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While my post is biased, I am a licensed professional land surveyor, anybody looking into purchasing a piece of property should get a survey done prior to closing whether it is required by the state or not. It amazes me that people will get a mechanic to look at a used car prior to buying it, yet will skip a survey when it comes time to buy to piece of property. Also, don't look for your realtor to suggest one if state law doesn't require it. Some realtors do, but for the most part they won't as it slows up the sale.
That is all water under the bridge in the OP's situation as the property is already purchased. As was mentioned above, the next step is to go to the courthouse and review and deeds and plans that are attached to your property. Look for the words "easement" or "right of way" specifically. If one of those was granted to your property in the past it should show up on a recorded document.
Next hire a land surveyor to give you an opinion on your boundary lines. Make sure you specifically mention that you are interested in any easements that might pertain to your driveway (when a surveyor reviews a parcel of land...he doesn't always need to show any easements for the parcel in question that are not on the property...only easements that are on the parcel itself). You really need this prior to talking with an attorney because you need to confirm the location of the boundaries, the implied encroachment of the garage, and the existence/non-existence of an easement. This is something I went through with a client recently...she went to the attorney first and the attorney very quickly told her she needed a survey prior to talking with him.
As a previous poster noted...once the surveyor shows you the locations of the corner monuments....mark them in some manner that leaves them easy to find for future reference. I have seen bushes planted next to them, PVC pipes planted around them, and my favorite.....somebody poured concrete around them leaving the monument top exposed. One word of caution though....If you look for your own monument and find the right one good for, good for you. If you find the wrong one and start using it....then you may create trouble for yourself as you are claiming the monument is your corner. This may lead to acquiescence and the monument becoming the corner as you have accepted and used the wrong monument as your corner.
Yes...I do see the OP's situation all the time......and it really is smarter to spend the $400-500 bucks before buying the property then deal with what is going to cost her now.
My neighbor has been diverting all of his rain water, concentrated and focused discharge into the high point of my yard for now 10 years. We have ongoing litigation but want to get the damage stopped. Close to $50K damages calculated. We decided to allow an easement for him to install the correct drainage and run pipes thru our yard to a storm drain at the street below my house.
How much can I charge him for the right to have the easement?
Is it unreasonable to ask that he pay for the legal fees associated with establishment and recording of the easement?
He seems too think that all costs should be split 50/50?
Who benefits from it the most. Neighbor is encroaching on your ppty. Neighbor is illegally diverting water onto your ppty. Neighbor created the situation. Neighbor should be 100% liable for costs.
In reality the neighbor, a flipper, bought the house "as is" in 2003 and then made things worse by altering an already poor and non legal drainage. Real estate bubble pooped, so they had to sit it out. They filed a counter suit against the construction company that built the house, but dropped it almost imeadately. Now they want to sell the house, yet can not do that without fixing the problem. They insist that we pay for legal fees for the easement. They really think we should also split the cost of the construction of the remediation 50/50? Then they will "settle" the damages once they sue the insurance company for not honoring their claim. It is a long story with very despicable neighbor, and complete unscrupulous lawyer. He has inserted himself into the case ex-parte against the will of the insurance company They think by running up my legal fees I will have to surrender to their tactics at some point. Now my new lawyer seems to be making deal behind my back to bifurcate the case and tells me to allow them to fix the damage, with 50/50 split and then go for the damages against the insurance company. I know this if you ever need to get a lawyer you are screwed!
If you need an Easement, the time to have gotten it was before your purchased. But I would check with a lawyer to see if there was an implied easement.
Yes, I know this is an old threat that someone brought back. So, IMHO, this isn't truly thread jacking. lol
I bought my current home about 8 years ago. A few months after I bought it, I was out of town for about a week. In that time, the lot next door to me went up for sale and an offer was accepted. I assume there was a sign up, but I can't confirm that.
When I bought the home, I had a survey done, and the fence of my home was on the lot next door. I had the seller move the fence prior to my purchase. Additionally, the fence did NOT follow the property line. It veered into the neighbor's property and then took a sharp turn onto mine before turning again closing off my yard before the property ended into the canal which goes to the lake. I'm guessing the previous owners were trying to reduce any cost they could and less fencing was less expensive.
So, I'm at home when there is a knock at the door, and a man says he bought the lot next door and had a question. I walk out, and he asks about the fence and if it follows the property. I explain that it does not and the property line goes straight to the water. The two lots are essentially like opposite slices of pie. Mine starts real small at the front street and gets real big at the water. His is real big a the street and gets real small at the water. He though the was getting about 50 feet of water front, when in reality, he only had about 10 to 15 feet. He then asked if I would be a good neighbor and "give" that land so he would have what he thought he'd purchased.
Well, if you know anything about water front property, generally speaking, the greater the water front, the greater the value. First, I wasn't about to give away land regardless of if it made me a "good" neighbor. Secondly, that area was where I planned to put a boat house. I told him I really wouldn't be interested in doing that.
So, about a year later, he and his wife show up at my front door asking if I would sell that property for $3k. Once again, I told I had no interest in selling any of my lot and that I would be putting a boat house there. The next day, he returned with another plan. He asked if we could dig back that section of land that followed the fence. It would still give me a place to put the boat house and it would add about 30 feet to his waterfront. He wanted us to split the costs. I told him, I'd pay for my dirt work, to ensure it was done how I wanted, but he'd be responsible for the dirt removed. He agreed. All the dirt, which was a LOT of dirt was piled on his lot, for, what I thought, removal. He ended up spreading the dirt out which ended up building his lot about 2.5 to 3 feet higher than my lot. Of course that meant a water issue for me. At this point, I just decided to purchase the materials myself and put in a drain system, on his property, that took the water to the canal. I then built my bulkhead around my new waterfront area.
Well, there were no permits for this project, lol. I was done, but he still had work to finish. Suddenly, he gets the notice to stop all work. He comes to me and says they want permits so he can finish his work and wants me to pay for half. I told him that my work is complete; therefore, I'm not going to pay for a permit. He sulks away. Apparently, he got his permits, because his work gets completed about a month later.
So a couple of more weeks pass by and I get a phone call from him telling me there is a big problem. I ask him what it is, but he keeps telling me to come to his house (his current home, since he has yet to build on the lot). It takes a while, but I finally get him to tell me what "our big problem" is. He tells me that the property line does not follow the fence, and the land he wanted to buy is his. Well, before the dirt work for the cut was started, I had a surveyor come and stake out the property line so I could make sure I had enough room for my boat house. I explain to the neighbor that both my survey from buying the house and the one done before the dirt work showed the exact same thing. I then ask him if he had a survey showing something else. At that point, after some prodding, he tells me the "engineer" he had out, who "knows more than a surveyor will ever know" told him. I am able to keep from laughing and tell him his guy probably looked at a point across the canal and made the assumption that it was where the property line should go. He swore up and down that his engineer would never make such a mistake and was the smartest person on the planet.
I decide to do some quick measuring and grab my surveys and a tape measure. I go outside and verify, within what accuracy I can, that the line is correct. I then call him and ask him to come over so I could show him. He said he couldn't and asked me to come to him. Wanting to put this to rest, I went over. I showed him the surveys and explained the measurements I had done. He then tells me my surveys are wrong. I ask for his, and he says he doesn't have one. I then show him that if his guy is right, my a/c units and a small portion of my house would be in his yard, and there was essentially no way the two surveys I had and the survey from when the house were built were all wrong. I then toss him a bone and say that maybe, just maybe, the original surveys were messed up and overlapped, but we'd have to see his survey to know that. He quickly responds that he'll have everything redone so that I get a carve out for my home's corner and my ac, but he'd need the rest. I explained that if this were the case, the title insurance company would most likely go to court and a settlement would be paid and HIS survey corrected and the line on mine would most likely stand. He then countered with, "But if you tell them you feel the line should be moved...." lol. I told him needs to get a survey. When he asks me to pay half, I said, "I'm sorry, but I'm not going to waste money on the word of your engineer friend. If he is right and the survey comes back and we have issues that require resolution, I'll pay for half of the survey." He agrees, and he asks me to leave him a check for half the survey, "since it's going to show he's right."
A week later, I return home to see a survey company just setting up. My neighbor is standing there with a smug look on his face and the Cheshire cat grin. Being nice, I walk over and shake his hand and start with some small talk while waiting for them to start shooting. The surveys eventually get to the point where the put in the first stake at the front of the property right next to the street. The second stake goes in, and you can tell it probably doesn't look good for him. The third stake goes right in that the corner of the fence, and it's obvious the line is going to go right where it should. My neighbor turns and walks away, and I can just about see the steam coming from his ears. I know he was so sure he was getting more land. He calls me later and says he only left because he had an appointment and since it was obvious his friend was wrong, there was no point in waiting around.
Later on, he found out that when he spread all that dirt and built up his land about 4 to 5 feet (it was originally lower than mine), he build himself out of a drainage easement. He could not build until he put the land back to the level it is supposed to be. He sold the house he was living in, in my neighborhood, and bought a home about 20 miles further south. Of course, now, these crappy walls he had build look like they will fail at some point sending dirt into our new cut. I'll have to address that sometime soon. I called and told him about it about a year ago. Other neighbors said he was looking at the walls with some other people, but I haven't heard or seen him since.
The newest twist, is that apparently, part of my back yard is the property of the people across the canal. In the original build of our area, there was no canal that went to the lake. It was added by the group of people in the homes that now sit on it, none of which own any of the property now. I did a measurement myself, and it does appear to be true. My other neighbor, next to me (on the other side of me from the empty lot), says that is not the case. His boat house and boat lift would actually be on their property. I built a nice rock wall on that property (what you'd think is my back yard) and I believe part of my pool deck is on "their land" as well. They, the people on the other side of the canal, just say we need to have the lines drawn again so they aren't paying property taxes for more land than they have. We need to get it worked out at some point.
These things get crazy........my buddy lives on a retention pond and the same thing happened to him......did improvements to the edge of the pond including small fence only to find the neighbor across the pond owned part of his backyard. He had to move the fence back.
My mom's home also was on a retention pond but like other developments everybody's every lot was pie shaped to an imaginary pin in the middle of the retention pond.
When we built on our lot (new construction) the survey company had our side lot lines going in the wrong diagonal direction from the street.....we had it fixed before we built the house luckily.......survey company was pretty embarrassed.
Well, there were no permits for this project, lol.
This is no LOL matter.
This is what happens when people try to get around codes and ordinances. You both brought all this trouble on yourselves.
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Drainage nightmares???
