I am trying to sell my house and my 92 year old neighbor presented my realtor with a survey showing my fence is between 1.2 and 3.6 inches over his property line. The surveyor used one set steel rivet and sighted the line using “…field traverse methods and a Topcon 8005A Total station, and 25’ metal tape.” How accurate are surveyor methods? Is there an accepted tolerance in the industry?
I asked my son the surveyor, he says he often has findings like these. A 2nd survey usually supports the original findings but sometimes does not. His company doesn’t really have a tolerance of anything but bang on accurate. He said fences have to be moved frequently based on his findings. Negotiations usually make this unnecessary.
The Topcon is his GPS and is accurate within several inches. It’s most likely that he used it to locate your property markers and verified their location, then used the field traverse methods to survey buildings, fence locations, etc…
The real questions you should be asking is.
Do you have your own survey?
Who built the fence?
How long has it been there?
How long has he known it is over the line?
How long has he lived there?
How long have you lived there?
Who has been maintaining it?
Is it a shared fence? i.e. right on the property line with both property owners sharing the maintenance, etc…
If it is on or over the line, depending on the facts, you could claim that it is a shared fence or actually his property.
A property claim over less than the width of a 2x4 is laughable. He can pursue the matter with the next owner when the fence requires replacement.
Just make sure that you mention it in your disclosure to your purchaser.
We have 15 acres fenced for horse pasture. My gf had a survey of her property, and the fence is totally legal as far as the survey map. Last year a neighbor, whose back yard ends at one of her fence lines told me the fence was “right on the line” and was supposed to be back a foot or so.
I walked up there and looked things over. While I was looking, he came out and told me about where the fence line should be, etc. It would be a pain in the ass, digging dozens of post holes, etc.
I made an offer. I said, “you help me move the fence and in exchange I will help you”. He scowled and asked why he would need my help. I pointed out the plastic pipe he had discharging grey water into a creek that then entered the pasture. Totally not kosher.
He quickly explained that the water was from downspouts and a dishwasher that he had plumbed himself. I suggested that he save his explanation for the DER people I would contact if he kept up about moving the fence.
Yes, negotiations made the fence change unnecessary.
Sorry for the hijack, but I had some questions.
What are your local laws for that? I suppose it’s a violation of the U.S. Clean Water Act.
Does he have a large lot as well. why wouldn’t he just discharge the water into a leeching bed or a cistern to recycle it?
Where does the water in the creek end up?
I have no clue what the local laws would be. My mention of DER scared him, and I assume rightfully so. This is a very rural area, and discharging grey water into a creek is very common. His lot is small, under an acre.
Our household waste water goes into a septic system, as I assume his does. Maybe he’ll get around to correcting his deficiency, but then he will likely start up on the fence issue.
The creek water winds up. . .flowing into a larger creek? I think.
Your realtor has been presented with a survey. I assume there’s a name on it? Call up the surveyor and ask him about the tolerances on his measurements.
The surveying equipment is very accurate—to one hundredth of a foot.
But the problem is usually not with the equipment. It’s with the assumptions used by the surveyor about how to use the equipment—specifically, which data to use, and which base points to use.
If he can find ,say, three of the four original steel pins which were set in the ground decades ago at the four corners of the lot, he has a strong base to begin with.
But if he only finds one of them, or if he finds two of them, and the distance between them today is a couple inches different than what it should be, the surveyor will use his professional judgement and experience to create the best fit of the data. It is not unusual for two surveyors to disagree.
A surveyor will give you the mathematical data; a lawyer will ask all the questions in Sparky’s post above. It can be simple, or it can get messy.So before you hire another surveyor (and then a lawyer), ask yourself whether it’s worth fighting over.
Assuming the above is all correct, sounds like your neighbor is claiming he owns the fence. That’s fantastic news, considering the occasional expense of keeping one up. Very generous of him to step up and assume responsibility for it. He can, if/when he chooses, tear down his fence and rebuild one in the correct location if he feels encroached upon.
This.
But also, I don’t know if the laws are the same in the US, but here in the UK there is something called adverse possession. If the fence has been in place for a certain length of time and nobody has challenged it, then it could well be that the boundary is enshrined in law, regardless of where the boundary was originally meant to be.
Either way it seems ridiculous to quibble over a couple of inches - not to mention amazing that the boundary is defined so precisely. Having looked at the title deeds of my house, the boundaries are not defined anywhere in writing, just as a thick and wobbly hand-drawn pen line on a map, which probably equates to a line two or three feet wide on the ground. (The title map does however indicate which of the fences are my property, by means of a T on the boundary line.)
Colophon above describes the usual situation here regarding boundaries. Even here it has happened that neighbours became so passionate about a few disputed inches that it end up with a violent death.
The law will vary from state to state. But we do share the legal concept of adverse possession. For real estate, the best known example is probably squatter’s rights.
I think the accuracy and style of land surveying can be quite different in former-colonial areas where formal land ownership was established at the time of modern surveying, compared to areas like the UK where the land has been divided up and owned since time immemorial.
For comparison, this is what a survey diagram, of the type that would be attached to a title deed, looks like here in South Africa. The corners and edge lengths are measured to a precision of 10 centimetres, and the direction of the edges to 10 seconds of arc.
Adverse possession is recognized in all the states in the union. The usual requirements are possession for at least 20 years, which possession must be adverse (i.e., not by right of an easement, lease, or life estate, for examples) and open (i.e., an inspection of the property would disclose the possession). Since the fence would obviously fulfill all requirements, you would own this thin strip of land. Questions of survey are very common, esp., in lands surveyed in the 19th C, when chains, rods and links were used, and they would vary with the temperatures.
In Oklahoma, IIRC, if both surveys are of first order work but started from different benchmarks, the parties can settle, they can have a judge settle it, they can request & pay for a survey from a “God” rock which are still left in many parts of Oklahoma. ( God rocks are the original center of sections stones placed in the original national survey in the 1800’s. )
If you use that as a bench mark, it trumps all other forms & is the correct survey. Does not matter how far off a fancy GPS surveys say they are. “God” rocks rule.
True story from my long ago history.
My maternal grandfather was the county commissioner in the county I was born in. North Texas area.
Two big land owners had a joint fence on a blind section.
Big fights and much yelling and division & hard feelings in that area for several years. It was about a difference of 3 feet. Grandpa gave them a month to settle it or he would do it for them.
They didn’t. They underestimated what Grandpa had the power to do.
He ran a new county road to joint the East/West roads on both ends.
The two owners both had to back up- about 24 feet.
Read about some of the fights Oklahoma & Texas have had when the Red river made a major change.
Mild mannered people will fight viciously over property lines.
A survey specifically to locate the fence line will be very accurate - probably about half an inch or less. I typically work with tolerances of 10mm for a surveyor’s reference marker or about 30mm for a boundary marker in an urban area. (Sorry but I’m from a metric country and I’m too young to prefer inches!)
As others have mentioned, the legal definition or record of boundaries can be considerably vaguer and is very dependent on the era that the title was created or altered in.
Finally, The surveyor did not use a GPS! A total station is an updated version of the theodolites that have been round for hundreds of years. The stuff about field traverses just means that he measured in a fairly standard manner.
In many jurisdictions the maintenance of the fence has be shared.
Its absurd to think the fence could be built more accurately, there will be no order to fix it.
The neighbour seems to be saying “fix it or I will cause your sell price to be lower”
But now you have the survey, you cay say “my property is worth more because that fence is accurate !”.
You’re right. I misread the Topcon’s description of functions, I assumed it’s coordinate function utilized GPS technology.
So what the surveyor did was find the known point(s) in your yard (or neighbourhood) and determine the property lines from there.
Aside, I have a friend who bought a waterfront property recently. Before the sale finalized he decided to have a land survey completed and discovered that their lot was 25 feet wider (by 200 deep) than they thought.
It appears that the property markers have been moved because their neighbour has built an addition and garage on this side of his house.
My friend is dealing with the legalities now, but it seems that there’s not much he can do to get his land back. In all likelyhood there will be a cash settlement or a judgement and the neighbour will keep the property The survey will be ammended to show that.
The worse part is that the known point was about a dozen lots over at the main road and the surveyor found discrepancies in the properties all the way down the line so my friend is not very popular in his new neighbourhood.
Quite correct. Usually common sense prevails.
One of the less fun parts of the surveying business is being a herald of bad news :).
A month or two back there was a thread debating the merits of the Torrens system. One of the advantages of the system is that the title from the survey department is definitive. To have been accepted in the first place, it needed to have enough information to allow it to be located even if all boundary marks are destroyed. Go in, mark the corners and bang, that’s it. fences and possesion is irrelevant. The owner of an encroaching building would either buy the land it’s built on or possibly get sued and forced to remove the encroaching part (This never actually happens)
If you want to argue about maintenance or placement of a fence, you either agree to a fence of convenience or follow the procedure set out in the fencing act.
The one percent of land in New Zealand still not guaranteed under the Torrens system can be a different story and has all the problems mentioned in this thread and more.