Neighbor's new septic over prop line

[zeuspaul]

Paddy

Assume you have a piece of property 400 ft square. You sell the *easterly two hundred feet to Mr A in 2000. Then you sell the westerly two hundred feet to Mr B in 2001. Then in 2004 Mr B wants his 200 feet surveyed. The surveyor measures the original parcel and finds it to be 399 feet on a side.

The property line would be set 200 feet from the easterly property line and Mr B's property would be only 199 ft wide. Mr A gets the full 200 ft (east-west) because he is the senior owner. You couldn't sell Mr B the full two hundred ft because you didn't own all of it any more. You sold some of it to Mr A. There is only one property line between Mr A and Mr B.

Mr A and Mr B both have a piece of property 399 ft north-south because that is all you had to sell. You can't sell something you don't own.

 

[CurlyDave]

I can tell you from my experience that in my case, the surveyor placed new stakes based on only the most cursory work and primarily my neighbors' made up description of the property line. The surveyor my insurance company hired found the original monuments, right where they should have been.

I happen to agree that he should have lost his license, and things did not go well for him in the courtroom where the case was decided. OTOH, his incompetence and willingness to be bought cost me about $20k, and my insurance company something on the order of $50k, plus made it very difficult for me to get insurance for a number of years.

I considered the thought of pursuing a complaint against him both with the state, and in court, but there were other personal aspects of his situation which made it unwise. His son had died of AIDS a month before the court case, and he himself died a few months after the case. I suspected it might be hard to collect a judgement against a dead man, and God had cut short his license, so I decided to cut my losses and let it go.

My point is that not all surveyors are the paragons of virtue you say they are.

 

[dholly]

Fine...but the system is still way inside the 10 foot set back requirement. So, here is where township comes in - do they grant him a variance or not/ I believe that will depend on whether they think this was an honest mistake. I don't know, but my guess is the system was permitted and enigineered to be properly set back and the contractor goofed. Still, we haven't (nor has my neighbor) even addressed the other property line he breeched. Remember, I own alongside and behind his lot. This mound system is built right at the inside corner. My neighbor has shown absolutely no effort to remedy the slope that is over this other line - setback notwithstanding.

Sheesh, I had forgotten that there were TWO boundary lines at issue! Hard to believe the ZBA would grant a setback variance if there were encroachment violations at both lines, but ya never know. Good luck...

 

[Paddy]

Zeuspaul,

I agree with all you have stated. At the same time the mound owner could have had his *deed line* marked and be wrong with regards to a property line. Point is; you get home from work one day a you see some stakes. next day a mound goes in and he states it was marked by a surveyor.

 

[zeuspaul]

Paddy,

Anything is possible. In my experience the majority of encroachment errors are because someone chooses to build without the benefit of a survey and encroaches. In this case the one who encroaches bears the burden.

If you chose to build based on a survey chances are you won't encroach and if you do based on an error in a survey you have recourse against the surveyor. It is probably a good idea to see if the surveyor is insured against errors and omisions.

CurlyDave, no one on this thread said *ALL surveyors are the paragons of virtue*. Can you say that of any field?? I simply said I know of no surveyors that would favor a property line based on who is footing the bill.

Fourteen thousand dollars for a survey is a lot of money and a large percentage of it most likely would have been for research. Obviously the issues were not that simple. Failing in the research of a property line is an issue and can be grounds for discipline. In your case there may have been unethical behavior. If so and in my opinion it is not representative of the survey profession.

Go back another hundred years and you may be able to make a case that your property line may still be in the wrong place.

 

[HappyCPE]

hey, Seat_Time, any news?

 

[EddieWalker]

Since we've moved on to the topics of surveys, I'll through a few experiences out there.

I bought three parcels of land from three differet owners that all made up one parcel that I wanted. They all had original surveys from the same company, who is one of the bigger surveyors here in Tyler. But when I asked them to do the survey per my banks requiremnts, they declined due to exessive work. I personally think they are only doing development surveys in the gated comunities now and don't want to mess with wooded tracts of land, but that's just my opinion. To give them credit, they did give me copies of the original survey that they performed and told me to have whoever I hired give them a call to go over there notes.

I hired another very reputable surveyor who found all the original pins. Every one of them!!! But when he calcutaled the distances and area, he came up with some different numbers.

The most significant was a plot that was orignially called 5.12 acres turned out to be 4.9 acres.

I don't know if technology is just better in the 20 years between surveys, or if one or the other messed up.

Back in California, there is a developer who is able to buy land that is re-surveyed and found to not belong to anybody. Funny thing about that is it's always land that was thought to belong to a State Park. They seem to do a few surveys a year and he ends up buying these little parcels all the time.

I heard about allot more, but there are six parcels that I know about for sure that he aquired this way. Two had new homes on them and the other four were in varios degrees of development when I moved away. To add to the controversy, is the city banned future development on the ridge where these properties are, but he has permits that backdate the time of the law. These permits also backdate the time of his ownership of the lots, but that argument never seemed to go anyplace!!!

But that's another story,
Eddie

 

[swiftboot]

Hey Seat time...whats the latest on your setback situation...keep us posted, I been following this like a hound dog on a coon track.

 

[Seat_Time]

Update:
Things have been quiet. I emailed the township and the health dept yesterday asking what the status of the "approval" or "denial" was. The Township clerk emailed back only to say that she would forward me the minutes of the meeting where this was discussed and that the ball was in my neigbor's court. So, at this point, I'm guessing my neighbor is still using his "old" system (which is still functional) and is probably tangled up in some haggling with either his contractor or possibly the system's engineer/designer/locator. I think I posted earlier that I had sent both the town clerk and the health dept. some glossies of the encroachment along with a copy of my survey, etc. Things are pretty well documented...I am looking forward to seeing the minutes of the meeting though. I will post when and if anything happens. Thanks for your continued interest...there's a lesson in here somewhere. Hopefully this all comes out clean and without hard feelings (I know there'll be some). I'm trying to position myself as not the antogonist with my neighbor, but with the contractor or designer. I want to be on my neighbor's side against the bad guys that screwed him and put the thing in the wrong spot.

 

[buyerjohn]

I've tried to read all the posts and hope i'm not covering old ground (no pun intended!). There are 2 different issues here:

1. The setback encroachment
2. The property line encroachment

The worst of the 2 is the property line issue as it creates title problems for you in the long run...absolutely get this fixed either through:

a. move the system off your property.
b. grant an easement for the system to be on your property.
c. sell the land the system is on.

B and C aren't cheap to do legally...there are survey costs and legal documents to be drafted... I think you are in NJ and would guess the costs would be $2k to $3k to do this. I would get the neighbor to pay for any of those 3 options.

I would explain to the neighbor that while you are a nice guy, whoever you sell to might not be and that the new buyer would be well within their rights to flatten whatever was built on the new owner's property after serving him some notice...so it's imperative that this issue is fixed LEGALLY if any part of the system remains on your land...it will create massive headaches for you down the road if you want to sell and you don't fix it - most buyers won't touch your property with this issue.

If the town has already granted approval for this system and he's modifying it so that it no longer complies with code, he's got an issue with the town even though it may no longer be on your property. However, that doesn't mean the town will do much about it unless you hire a lawyer and play hardball.

If the town hasn't approved it, then they shouldn't approve the modified field without a variance which you can fight...but my experience is that town's hate to make people tear things down and they will find a way to let them keep the modified field...

One option is to have the neighbor install a plastic liner in the mound on your side of the property that way none of the liquids can head in your direction. This is common in mound systems around here.

Find out what leverage the guy has with the contractor..has he been paid? If not, get them to move part of the system in the other direction...it's not like the entire system needs to be moved and depending on the direction of the leach lines it could just require moving one line to the other side of the field...this isn't a big deal.

Are the lines parallel or perpindicular to your property line? Parallel makes this an easy fix.

just my two cents...John.