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Thank you all for ignoring my comments earlier. It allows me to repeat. I am a land owner and have been involved in these types of situations twice. Rule#1 is have a surveyor mark your boundary. Your personal attempt to determine the exact property line will not be taken seriously by your neighbors. Cost? A couple hundred bucks. Well worth it.
I did this precisely to solve an issue with the property owner behind me. The property line between my yard and his (which is a rental) is a very slanted line that goes deep into his yard the further it is away from the street. The situation is also complicated by the deep hedge/grapevine that grows between the two yards. I knew the the landlord wanted to put a driveway between his rental house and the end of my yard (although there wasn't enough room) because he tried to buy part of my property. No way on that!
One day a backhoe showed up in the adjoining yard. I placed a hasty call to a local surveyor, who came out and installed bright orange streamers all along the hedge where the property line was (he really had to fight his way into that hedge at some points too). It cost me $150, but it was well worth it. The landlord looked pretty foolish on top of his backhoe tearing up his yard to no purpose, since the amount of hedge he removed still didn't allow for a driveway. BTW, the hedge has grown back to its original spot. Oh well.
Thank you all for ignoring my comments earlier. It allows me to repeat. I am a land owner and have been involved in these types of situations twice. Rule#1 is have a surveyor mark your boundary. Your personal attempt to determine the exact property line will not be taken seriously by your neighbors. Cost? A couple hundred bucks. Well worth it.
Obviously not since so many responses echoed exactly what you're saying.
I just assume the land had already been surveyed and the owner was aware of the (established) boundaries, which he would include in the certified letter to the neighbor, copied to the lawyer. If not, of course get it surveyed first.
Have a surveyor stake out the property for you, "in preparation for fencing." Casually go to the neighbors and let them know that you are looking at putting in a fence, and need them to remove their personal items/shed from the property line. It may be that they truly don't realize it's your property, especially in wooded areas. Many people buy property and their sellers point out the wrong property line markers. Assume it's an innocent mistake until proven otherwise.
We had a buyer who bought a house last year with a beautiful backyard -- fenced, beautifully landscaped, with a stone firepit patio, a permanent dog run with a nice doghouse and running water, gardens, gravel path -- just gorgeous. However, the survey arrived a week before closing (big backlog here), and we discovered, to everyone's horror, that the back 25 feet of this gorgeous landscaping didn't belong to the seller! He thought it did -- when he bought the property (without a survey, stupid!) the previous seller had pointed to the back neighbors fence and said, "the line goes to that post". What no one realized was that there was a 40' swath of land that was "no man's land" between the homes, and it was going to take weeks to figure out who actually owned it. The municipality didn't even know it was there, and hadn't even been collecting taxes on it. The price of the house was instantly reduced by $15,000, to allow the buyer a cushion for legal fees in order to determine ownership of the property, or to buy it from whomever owned it.
So my suggestion is to assume there is no malice intended. If they give you any guff, call the sheriff for trespassing.
Thank you all for ignoring my comments earlier. It allows me to repeat. I am a land owner and have been involved in these types of situations twice. Rule#1 is have a surveyor mark your boundary. Your personal attempt to determine the exact property line will not be taken seriously by your neighbors. Cost? A couple hundred bucks. Well worth it.
While I agree with a survey, not all of us can get them for a couple of hundred. In my area, a survey is $500-$700 and those I know that have gotten them have lots under half an acre. I assume they go up on bigger or more complex lots.
These neighbors sound like the kind of people who think that what's theirs is theirs and what's yours is also theirs. They've treated your land as though it was community property. My guess is that they know where their property lines are and they're just testing you to see if you'll be weak and do nothing. They'll take more of your woods, cut down more trees and do more dirt-bike riding, if you don't assert your rights.
This particular pic is the one neighbor that is using part of the east side of our back yard. The other two neighbors next to him that also boarder that side are Not using our property. So, he has to know that the line goes straight down from the neighbor on his north side as well as on the other side. The property doesn't just "jut" out at his property. And your probably correct---he may think we are weak. Well, that isn't the case and I will prove it this weekend
Maybe I'm missing something but did you try just knocking on their door and telling them they were tresspassing and asking them to move their stuff? You can give them a copy of the survey.
I am the one that just noticed how much of the side of our property they were using so this weekend I am walking over there and giving them a copy of the Survey
am I the only one who doesn't see the picture(s) the OP posted on this page?
we need to back up, and frankly you really need to quit thinking about all of the confrontational methods suggested. What is wrong with Americans these days?? Personally, I was hoping the general "make sure of your survey/property boundaries and then inform them nicely if you were right" would have been enough; sadly not.
Who the heck would suggest spending many $1000's to build a fence, without having a free conversation first?
Of COURSE, if someone is shown (by marked boundaries) to be using your property, and don't change their behavior, then you are perfectly entitled to escalate!
Herre's the gist of your OP:
how big is your lot, and how big are their lots?
Of your lot, how many feet into it have each encroached by each party?
Where are these encrochments, in relation to the other 2 adjoining owners that you mention?
How big is this shed that "part of" encroaches?
How much of "your lot" have they extended their backyard into?
see post (pic) #64. Yes, I don't want to put a fence around our property. I'll be selling this house in the next couple years (Hopefully) and I just want to make it clear to these two neighbors that they can't use our land for their own. You do have to be careful about approaching a stranger about something they are doing wrong. People are crazy. I'll take the high road at first but if they get nasty, the claws will come out.
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