The last couple of comments got me to thinking of my neighbor. He is a commercial pilot that has flown everything from 757's to China to private jets for celebrities. He is so detail orientated that when he saw the county tax assessors map of who owns what, he took it to be factual and felt that I built my pond on his land and about an acre of it was his. I tried to explain to him that the map was just a guideline of where the property lines where kind of where located. He didn't believe me and said that nobody in government would publish something like that. He then spent several thousands of dollars having the property line cleared after paying for a surveyor to find and remark the corner pins. Now that he's spent the money and cleared the area, he's learned that the edge of the pond is more then 200 feet from the property line, he hasn't said a word about it. I think he just couldn't grasp the concept of a map not being meant to be accurate.
Eddie
And you now have a boundary that's been surveyed and cleared! You should ask him if you can have a copy of the survey.
Speaking of reliability of maps, I remember sitting in a town council meeting many years ago while CVS tried to rezone land they owned to build a store. Turns out they had relied on a zoning map on the town's website when buying the land and thought they had the right zoning. But that map was inaccurate (and had included a fine-print disclaimer) and they did not have the correct zoning. The town denied their rezoning, said it was their problem for not doing more due dilligence, and in the end the lot was sold and the CVS was never built.
So no, you can't bet on casual maps even those provided by the authorities.
And you can't rely on the authorities.
One of my houses is on a suburban street of 1/2 acre lots. When I bought there were no curbs or sidewalk. The county repaved the street and curbs with driveway aprons were put in decades ago. I was renting the house out at the time and on travel constantly so did not pay a lot of attention to it.
Two years ago a "flipper" bought the house to the east and started talking about widening his driveway to his perceived boundary next to my well so he could put in a garage. I knew it was further over than that so I got a survey done promptly and found that our shared boundary was about 5 inches INSIDE the driveway apron curb cut width.
.
He promptly had a survey done by a different company and they agreed. He did not widen his driveway or build his garage.
My lawyer (aka SWMBO) refuses to try and pursue the county to move the driveway apron, "Not worth the hassle".
I worked in mapping for about 40 years. Boundaries are often inaccurate.
And on the subject of inspectors and county inspection rules -
They run the gamut.
While redoing the property above (kitchen plus) we needed electrical inspections. The inspector was extremely courteous and knowledgeable and advised us of several recent code changes and a few better ways to do things.
However the Counties can be entirely messed up on their interpretation of laws. Virginia recently enacted a strict "deck safety code". Some counties say you need a permit if you replace 1 surface deck board, others if you are replacing joists or better. And it's the same law.
