What is the name of your state? california
This posting is more an advice than a question.
Replies and comments are welcome!
I bought a house some 2o years ago in California.
I was happy, innocent, probably stupid too, and I didn't bother to do a survey of the property I was buying.
The property was fenced , landscaped and over the years I improved it by building a deck, planting trees and so on..
I thought the propperty line was the fence !
The property next to mine was sold many times but the problem arised with the last sale when the buyer did a survey and realized my fence was 20 feet on his property !
We did our own survey and he was right!
We hired a lawyer and tried to use the old " prescriptive easement" trick ( only 5 years in California ).We could not claim adverse possession either since we did not pay tax on this land ( we did not want to "steal" anything anyway, just tried to keep it the way it was).
We were denied because it would have been "pratically the equivalent of an estate tittle for us ( our neighbor could not use his property with the fence, cf Raab vs Casper court decision 1975 ).
Our attorney confirmed that in california, prescriptive easement for boundaries are almost always denied .
We had to remove the fence and give our neighbor what ( after all ) he legally was entitled to.... and our lot is much smaller than what we thought it was
My advice: Before you buy anything, just do a survey !
This posting is more an advice than a question.
Replies and comments are welcome!
I bought a house some 2o years ago in California.
I was happy, innocent, probably stupid too, and I didn't bother to do a survey of the property I was buying.
The property was fenced , landscaped and over the years I improved it by building a deck, planting trees and so on..
I thought the propperty line was the fence !
The property next to mine was sold many times but the problem arised with the last sale when the buyer did a survey and realized my fence was 20 feet on his property !
We did our own survey and he was right!
We hired a lawyer and tried to use the old " prescriptive easement" trick ( only 5 years in California ).We could not claim adverse possession either since we did not pay tax on this land ( we did not want to "steal" anything anyway, just tried to keep it the way it was).
We were denied because it would have been "pratically the equivalent of an estate tittle for us ( our neighbor could not use his property with the fence, cf Raab vs Casper court decision 1975 ).
Our attorney confirmed that in california, prescriptive easement for boundaries are almost always denied .
We had to remove the fence and give our neighbor what ( after all ) he legally was entitled to.... and our lot is much smaller than what we thought it was
My advice: Before you buy anything, just do a survey !