WEBlue

Anyone had one of these done?

We didn't have one done as part of the purchase of our property, because we were given by the seller a fairly detailed map that showed the property boundaries to our satisfaction at that time.

However, in the 5 years we've owned this place, a few issues have arisen, and we find ourselves very curious about exactly where the lines are. So we asked around, read web reviews, & hired a local firm.

Yesterday two fellows showed up, and spent a long time crawling through our undergrowth and our neighbours' undergrowth looking for 'trustworthy lot corners', a few of which they eventually found. So now we have a number of pink ties showing (sight line anchors?). Monday they'll come back with a robot to finish up; should be interesting!

robin1234

Interesting! Are you going to end up with permanent posts, defining the boundary, that will withstand possibly being neglected for years?

I've vaguely thought of doing something similar. Our property is five acres, a simple rectangle, on a corner of two roads - so our boundary is defined by roads on two of the four sides. We have two neighbours. When we bought the property, twenty years ago, fence posts and barbed wire were visible - down on the ground, but still visible. Crucially, there was a clear big fence post with the remains of barbed wire at the fourth corner. In the interim, our (pillock) neighbour rented earth moving equipment and cleared most of his trees on the boundary, destroying and disrupting the ancient remnant fence in the process.

I believe he has mental health issues - he works all the time. Building additions to his house, cutting trees down, moving earth, making his lawn bigger etc. etc. He has one of those outdoor wood boilers/furnaces for all his heating and hot water, so has an insatiable need for firewood.

So I've thought of getting our boundary redefined, but I don't want to spend too much money doing it ....

Pulaski

Round here all corners of each parcel are marked with an "iron pin", which is actually a piece of rebar. I know where all but two of my iron pins are, and could probably find the other two with a metal detector. I occasionally tie new pink survey ribbon around the pins where they protrude especially the two in the grass! One convention is that utility poles are usually, but not always, placed against a pin, the pin literally is touching the utility pole where it is driven into the ground, and we have two such poles at corners. Another pin is about 20ft from the nearby pole!

The bizarre thing is that, per the lines between the pins, part of the clearing in which our house sits actually belongs to our neighbours, such that the concrete drive outside our garage (side-loader) is literally the edge of our property and and the grass area along side the drive is actually not ours. .... And the same is true for the other side of our property, that the land which is legally ours extends into the clearing in which the house on the other side of us sits. ..... AND the same is true on the other side of that house. In other words, when that house was built (it predates the houses on either side of it by several years), the clearing cut in the trees to accomodate it straddled the property lines on both sides!

Despite all that, we have never had issues with our neighbours.

RICH

Mine is a simple lot. The next door house sold this year and they had a survey done. There are currently orange flags at each corner. I dug under the adjoining one's to me. About 6 inches down there are markers. At the front is a piece of rebar in concrete, at the back a 6 inch tube or pipe of about 3/4 inch diameter.

Eta recently the "council" decided to install sidewalks on some streets around here. A number of home owners had to move their fences back 10 feet from the road or so, to where their property line actually is!

WEBlue

Permanent?... Probably not permanent, but I did persuade the Husband to opt for the rebar (metal) markers rather than the usual wood poles (--they're called beanpoles here, just flimsy wood stakes).

We do have two things called 'monument stones' at two corners of our property. These are large stones (small boulders) with little holes/depressions in them that fit a little metal tool. But once we have the rebar markers installed, we can string a line between them and put some plantings in along that which will (I hope) be a somewhat permanent indicator of the border between us and neighbor.

Yes, we have a similar issue. Neighbor on one side took down a big old bordering tree that we all agree was on her property, but in the process of doing that she also took down a holly tree that the husband & I assumed was ours. She--obviously--assumed it was hers.

She also had no border survey done when she bought her place a few years before we bought ours. So neither of us know exactly where the line falls.

WEBlue

Aha, so that explains why our surveyors were crawling through the woods with a metal detector and a couple of spades....

We wonder about this too. Our neighbour's driveway has been enlarged to include a side parking area, the corner of which may actually touch or go over the property line. The owner before our present neighbor did that.

The husband wants to put up a good-sized shed near the line in the back, so we'd like to know for sure where that is....

Jerseygirl

Yes we had it done about 20 years ago...obviously before robots were used. Posts were put in the ground with pink tank tied to the top. They were still there when we sold the house 18 years later.

WEBlue

That makes sense, burying the markers. I wonder why our surveyors had real trouble finding nearby ones that were 'trustworthy', though? They tromped through this block and part of the next one looking before they found a few.

All our neighbours set plantings or fences well back from the street edge. I always thought it was to do with not wanting the snowploughs to scrape them by mistake when the snows are deep....

Nutmegger

We had one line done at our prior house because the neighbors from hell were trying to claim some of our land by eminent domain (the prior -- absentee -- owner hadn't complained about them plonking their kids' swing set over the property line). We had that line, which separated us from them, done professionally in order to ensure that the fence we erected after they finally moved the swings was appropriately placed. To complicate matters, under the town regs our fence couldn't be on the property line as it was going to enclose dogs. So the neighbor then proceeded to get his own surveyor and put up a demarcation fence right on the property line. Actually, he cheated a bit, but we were sick of fighting with the idiot by then. (Though we did discover that the surveyor he used had let his license expire and the town gave him crap for that!)

Pulaski

Some old deeds here in NC refer to an "iron pipe" rather than an "iron pin", presumably because iron plumbing pipe was widely available long before concrete reinforcing rods became widely available.
If it's like it is here, and I suspect it is, you do legally own land all the way to the edge of the roadway, but that the last 10-15ft are an "easement" into which underground utilities are buried, the sidewalk is placed, and which things like road signs can be placed without your agreement. Therefore you have no right to "install" things in the easement, other than your mailbox, and if you plant things they always risk being summarily removed or damaged.
In urban and suburban settings the iron markers are invariably driven flush into the ground or below grade. Then when a survey is requested the surveyor comes out and sticks wooden stakes in the ground where the metal markers are buried in the ground.
Some land is still marked that way down here, including the NC-SC state line, and they date from the time before iron pipe was available, sometimes even from the colonial era!

robin1234

Interesting! Our property deeds make it clear that the boundary of our property is the middle of the road. (This description of the property dates back to 1865, when the lot was carved out and the house built.) Maybe that's a change between nineteenth century and modern times?

steveq

Yes, same here in PA. And WE are responsible for clearing the snow of the sidewalk there, AND maintaining the sidewalk.

Pulaski

I think our deeds reference the center of the road for measurement purposes, but I don't think we "own" the metalled area.

WEBlue

Our surveyor offered several alternative markers. Cheapest was the wooden 'beanpoles' with the pink ties, next was rebar with pink ties, and most expensive were cement markers. We opted for the rebar markers. There was originally a beanpole at one back corner when we moved in, but a tree fell on it & broke it. Hubby stuck it as close to where he thought it had been once he shifted the fallen tree--it's no longer accurate, I'm sure.

RICH

I need to look into the easement thing. Since they did the nearby sidewalks, I realized that most properties on my street have a "driveway entrance" from the road to the nominal property line. Mine doesn't, so if they do a sidewalk, I might get cut off from driving onto the front yard (it is not currently a driveway! The property is designed to drive in from the back alley)

The neighborhood was developed into lots in the 1950s if that makes a difference.