Property Lines

[dodge man]

In my area 99% of the time property is bought and sold without a survey. If you read your title insurance it won't cover anything a survey would reveal as a title problem. Places that do require a survey its usually the lender and/or the title insurance company. I've never seen or heard of a law the requires it.

I personally would never sign a survey, even if I did it just a few years ago, without going out and at least finding the corners again.

I guess I should add I'm a Professional Land Surveyor.

As far as I know, surveyors don't get "rich" doing the work. They make a fair to good living at best, and there helpers make a lot less. In a way, property that has been surveyed several times in the past is not a good way to make money, its easy to do it again so we charge a lot less. We aren't like realators where we charge a percentage of the value.

 

[John Fitzgerald]

Title companies around here won't write title policies without a "modern" survey. No title insurance = no financing.

 

[dodge man]

To the OP, you and your neighbor went about it all wrong. You get in a heated argument about where the boundary is and can't agree, you both hire surveyors and lawyers. After spending thousands you finally get your day in court. You and your lawyers are both just sure you will win. Before the trial begins the judge tell you to take the argument out in the hall and reach an agreement, he is not going to mess with silly boundary disputes and waste the courts time. Then you reach the agreement just like you did from day one. The difference is you didn't make a lawyer any money in the process.

The above paragraph is meant as a joke but after surveying for over 30 years, I've seen it happen more than once.

 

[JRobyn]

I always get a chuckle out of the "find the corners" phrase. IIRC, our property boundary includes nearly 200 individual metes and bounds. Not a "corner" in the bunch.

I was pleased to find that when I entered all of the metes and bounds into a survey mapping program that it "closed" very accurately. And when I printed out the boundary on clear mylar and overlaid it on an identically-scaled topo map, the boundaries lined up exactly with all of the creek bottoms and roads that constitute the majority of our boundaries. I am sure that the paths of the creekbottoms have moved a bit over the decades. If that means I've lost a foot or two in one place, I've likely gained the same in another.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

from todays newspaper:

Beginning for the same at the Northeast corner of said Northwest Quarter of the Southeast Quarter of Section 13, thence on a straight line a little Southwest to a stone in the center of the public road leading up the hill from Cameron, passing 10 feet South of a sarvis bush standing about 3 rods East of said road up in the field about 24 rods. Said stone in the center of the road supposed to be about 2 1/2 rods South of the Northern boundary of said Northwest Quarter; thence from said stone in the center of the road southward down the hill following the meandering of said road in the center across the entire said Northwest Quarter to Stephen *******—´ line to a stone in the center of said road; thence East supposed to be about 24 rods to the Southeast corner of said Quarter; thence North to the place of beginning, supposed to contain about 11 acres

I love the " following the meandering of said road"

 

[TheMan419]

To the OP, you and your neighbor went about it all wrong. You get in a heated argument about where the boundary is and can't agree, you both hire surveyors and lawyers. After spending thousands you finally get your day in court. You and your lawyers are both just sure you will win. Before the trial begins the judge tell you to take the argument out in the hall and reach an agreement, he is not going to mess with silly boundary disputes and waste the courts time. Then you reach the agreement just like you did from day one. The difference is you didn't make a lawyer any money in the process.

The above paragraph is meant as a joke but after surveying for over 30 years, I've seen it happen more than once.

Since I am a lawyer I thought I would save myself the headache. No offense, but the most boring CLE I ever went to was how to read a legal description. I forgot to get my credits in and it was the only 6 hour class I could find that gave me credits. It was on December 28th a 2.5 hour one way drive for me to get to the class.

That all said I do a fair amount of divorce work and we argue over property all the time. So it is nice to see the legal description of the property and have half an idea of what it means.

I too have seen plenty of cases like you describe. Sad really. Happy that some lawyer is making money off of it, but really we can't just sit down and talk these days?

 

[Birdhunter1]

............................
for probably 100 years. References to "stake and stones" as corner points. Long overgrown, and the woods was full of rock piles.

You'd be amazed at how many old fences I have worked on that when I go to replace corner structures somewhere within a few inches of that corner post you can find a large diameter short thickness rock, say a 10" diameter rock a few inches thick, or a stack of rocks underground like someone dug a hole and stacked a bunch of 4" rocks on top of each other. One farm I was working at the old guy that owned the place told me there is a rock about the size of a dinner plate next to the post, it was there when he was a kid and his dad told him that it was there when he bought the farm in the early 1900's.
The owners words were don't move that rock!

 

[dodge man]

It was very common out west that the original government surveyors built rock mounds for the section and quarter section corners. Of course over time these tend to sink into the dirt. In my area of Illinois, and I think this goes for most of the state, they set a post in a sod mound for almost all of the corners. The evidence of these are long gone, some having been set over 200 years ago. Illinois had a county surveyor office in place for most of the counties for many years, which as far as I know no longer exists. These county suveyors did a lot of surveying over the years and the usually set stones for their work. Of course how do you know if a stone near a fence corner is a property corner of just a rock that got tossed there? In my area if they were set by the county surveyor they were often a standstone which is not really a rock that would pop up in a field.

You also bring up an important point in surveying, owner testimony. In theory, as a land surveyor in Illinois, I can swear a person in and take sworn testimony. I've never done this. I'm also allowed to use my judgement on if a person is telling me something that would favor them by telling me something false. I've often talked to land owners about corners and they are almost truthfull. Someone that says the stone next to a post is a property corner is as good as gold in my book.

 

[TXHF]

My lines are clear and I know where all the survey pins are but if someone wants to step over and mow it before I put the fence up? They are absolutely welcome to mow all they want. ****, I'll even give 'em beer and watch from my hammock.

Glad to know there are some people willing to meet and watch each other's backs. I've only met one neighbor up there thus far and they all seem very nice. I rolled up on the whole family shooting targets but I did not know they'd bought that parcel. They haven't fenced yet either.

 

[Woodeye]

My forty acres is marked with sunken "Ford axles". A few years ago a timber company surveyed the entire area and they used cotton gin spindles. The two are sort of similar in that they have a bevel gear on them, cotton gin spindles appeared to be stainless steel.