I purchased a residence in November of 2017. It was described as being 2.888 acres. It included an overhead view with property lines drawn in. Tax bill lists it as 2.888 acres.

I came home the other the other day and there were three survey markers on the south side(front) of my residence. Two were in the far east and West corners as expected. A third was approximately half way between those 2 but approximately 50' north of the other 2 essentially creating a triangle.

Fortunately the surveyor drove by while I was looking at the markers. He was even nice enough to provide me with his copy of the certified survey for my lot. The survey shows the lines (trangle) as the surveyor marked, but the lot is listed as 2.504 acres.

If the survey is correct I lost over 10% of my lot directly in front of my house. I then also bought and paid taxes on something that was inaccurately described.

I'm going to contact the Town, but what else do you think I should be doing?

Thanks,

Andy

Who enlisted the surveyer?
I
Osky

The neighboring farmer is is getting divorced and selling off a couple parcels.

Did you buy from neighbor?

Why did you not have your parcel surveyed when you purchased?

Did you have a lawyer represent you at closing?

If you can prove the seller misrepresented you, you may have some recourse.

Good luck

3 properties I've bought since we were married in 85' First two were issues with Neighbors, the 3rd and where we live Thank God (for real) we paid for a survey. $2,800 added to our Mortgage. Best mone we ever spent!

Sounds like someone Misrepresented the listing. I sure hope you had Title insurance.

Original owner bought and built in 2004. Second owner bought in 2016. We bought in 2017. We did not have it surveyed. We Did not have an attorney. Just a real estate agent and yes we had title insurance.

Had something similar happen to me last year on some land we purchased ....we bought 53 acres and only paid taxes on 51 acres due to the fact that we aren't taxed on the road frontage rite of way .....

Occasionally, two deeds will overlap and nobody notices for a long, long time. When that happens, I don't know how it gets resolved.

Your deed will have a property description. It should be pretty easy with a tape measure and magnetic compass to do your own survey and be within a couple of feet of the real thing. In a couple of hours, you'll know if the property you bought is what you thought it was.

If you bought property that somebody else really owns - that's what title insurance is for. Send a copy of the survey you received to your title insurance agent and see what they say you should do.

Go to your county website and take a look at your property on the GIS mapping portion. You might be able to see if there is a discrepancy.

1-should of got it surveyed
2-should of got a lawyer
3-should of got a title search done
Surveys are human, they can screw up, send it to title insurance

Not all surveyors are accurate. The state sent a surveyor along one edge of my property line a few years ago. Luckily I caught him after he was all done and showed him the original cornerstone landmarker from the 1800s. He said...Ooooh I was off a bit. Yep...a good 30 yards. Not an exaggeration, either.

That said if you ever want to see a surveyor jump for joy like he just won the lotto, let him find one of those corner markers from the 1800s where all plat books originated from. Apparently that REALLY excites a surveyor. Hey, whatever floats a guys boat.

I'd like to do this on my lot as one corner does not have a pin and while I know about where the corner is I'd like a more define point. Problem is the point of origin the centerline intersection of two county roads then so many feet down the road centerline then so many feet due east to the corner in question. From there so many feet xx degrees then so many feet xx degrees but here it gets interesting with just feet to the third corner no degrees given then so many feet back to the first corner. Hence my need to locate the first corner so I can triangulate back to the fourth corner.
How do I locate road centerlines?

I bought my land based on one of those markers. Only one of my lines is surveyed but it's on the corner of a property that has that marker. If that line moves, the rest of my property lines moves with it. That's the way my deed was drawn up. My cabin rests well inside that line.

There is a lot of land bought and sold around here that isn't surveyed. There are a lot of ballpark estimates people honor.

Our church property was made up of 5 different parcels, all bought or donated to the church over a period of 150 years. We had a property description drawn up by a survey company so we could file for a consolidation deed and make all 5 parcels into one big parcel. We found out that several of these little parcels overlapped - sometimes by a lot. So, whoever surveyed them in the past had screwed up when they wrote those old property descriptions.

And, I went through the new property description and found one corner (very strange shaped lot with many corners) that the surveyor failed to mention in the description. He re-wrote the property description and all was well. But, surveyors aren't infallible. They can make mistakes.

BTW that fourth corner is easily guessed as there's an existing fence, no pin. The other end of the fence is the third corner but it has TWO pins, neither exactly on the fence, with a possible two fpot max discrepancy. The second corner also has two possible pins one painted so I assume correct and the other six foot away that could be a pin or scrap metal.

Remember too that in the eastern US you are dealing with original property descriptions using metes & bounds.....not actual azimuths and exact distances. Trying to impose a rectilinear grid over that can surely create difficulties. Invariably a surveyor will conclude a survey with a small error of closure. Then it gets creative in how to reconcile that.

It isn't necessarily true that the surveyor was incompetent................Speaking of that.....maybe Zim will comment

Went to the county GIS, it shows the over view with boundaries and description we were provided with when we purchased.

I know a deal where a guy spent 5 grand on a survey and never gained 1 foot of ground. I also knew a guy that got so mad over a crooked road that had crept over on his land over the last 100 yrs, that he had a heart attack one night after an a heated argument with the road commissioner and never recovered.
I had a friend that bought a house and lot at a sale dirt cheap that had been advertised as 2.5 acres more or less. The next day he got to measuring and had barely over 2 acres and told the land owner he shorted him and wanted some extra off his side. He refused and offered my friend his money back and he took it. Had he kept it he could have got double for it a couple years later.

I knew of a place that the oil field had got over on a piece in the 1940's and made a road and that was just what ever body that owned and or farmed it used as the boundary which was off a couple acres. Then some new guy in the 1990's bought part of it and decided to put the line back where it was, ended up in court and since it was used by the other guy all them years they had to leave the line where it was, and any blind guy could see it was off.

I know where there is 3 townships that corner up and one 40 acres has 45 in it because that was how much the measurements was off, so they just made it up there. Back when they laid this county out it was mostly wilderness and I don't really see how they did as well surveying it as they did. Not like they had GPS, and that causes problems with the FSA measurements and if they could move one line then they are all off.

Many of those section stones are in a cross roads somewhere. Thru history those stones get moved either by accident or in the night. In old testament times that was a death offense for moving the corner stones because the land was the lively hood of the family.

Best I have come up with over the years is never take out a fence row, it just ain't worth it. When land was just a few dollars an acre it was no big deal and most of it was family anyway. Today with it worth thousands its different. And instead of people loving their neighbor they would rather have his land and maybe even his wife, lol.

If your deed describes a parcel that is 2.888 acres and is filed before before the adjacent deed that has your parcel cut down to 2.504 acres then your deed will take precedence over the other. You didn’t state what your deed actually read. Doesn’t really matter what a plat shows or what the tax bill says, both of those could have errors. Don’t know how much 0.38 acres is worth to you but it could get expensive getting that mess straightened out.

A good friend of mine is a surveyor and on occasion I help him on large parcels. With todays technology accuracy can be within a mm. We often get old surveys that use trees, plow shares, etc as corner markers only to find them gone, moved by previous owners or 6 feet off of mark just from bad math or laziness. There is often a discrepancy depending on which end the survey starts, especially in subdivisions.