How To Find Boundary Lines For Your Property
How to Find Belongings Lines
Before you lot start building or planting toward the margins of your belongings, caput off disputes with the folks next door by offset figuring out where your lot lines begin and end.
istockphoto.com
Good fences may make practiced neighbors, but accidentally erecting one on or across a neighbor'due south property line can atomic number 82 to hard feelings or even a lawsuit. Whether you want to build an improver, figure out who's responsible for tree removal, or plant a border hedge, you need to know where your m legally ends and the side by side guy'south begins.
Here, we've put together the most mutual methods for figuring this out. Some are simple and inexpensive, adequate for satisfying your curiosity. Others need skills and will cost a few bucks, but may be necessary for sure structure projects. Read on to learn how to find holding lines—and ensure that your house and landscaping stay on your side of it.
What are Property Lines, and Why do They Matter?
Property lines are the legal boundaries of a given property, merely unfortunately, they're not always piece of cake to find. Non only is it essential to know where property lines are to keep from planting or building something on a neighbor'due south holding, just it's also important to know that most lots come with setbacks that prohibit edifice inside a few feet of a property line. Guessing where the legal purlieus is tin can result in having to tear downwards a shed or garage that's too close to the holding line.
Homeowners are responsible for maintaining the lawn and yard on their property and most are not willing to let a neighbor use valuable lawn if it doesn't belong to them.
RELATED: Whose Responsibleness Is it: Homeowner, Town, or Utility Company?
Bank check Sidewalks and Street Lights
Examine the lines that are cut in the sidewalk in front end of your house. Often, the contractor who poured the sidewalk started and stopped on the property lines, then those cut lines may coincide with the edges of your property. As well, the advent of the concrete on your side of the property may exist slightly different from that on your neighbor'south side. Streetlights, too, are often placed on holding lines. While these visual clues are skillful indications of property lines, if you intend to build or install something on your land, you'll need boosted verification.
istockphoto.com
Visit the Local Zoning Department
The zoning department is the municipal function that records plats: the maps, drawn to scale, that bear witness land division. Unless your home was built more than a hundred years ago, yous tin can probably obtain a re-create of your cake and lot plat for a minimal fee. This will requite you the exact dimensions of your lot—in other words, the property you legally own—in relation to other lot lines on your block.
RELATED: Setback Requirements: vii Things All Homeowners Should Know
Retrace the Surveyor's Steps
When the surveyors were laying out the original plat, they determined a starting point for all the lots on your cake. You can retrace the original steps of the holding lines survey past finding the starting indicate, which will be labeled on the plat as either the "common betoken" or the "point of beginning" (POB). It is frequently the eye betoken of a side street. The original surveyor's measurements will all be listed on the plat. With a long measuring record or digital tape measure, follow the plat as yous would a treasure map, measuring your physical belongings as you lot get. Your measurements should correspond with the ones on the plat.
istockphoto.com
Locate Hidden Property Pins
Survey pins are thin fe bars, 2 or 3 feet long and sometimes capped with plastic, which the original survey coiffure inserted on the property lines. If you have access to a metal detector, move the device over the ground forth the sidewalk to the adjourn to locate the survey pin. Pins may be cached just under the surface, or up to a foot below. A few days before you dig, however, you lot must telephone call 811, the free, federally designated number that will road you to your local utility company. Enquire the utility company to come out and marker whatever buried lines and then you don't unintentionally striking ane. In that location'due south no charge for this service, only if y'all damage a buried utility line, you could end up having to pay to repair it.
Beware of Moved Survey Pins
Property pins are non foolproof markers. Over the years, previous owners, utility workers, or even a tree-removal company may accept dug up a survey pin and reinserted it nearby, or just tossed it aside. Your actual holding line, even so, does not alter just because someone messed with the survey pin. For case, if you locate survey pins lx anxiety apart on opposite sides of your property simply the plat says your lot is fifty feet wide, 1 of those pins may have been moved, and your holding is still just 50 feet across.
Dig Out Your Human activity for Additional Info
In older neighborhoods, property owners may accept purchased or sold off portions of their yards. Locating a survey pin won't requite you this information, but the almost recent legal description recorded on your deed will list any such changes. If you don't have a copy of your human activity filed with your homeowner records, get i at the annals of deeds office, often located within your county courthouse.
Consider the Metes and Bounds Survey
If your act features a metes and bounds survey—a survey that describes the exact distances and directions from one established point on your holding line to the next—yous'll take all the information you demand to find holding lines. Unfortunately, this type of legal description is notoriously difficult to comprehend unless you're a surveyor.
The metes and bounds survey cites a starting indicate, located at one of corners of your holding. From there, the survey will give you detailed directions and distances to assist you locate the rest of the corners and boundary lines of your property. Information technology's similar to a connect-the-dots game, except y'all do it on pes, not on paper. You'll need a long measuring tape every bit well as a expert-quality directional compass so yous can move systematically from point to point.
Merely egad! You'll discover that a metes and premises survey reads like a Shakespearean play. A typical survey may tell you to "embark" from the betoken of beginning (POB), "running thence westerly 100 feet, thence southerly at an interior angle of 55 degrees to a point," and and so on until it brings you back to the original starting point.
istockphoto.com
Observe Property Lines Online
Every day, more than applied science is bachelor online, and belongings maps are no exception. Many counties are now digitizing their property records and uploading them to interactive sites that permit residents to access them from their own computers. These sites make use of a geographical information system (GIS) in social club to pull upwardly a lot or parcel of state using an accost or an owner's name. Look on your canton's website and then wait around for terms like "Property Search" or "Parcel Search" to access the GIS map.
Other online GIS sites may too exist able to help, such as AcreValue, a favorite tool of real estate agents for finding belongings lines. The lines will give you a general idea of where your property boundaries lie, simply they cannot pinpoint the exact property markers for you. For that, you'll demand to use one of the other methods.
Bring in a Professional person Surveyor
Before you lot drive yourself too crazy with the metes and bounds survey, know that the merely legally binding method to decide verbal property lines—essential, for instance, if you lot intend to build an addition to your house—is to have a professional survey. Local building codes will determine how close to your property line you can legally build. A professional survey could cost from a few hundred to more than a thousand dollars, depending on the size of your property and the complexity of the survey. Plush, perhaps, but calculation to your dream house while keeping in your neighbors' practiced graces is priceless.
RELATED: How Much Does a Country Survey Price?
Concluding Thoughts
Earlier building a new structure or installing a driveway, it's vital to have a professional come up out and mark the property lines. Property pins tin can be moved over the years, and in some cases, the purlieus may extend past a property purlieus marker if a previous owner bought or sold land to a neighbor. In a best case scenario, you may accept more land than you idea you did. In a worst instance scenario, yous may have poured the driveway on the neighbors' land, and they can make you tear it out.
FAQs Almost How to Find Property Lines
Using the above techniques, new homeowners or those wishing to find property lines for structure purposes, can do a bit of sleuthing to find their belongings line markers. In addition, those who are just curious about where their property boundaries prevarication may have some questions.
Q: Is it possible to survey my own property?
You can try by using the information from your deed and obtaining a copy of your property's plat from your county's Register of Deeds Office. You can follow the information and use a tape measure, but exist aware that only a professional person survey is valid for legal purposes.
Q: How exercise I run across property lines on Google Maps?
Type in the address and so zoom in. In some regions, Google Maps shows property lines, simply not for all locations.
istockphoto.com
Q: How do I find the GPS coordinates for my property?
This is also available on Google Maps. Roll in to view your holding and and so right-mouse-click and select "What'south here?" The GPS coordinates volition appear at the bottom.
Q: Tin can a neighbor remove survey stakes?
They're not supposed to. Pins are supposed to be permanent property line markers, but belongings pins have been known to show upwardly in the wrong spot.
Q: How do you marker property corners?
Only a licensed surveyor tin can mark the corners with property markers.
Q: What is the seven-year purlieus rule?
Besides known as "squatter's rights," some believe that if they accept possession of country that isn't theirs for 7 years, they tin can utilise for possession of the land. Not all communities permit this.
Bring in a professional person surveyor
Some jobs are amend left to the pros. Compare quotes from trusted local surveyors today.
Source: https://www.bobvila.com/articles/how-to-find-property-lines/
Posted by: haneywhick1943.blogspot.com
0 Response to "How To Find Boundary Lines For Your Property"
Post a Comment