I bought a house where the listing stated the lot size was 60X200. The lot was actually 60X150, but I didn’t find out the true size until after closing. There was no fence at the time but the plats had been drawn many years ago and hadn’t changed…the only real problem was with the listing info being wrong.
I talked to a real estate lawyer who said I was SOL, you can’t hold the seller to what’s in the listing.
That’s true, but you can hold the Seller to what they agreed to sell you. What did the Offer/Sale contract say? Did you get title insurance, and was the lot size insured?
I don’t see what you are making a fuss about.
Your deed, and the survey, both say you own x amount of land. And that is the land you bought and paid for. In what way are you damaged?
In fact, it appears that you have an additional area of land that is owned by the county, but reached only through your property (on this side, at least). So it’s mainly used by you, and the county doesn’t do much with it – obviously, they didn’t even notice when the previous owners put up a fence on the county-owned land. So you have an area of land that is in practice used only by you, yet owned by the county so you don’t pay taxes on it.
This seems like a good situation for you. How will making a fuss about this create a better situation? In fact, making a fuss will probably make it worse. The county might demand that you remove that fence (at your expense). They might decide to put up a real fence at the actual property line, so that instead of a back yard vista that extends to this wooded are, you have a smaller closed-in backyard. They might even say that you can’t even go into that wooded area without buying a county park permit.
I think you are better off leaving this as it is.
I have some former friends with a self-made similar predicament. What is basically an empty lot next to them was made part of a “park” which encompassed a pond and some woods behind them. After moving in, my friends built a deck that extended about 10’ from the house, even though the lot line was only 8’ from the house, then cleared another 6-8’ of brush and trees that are technically part of the park. If and when they sell the property, the next owners, barring a sharp eye to the actual survey, will very probably assume that their property extends about 16’ from the house. Someday the city will take notice and make them remove the deck, since it extends past the property line. In the mean time, they have use of a larger than normal lot. The real question, as with the OP, is “how was the size of the lot positioned?”. Did they ever say the lot went out to the fence, or imply it?
You might have a case against them, but the process of raising that case means you’ll lose use of the extra land in the process. Better, as Mr. Bonham says, to keep quiet and let it rest.
Why would you think I’d mention anything to the county?
You are correct that I bought and paid for the correct amount of land. What you seem not to realize is that, when I made the purchase, I thought I was getting a larger back yard. Would I have paid the same for less land? Probably not. Would I have continued looking if I knew that half of the back yard is not mine? You bet.
How could this possibly be a good situation for me? I can use all the land I want behind my house and the county would never know. But, if I want to build something there or put up a proper fence I cannot for fear that the county will notice. If I decide to sell the property I would have to let a prospective buyer know that the land they are buying is not as large as the land I thought I was buying.
If the land described in your deed and referenced in your contract are correct (as you seem to indicate they are) you probably have little if any cause for legal action. You are entitled to be annoyed the seller’s sloppiness in not making the boundary explicit, or possibly your agent’s casual OK of the survey, but barring some written or other concrete indication or evidence that that the wooded section was legally represented to be part of your yard, your chances of prevailing in any action would appear to be fairly slim at this point. You got exactly what you contracted for, the court will not care if it’s not what you assumed you contracted for unless you have hard evidence of misrepresentation.
Licensed land surveyor here (but most most likely not licensed in your state.) I have only skimmed the posts following the original post, but at least once or twice I have seen the most correct advice for you given in this thread; consult with a local, licensed land surveyor or practicing real estate attorney in your area. The vast majority of the public does not understand just how complex real estate law and boundary determination is. Truly, asking for advice in this category online is nearly like asking for legal or medical help. In fact, I would suggest to the powers that be that they should put the same restrictions put upon these inquires as they do upon those pertaining to the law and medicine.
You might want to read those posts you skimmed. The actual boundaries of the property are not at issue. The survey correlates perfectly with the contract and the deed. The land area of the property as a described in the sales contract, and what was delivered in the deed are not at issue. What is at issue is what he thought the boundaries of the property were based on his assumptions about a wooded section of the property that was enclosed by a chicken wire fence that he* assumed* went with the property when, in fact it did not, and was part of the county’s land.
Unless he can provide concrete evidence beyond hearsay, that somehow, this land area was explicitly represented by the seller and/or the seller’s agent to be part of the contract of sale, or that his buyer’s agent misled him somehow, there’s not much legal purchase here for relief.
What in the world does this mean other than they falsely advertised, which is illegal? A private wooded yard is one surrounded by a wooden fence. This yard is not surrounded, as part of the land on his side of the fence is not private.
You might not be able to get out of the contract, but couldn’t you get some sort of compensation for the misleading ad? At the very least I’d want to make sure the real estate agent was more careful in the future.
I’m interested in what the surveyor actually did… just a piece of paper or did he make the corners of your property more visible by staking them? Obviously not or you would have noticed sooner.
Does a drawing typically include landmarks like existing fences…how about trees? I just had a situation requiring that I look at our survey…the drawing included our house, but no trees which wold have been helpful. There are no fences to consider.
There is probably a disclaimer in the ad. A real estate agent should use reasonable care, but often has to rely on information from other sources; tax records, existing surveys, fences, claims made by the Seller. It is not possible to 100% verify all of these, nor is an agent qualified to do so.
That said, if a Seller shows me where his property boundaries are, I will say to a prospective buyer, “According to the Seller, the property goes to here.” It is still the Buyer’s responsibility, and I will strongly encourage him, to verify all pertinent information is correct or to his liking using the proper professionals. If he doesn’t, he accepts the consequences.
Sounds like you screwed yourself by not looking at the survey before signing all of the closing documents.
This definitely would have been grounds for backing out of the closing.
You had all the information right there. You admitted that you just didn’t look at it. Your fault.
Depends on the wording of the agreement between parties, but yes, that is usually addressed.
I’m surprised the title company would issue a policy without seeing the survey, although they might have issued one with a survey exception. No attorney would have let that go by.
The agent will get away w/ putting whatever they like in the ad, true or not, since all ads have that disclaimer at the bottom stating everything could be false and it’s up to the interested buyer to discover the whole truth.
I find it hard to believe there wasn’t some way for you to educate yourself on this piece of property before closing or even making an offer; no one can solely rely on their realtors anymore and it’s incredibly foolish to do so in this day and age; they have no legal responsibility to you aside from that which their license and the law requires. Most counties now have their plats, etc in an online form; go to your county’s website and it should be somewhere around the Tax Department. Many homebuyers don’t realize they have this tool available to them and wind up w/ some regret, much like some posters don’t realize they can use multi-quote rather than respond to each previous post in their own individual posts.
By the time I bought my property in Charleston I’d researched its taxes, deeds and plats surrounding it; this was while I had a full time job so it can be done.
I’ll just point out that it’s possible that the seller was no more knowledgeable about the true property line than the OP.
Disclaimer: I am not anyone here’s lawyer. This is not legal advice. I’m just chatting anonymously and off the top of my head.
Could they? Since he didn’t put it up and it is not on the land that he purchased, it would seem that he has no connection with the fence.
This point is more often the reality in these scenarios than deliberate bad faith dealing by the seller. In cases where properties adjoin woods fence lines can often get “creative” over time.
No one is an infallible genius in this business. I’ve had lawyers, surveyors, bankers, insurance agents, environmental inspectors, and of course real estate agents and their clients all make assumptions about situations that bit everyone in the ass.
The OP can file a lawsuit charging misrepresentation, but proving that he was deceived in some fashion when he got exactly what was contracted for is going to be a tough case to prove. Title is perfect. Title insurance is a non-factor in this situation.
If there was a material representation in the advertised listing that there are “woods”, and there are no substantive trees at all on the property inside the lot lines there might be some false advertising claim he could beat the selling agent over the head with, but these ads generally have disclaimers that all representations are subject to verification. If he is enough of a PITA the brokers Errors and Omissions insurance agency might pay something for him to go away, but given the facts at hand (so far) I doubt any of them would roll over and do this vs fighting it in court.
Get an attorney.
You are probably correct. I, like most others who purchase property, am a layman concerning all these issues. Most people assume a fence line marks the property boundary. We also assume, maybe incorrectly, that the professionals we hire will advise us properly.
Getting a survey done was not even on my radar until my agent recommended it. I agreed to have the survey done without even thinking about the possibility that half of the yard might not belong to the current owner. The survey results were not conveyed to me and, honestly, it was the last thing on my mind at the time of purchasing a new home. Again, there are so many big and little things that most people don’t even consider when purchasing a piece of land for the first time. We rely on professionals to make sure we don’t get screwed. Here, it appears I didn’t get screwed…I just didn’t get what I thought I was purchasing. Still feels the same though.
I find it hard to believe that you cannot realize that some people don’t know what questions they should be asking to start off with. You do realize that not everyone is an expert in this field? Sure, I am a lot more educated than when I started and, assuming it is not so far in the future that I forget everything, I will be in a much better position to ask those questions. Live and learn…
Any particular reason for being so snarky? This is GQ so I’ll bite my tongue. If you have some issue with me I’m sure the Pit is open.
Why would one need to be an expert to protect oneself when spending (I presume) an enormous percentage of one’s money and committing oneself to a mortgage contract (I presume) for many years? I’m certainly not an expert nor highly educated but took my purchase very seriously and knew I’d need to do lots of research to make sure I was protected, and that was w/ a co-worker being my agent, someone I even invited to my wedding.
I do NOT have an issue w/ you; if anything I’m frustrated for you since I know how some real estate pros lie and cover as it suits them while we’re left holding the bag. Snark was not my intent, so I’m sorry that my pointing out your lack of multi-quote use came across that way; it’s easy to hear any number of tones in someone’s written word depending on the listener’s ear. I didn’t mean to take your day from bad to worse. Perhaps I made my responses more personal than they ought to be for GQ and I’m sorry.
I belong to several message boards and multi-quote along w/ ‘Subscribe to this thread’ are the most useful yet obviously least used tools across the board.