate lawyer. This is definitely a CYA situation.
If you want to tear that fence down go for it. I would mess with a formal letter, but I would go door to door and inform the neighbors of your intentions.
I’m also in a C’bus burb, but farther out of the city. I got my neighbor’s permission before we built our fence off of his. His is more poorly constructed (his contractor ripped him off) and therefore is the one falling all apart at this point. I’ve replaced a few of his fence boards myself. But we get along pretty well and it’s not a big deal.
You DID disclose it, by providing the survey. The buyer is a fool for not looking at it closely enough, or he didn’t care.
There is no requirement that you disclose “every detail of every wart”. But there IS generally a duty to disclose any known facts of material defects or clouds to title .
Illinois’ required disclosure is statutory, and specifically includes “property line disputes.” 765 ILCS 77/ Residential Real Property Disclosure Act.
In IL, I think you’d be on pretty thin ice if you knew your neighbor’s driveway or fence encroached on the property you were selling, but you said “no property line disputes” because you and your neighbor didn’t care about it.
Good questions. I’d like to add, does your city/township/county require a permit to put up a fence?
Post 13 quoted the city rules on fences.
I haven’t read the entire thread, and my program just ended so I have to get back to work.
But I was going to suggest writing a letter to all involved, stating that you are the owner of the fence. And what Marion_Wormer said.
I’ll check back later to see if that quote had already been addressed.
Here’s the problem. If you don’t tear it down, then you are going to be subject to be bothered about the fence. As was suggested, send everyone a letter saying the fence is being taken down because you have no use for it, and don’t want to invest the time and money to maintain it.
I think it was rude of people to link and/or paint your fence without getting permission.
The only down side is if without the fence you risk other people and dogs running around in your lawn. As for them being upset about it, that’s too bad. You made no such agreement with anyone to keep the fence there for them to use.