Property Survey Legal Question

No.

No kidding. You never measure from a fence- you drive a stake at the surveyed (and guaranteed) corner pins, and run a string between them.

-- aem sends...

"RedDwarf" wrote

Cool. You just answered a question I was thinking about asking. How far leeway am I required to have between a shed and a fence. Same area as you. I was hoping to mount it with only enough to get a lawnmower around there but I guess has to be more eh? Am looking at the smaller 8x10 size but the taller ones with a sort of almost upstairs loft for added stowage.

It appears that the OP looked at the sketch provided by the surveyor and assumed the property lines and structures on the drawing were exactly as they exist on the property. As you say, the only thing guaranteed by the survey are the locations of the actual boundary pins. The drawing is always an approximation.

The encroachment of the shed will probably not be a problem, unless he has a neighbor who files a complaint. It will need to be disclosed to any potential buyers in the future though...

You need to check with your local building inspector. There is no single answer

- it depends on local law and any property specific covenants.

And just to ampliy - It's quite common for a fence to be built inside a property line. Sometimes it's due to an error in placement, sometimes it's to deliniate a specific area and sometimes it's so that the neighbor can't make any changes to that side of the fence (i.e. paint or stain).

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If you do contact the local officials, do it anonamously (sp?) so they don't know who is calling. Use an unlisted/untraceable phone number. That way if you get an answer you don't like, you are not allowing them to check up on you. But, of course, no matter what happens, you will have to disclose that information when you sell the house as undoubtedly it will show up when they do a survey as part of the title search/transfer process when you sell the house.

Incidental stuff like a notation of a fence are just there for reference . You use the property line when laying out buildings.

I'm wondering how the fence could be 4.5 feet away from the property line and not be obvious that its not on the line after they placed stakes at the corners. But I agree with the others that it's unlikely you can recover from the surveyor, as I would think they are primarily responsible for getting the boundaries right and unless you specifically asked for the fence to be surveyed, you're probably out of luck. Any structure should be measured from those stakes, not other objects shown on a survey.

Lots of good responses . . . I will just add that for legal questions, you can try misc.legal.moderated.