Sometimes it's worth it to hire a land surveyor

[MoKelly]

Whether you can cut or prune a tree overhanging your property is State dependent. Different States have different laws, and judicial decisions. You County Agent can probably clarify what it is where you live.

In Missouri you can cut back all branches to the property line.

MoKelly

 

[two_bit_score]

No.....that would not have been a solution.
I learned from others that he NEVER had sold any land.
He owned another very large piece of land worth several million, and had repeatedly refused to sell.

Understandable. I am much more often the buyer than seller these days.

 

[check]

Yes indeed, surveys and legal descriptions can get quite complicated. I bought a waterfront property about 10 years ago that was 25 acres, and had 2 right of ways. Plus, one corner of the lot was in the middle of a road. One of the right of ways was in my favor, over the back end of some 10 other lots or so. And my lawyer discovered that the wording of that particular right of way was incorrect, so we had the clerk change the records.

Finally, part of the property was zoned “rural“ and another part was zoned “commercial“. The commercial part is gold, because it allows me to build as many “housekeeping cottages and cabins“ as I want! And it also came with three septic fields, which are also gold, because normally you are only allowed one.

 

[California]

Take a look at the lower-center of this map. (zoom in). Township/Range boundaries are far from rectangular in some cases. 'Barstool surveying' was suspected (never walked the land). Also mineralization affected magnetic compasses, but they should have been calibrated to astronomical (?) references.

Weber's Map of Plumas County California . . 1914 - Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc.

www.raremaps.com

We filed a mining claim in that region that was still in unsurved territory at the time. So 'from where east branch x creek separates from west branch, up to the boundary of [private land owned by a logging company, former patented claim], and excepting land described in [prior adjacent claim]". Real old school.

Here's a more detailed view of historic mining claims (some patented) within T21N R9E of that map.

Rich Gold Deposits of Plumas County

westernmininghistory.com

 

[dodge man]

It’s not unusual for township political boundaries not to match up with the surveyed ones. It’s also not uncommon that shortcuts were taken by the original township surveys when they laid out each section. Like already mentioned they sometimes were done on paper and didn’t do the field work.

In most parts of Illinois where I have worked it was surveyed with a compass and a 33 foot long chain(a two pole chain). The accuracy was somewhere around 1 in100. This means for every 100 foot they measured they had about 1 foot of error. This would mean in a half mile they would have 26 feet of error. Sometimes they did better, sometimes worse. This took place about 1816.

 

[kenmac]

By "Bamboo" do you mean Japanese Knotweed?Japanese Knotweed That's nasty stuff if it gets established. You can pour a concrete slab over it, and still have shoots grow out from underneath. It was planted as an ornamental for years and is almost impossible to get rid of, short of scorched earth chemical treatments.

that's correct. I had it when I lived in the city. Round up won't touch the stuff. I rented a mini ex and dug it all up. The hard part was finding /digging up all the rhizomes. If you leave any, that bamboo is coming back !

 

[goeduck]

I also have waterfront (saltwater in my case) property and own tidelands out to extreme low tide. The angle of how it goes out (it is not a direct extension of the upland property line) is a bit unknown to me. There are state regs describing it.

Turns out no one cares, it is not like you can tell where you are when you are 500 feet out. What we do care about is clam diggers, etc. thinking the tidelands are public.

 

[Jstpssng]

that's correct. I had it when I lived in the city. Round up won't touch the stuff. I rented a mini ex and dug it all up. The hard part was finding /digging up all the rhizomes. If you leave any, that bamboo is coming back !

Roundup does knock it back somewhat, but you have to keep after it. The best way is to mow it, treat the stumps, then keep hitting the young shoots as they come up. My father killed a big patch with Roundup years ago when he moved into my grandfather's house, but back then he might not have paid strict attention to what the label said. Yet we still have it coming up all over the place, not where it originally grew.

 

[two_bit_score]

Closed on my new parcel last week. My surveyor did a great job locating a discrepancy between what was on the ground, under fence and the deed description.

He also did the research to show that the deed discrepancy was due to a typo error that was carried over. We got the adjoining owner to sign off on a quit claim deed for the discrepancy and the title company had no problem including that portion in their coverage.

It all worked out well. And much, much better than if I had not had the survey and had constructed a building on the portion of the discrepancy and found out about it later.

The survey work probably cost me a little more but the seller paid for the additional deed work. I felt like my money for the survey was well spent.