My grandfather had purchased his house back in the 1930’s and lived there until he died, and my brother purchased it.
When my brother moved in, the little old lady who had lived next door since we were little kids passed on, and her house was purchased by a young couple.
His neighbor had a driveway that went all the way to the back of the property, and next to the driveway closest to my brother’s side were all the rose beds my old grandfather had planted and tended all those decades with love.
Anyway, after a few months, my brother comes home from work, and all my grandfather’s rose beds had been dug up and leveled, and there was a little modular plastic picket fence pounded into the ground all the way from the street back to the end of the neighbor’s driveway, with the area of the rose beds and a strip of grass probably eight feet wide now on the neighbor’s side of the cheesy fence.
My brother, who is quite calm and reasonable, went over to ask what was going on.
The guy said that my grandfathers rose beds and the strip of grass was on his property, and he was just putting up a fence where his own property line was and claimed it.
My brother had never looked at the property lines, it was just understood where they were, and everyone for decades seemed fine with it.
So he got the property maps, and sure enough...that land where my grandfather had put his rose bushes DID belong to my brother’s neighbor.
However, the property line from the street was not...perpendicular. It went at an angle.
So his neighbor DID own the rose garden land.
But my brother owned about the first 20 feet of the guy’s driveway!!!!!!
My brother went over and showed the guy the official property maps, and they both agreed to keep everything the way it had been for decades!
I love that story...:)
Banks give mortgages to peeps without a survey?
I like that story too. Did your brother and the neighbor end up being friendly or was the neighbor one of those standoffish ones?
My in-laws house faces a river. The lots are straight but the river takes a curve. The next door neighbor couldn’t understand that when he looked out his window toward the river, he was overlooking my in-laws land. My FIL caught him one day actually moving the property line markers. He finally paid for a survey and had the markers replaced. Then, just because he wanted to, he parked his old rusty boat trailer down in the far corner of his lot. When my FIL died, I scrapped the old trailer. I didn’t want the jerk neighbor hassling my widowed MIL.