I probably got you all confused with the above story…
Neighbor 1 (who we never knew) built both houses and reconfigured the lots.
Neighbor 2 bought from him and lived here until 2005…we know them and she told my wife all the property stories
Neighbor 3 bought in 2005 and built the stairs (himself) and is doing the survey now. His older parents were also involved in purchasing the home to some degree (none of my business but may be contributing to his lack of knowledge).
I didn’t mean to impugn all realtors. It’s just that I’ve seen multiple cases, one in my own back yard, where a homeowner made assumptions based on what a realtor told them. Including a case where a realtor showed them what was obviously a pole from an old swingset (you could still see the painted decorations on it!) and told them it was their property marker.
if the survey comes out in your favor i would recommend immediately create a lease where you are renting him the land for the stairway, like for some token amount.
IANAL
Based on my limited experience, when the land was transferred, they may or may not have put in new pins. If the deed was recorded, it shouldn’t make much difference except you could show the new neighbor without a new survey.
What the … !!!
This is my last post in this thread. You are basically asking for expert, professional advice, not unlike asking for a legal opinion. I believe that there is at least one other land surveyor on this board, but no one other than myself has identified themselves as a land surveyor in this thread. Would you accept and follow important legal advice from some faceless unknown on the internet? Please talk with a local professional.
I’m not offended. 
The job of a real estate agent is to bring buyers and sellers together. Since that often involves rubbing elbows with many related disciplines, it’s hard for some agents to remember that they are not trained in surveying, building construction, mortgages, remodelling, or complicated legal matters. It would be wise for buyers and sellers to consider any advice from a non-expert accordingly, and while it might not be wrong, it isn’t what you are paying the agent for. If your deal hinges on specific advice, hire someone who is an expert in that field.
Talk to your neighbor. And if necessary get your own survey.
Now a little story about land surveys. My great grandfather purchansed the ranch in 1893. It was surveyed at the time. the property next door was sold at some time and a seperate survey was done on that property. Both deeds were recorded at the county. The common property line had different measurements and angles.
Sometime in the 60’s the property next door was sold and resurveyed. We got the notice what the new common boundry line between the properties would be. We were given a date to protest the new survey by. If we did not protest then tne new survey results bould be binding between both parties.
No for the fun stuff. The back corner of the common fence was moved 11 feet. Which ment the two corner lines of the property no longer meet. The orgional 1893 deed gave the bearings in degees and tenths of degrees. the new line gave the bearings in degrees, minutes, seconds, and tenths of seconds. What was that lets move the fence line one inch.
Nope… I’m gathering info, identifying issues and welcoming advice that I’ll take for what its worth.
I’m a “professional” myself… if you call filling our government mandated forms once a year for people with the primary goal of reducing the amount they fork over to the government being professional.
I definitely like the idea of a lease mentioned a couple posts back.
Just remember, the primary job of a surveyor is to make sure all property owners are satisfied and not fighting about the boundary. If you can do that without the surveyor, then there’s no problem, and no need to hire the surveyor. You might be able to sign a piece of paper with your neighbor that says that you agree that the bit where his stairs are is his property, and the part next to the lake where you’ve been mowing all these years is your property, and if you both agree to it, that’s where the boundary is, even if it isn’t where it was before. You’ll still need to go through the proper channels, of course (or if you don’t, then someone later will have to do so at greater difficulty), but it should be a lot cheaper than getting an entire new survey.
Whoops, didn’t even notice that this was a zombie (I guess that explains how such a long discussion cropped up since last I looked at GQ).
Moderator Note
This is an old thread that was raised by a spammer who has since been disappeared.
Since this thread has been revived, now is a good time to relate the saga of the Lake Wylie Mini Mart.
For the last 20 years, North and South Carolina have been working to come up with a more precise demarcation of their common border, scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2017. As part of the improved survey, it was determined that the Lake Wylie Mini Mart was actually in North Carolina.
The reason that the Mini Mart had been built in what it thought was just inside the South Carolina side was because: 1) Gas taxes are significantly higher in NC, 2) SC is less concerned about whether their citizens have their fingers blown off by big fireworks, and 3) they can sell beer in SC, but not in the part of NC they will become a part of.
At this point it looks like the Mini Mart will get a waiver from NC to retain its SC privileges, but only as long as it is under current ownership, which greatly lessens its resale value.
We had a case like this locally, where the County Planning Department imposed a restriction on a property, saying that it could be a bed and breakfast in a residential neighborhood only if the ownership didn’t change.
Three property owners in the county with similar restrictions got together and threatened to sue the county if the “one owner” restrictions weren’t removed. The county attorney reviewed state case law, and issued an opinion that the limited restrictions did not conform; that the county would lose in court if challenged; and they were removed without resort to the courts.
If NC or SC law is similar, maybe the outcome could be similar, too.
I know this is a zombie but, to chime in, the reason why GPS isn’t used in surveying isn’t due to accuracy issues, it’s because GPS measures in absolute co-ordinates and surveyors use relative ones. The earth’s crust is constantly shifting but land plots do not. Thus, surveys are defined in terms of local features which move in lockstep with everything else.
Not true at all, I’m afraid 
While GPS does in fact measure using a worldwide grid, every survey grade receiver is able to convert to local coordinates. The beginning of a survey usually takes some time to lock in to local reference marks and then old measurement records are traced back to find out where the original guy put in the missing boundary marks. Any new boundary marks are put in and all the locations involved are recorded in whatever the current grid is. So if you like, the survey is localized and then recorded so that it becomes part of the greater system for the jurisdiction that you’re in.
GPS measurements have their own problems, mainly working under tree cover or looming obstacles, and the expense of the receiver. Hence Theodolites with IR distance measuring gear are still in use as well.
The Mini mart saga is a good example of the problems of boundary definition writ large. It’s not so much the land moving around, so much as the original records are old and not as accurate as we are used to these days. So what do you do to sort it out? Get out into the field and try and find the original monuments, and record their locations using modern techniques. If you can’t find enough of them, then you search the old survey records, maybe someone recorded where the old border markers when they did a place along the road 10 years later. The closer you can get to the original subject survey, the better.
In areas under the public lands survey system the original survey notes and monuments are the legal corners even if newer tech could improve them. A fancy GPS shouldn’t change much.
If you want to come to a gentleman’s agreement that a small piece of land is the responsibility of party A even though it probably belongs to party B, that’s between the two of you. But if party B sells, the new owner is in no way bound to respect that agreement, and can immediately take possession back of that piece of land. Even if you’ve written it down, if you didn’t file it with the Registry of Deeds or whatever govt. agency handles such things in your location, your agreement is probably not binding on the next owner.
And if B has a mortgage on the property, trying to sell off or give away a piece of the property without the agreement of the mortgagee is certainly in violation of the mortgage agreement, and probably fraud.
That’s what I meant by “going through the proper channels”. It should still be fairly easy, if the landowners are in agreement.
Though I’ll admit I hadn’t thought of the mortgage angle.
Well, you’d certainly need a description better than “the bit where his stairs are is his property, and the part next to the lake where you’ve been mowing all these years is your property” if you want to do a true legal transfer and file it with the county. So you’ll probably need a surveyor anyway to draw up new plots for each property, correctly describing and marking the portion to be transferred.
Not to mention that for a LOT of surveying tasks, a multistation with the IR gun is more than accurate enough. From what I can tell, the main survey-related problems are more along the lines of enormous screwups*, not that the lot line is maybe a half-inch east of where it should be at the northeast corner, and half an inch west at the southeast corner (which FYI, is a pretty large error even for a form/final survey).
