Beating your bounds.

[mjw357]

In a nut shell, can you trust the legal description?

Not entirely, no. They are usually prepared by lawyers.

 

[LBrown59]

It's been my experience that each time a survey is made it results in a different boundary line .

What good is a survey that can simply be changed by the next surveyor that comes along?

Why is it the last survey is assumed to be the correct one?
So you get into your surveys his surveys which results in a he says you say situation with a bunch of expensive worthless papers for both parties.

 

[gengine]

I've heard of a quiet survey! My FIL was putting up a shop next to the property line this summer, and I convinced him to get a survey after the neighbor expressed his concern about the fence line. It turns out, on the north corner the property line is 24' into the neighbors side of the fence, and where the shop was going up, the prop. Line is 8' onto my FIL's side of the fence. The surveyor said he was able to fudge the boundary's a little bit if there is an existing physical boundary such as a fence or a road.

 

[mjw357]

It's been my experience that each time a survey is made it results in a different boundary line .

What good is a survey that can simply be changed by the next surveyor that comes along?

Why is it the last survey is assumed to be the correct one?
So you get into you surveys his surveys which results in a he says you say situation with a bunch of expensive worthless papers for both parties.

A survey is just an educated opinion. And getting your property surveyed does not make what is marked, yours. The legal description contained in your deed is the one that holds water, unless you record a new deed containing that description.

Only a court of law can say who owns what when there is question. If there is a difference of opinion or dispute, evidence and testimony from both sides are weighed, and the judge decides.

 

[dodge man]

A survey is just an educated opinion. And getting your property surveyed does not make what is marked, yours. The legal description contained in your deed is the one that holds water, unless you record a new deed containing that description.

Only a court of law can say who owns what when there is question. If there is a difference of opinion or dispute, evidence and testimony from both sides are weighed, and the judge decides.

You are correct, a survey is a professional opinion on where your boundaries are.

Only a court can say who owns what? Not really. Believe it or not, the land owners are the ones who determine where the boundary is. If I perform a survey and the land owners honor that survey, use my iron pins as the boundaries over a long period of time, that makes my survey good as gold. I once read a case where owners took their dispute to court. They didn't like what the judge decided, so they did something different. There actions actually overruled what the judge decided. Of course the landowners had to come to some kind of standoff or agreement for this to happen.

 

[DAY]

I'm curious: Does GPS change the game?

 

[dodge man]

It's been my experience that each time a survey is made it results in a different boundary line .

What good is a survey that can simply be changed by the next surveyor that comes along?

Why is it the last survey is assumed to be the correct one?
So you get into your surveys his surveys which results in a he says you say situation with a bunch of expensive worthless papers for both parties.

Each time you get a survey done, it results in a different boundary? That shouldn't be the case. Good surveyors won't allow this to happen. Some of this stems from our inaccuracies in measurement. Say I came out and said the distance between two of your corners is 350.00 feet in 1984. In 2012, I survey between the same two corners and get 349.50 feet. Maybe because of newer, better equipment, I get a different number. Does you boundary change because of this. NO! Does your deed change because of this. NO! The iron pins are the boundary and the measurments are secondary.

Your last paragraph opens and entire can of worms. Some surveyors seem to enjoy proving other surveyors wrong. We call these pin cushions. You go out and find 2 or 3 pins, all representing the same corner. My opinoin is that makes us look bad and creates problems. Good surveyors resolve boundary problems, not create them.

 

[LBrown59]

In a nut shell, can you trust the legal description? I presume these mistakes are rare but they do happen.

No : I found this out in 1989 after mom died .
Back in 1965 the state bought a small strip of about 1200 sq'. of the top corner of one of my parents 50 x 100 lots for a right of way for I 77.
I found out in 1989 the county screwed up and deeded the entire 50 x 100 lot to the state instead of just the 1200 sq ft the state bought.
During the entire 24 years from 1965 to 1989 the county had been taxing mom and dad on a 50 x 100 lot the county had taken away from them and given to the state.

Are you familiar with the term "quiet survey". I heard it once in my life when neighboring properties had different surveyors and the corners didn't coincide.

I don't know about that but the County is still billing me for taxes on a piece of land that does not exist.

 

[dodge man]

Are you familiar with the term "quiet survey". I heard it once in my life when neighboring properties had different surveyors and the corners didn't coincide.

Something about surveyors not disputing neighboring corners if not off by a lot? I suppose new tools might be more accurate than old and maybe some surveyors are just more accurate than others.

I've heard of "Quiet Title". I assume a Quiet Survey would be the action needed to Quiet Title. Its basically an action to resolve a boundary that is in dispute or unknown.

 

[dodge man]

Do mistakes occur in legal descriptions? Of course they do. Think about it, if property get sold several times over a period of 100 years, all that it takes is one typo. I have seen entire lines of a legal descriptions get left off. The beauty of most land records is you can go back and look at the old description for the same property and look for mistakes.