Help! Bought vacant lot, but there’s no trespassin signs on it

[Alexis Monroe]

Hi!

I’m a new investor and bought a vacant lot as a quit claim deed from a bank. The bank hadn’t paid taxes on the lot for the past 8 years. So, I paid the taxes and the bank gave me a quit claim deed. 

When I went to see the lot, there is a fence around it and no trespassing signs on the fence. The neighbors, who are renting from the owner of the adjacent lot, believe that are renting the lot next to them (my lot) and use it (my lot) for storage. I’m not sure how to find the owners contact information but I did find the adjacent owners home address on property appraiser.

Any ideas on how I should proceed With this? Should I go to owners home? Send a letter? Sue? Sheriff? No idea... and I don’t want to be aggressive. I just want my lot lol. 

[Account Closed]

Originally posted by @Alexis Monroe:

Hi!

I’m a new investor and bought a vacant lot as a quit claim deed from a bank. The bank hadn’t paid taxes on the lot for the past 8 years. So, I paid the taxes and the bank gave me a quit claim deed. 

When I went to see the lot, there is a fence around it and no trespassing signs on the fence. The neighbors, who are renting from the owner of the adjacent lot, believe that are renting the lot next to them (my lot) and use it (my lot) for storage. I’m not sure how to find the owners contact information but I did find the adjacent owners home address on property appraiser.

Any ideas on how I should proceed With this? Should I go to owners home? Send a letter? Sue? Sheriff? No idea... and I don’t want to be aggressive. I just want my lot lol. 

Adverse possession. It's a thing. Before you worry too much about being rude or aggressive, maybe consider how other parties are currently treating you. Do you thank people after they slap you in the face too?

Id like to tell you my own story of a close call that could have been significant (not all cases are significant to value). This is the property I live at.

So I buy a house on Lookout Drive. There is a small development of houses, built in a later era than mine, built above my street on the plateau above mine (the highest "lookout"). At first glance, it appears more appropriate to have named their street Lookout and mine something else, as those houses are all on the highest ground. However as it turns out, I happen to own the highest elevation of the entire "lookout", except that it is buried in trees and shrubs and a steep cliff impedes humans from accessing the plateau (my house is at the bottom of the cliff). I didn't realize all this until later, I simply purchased a decent house on a decent lot and didn't think any more of it at the time.

So I move in and of course begin to explore my property, searching for the lot lines, like any new owner would (most would have done it before buying). Everything is old and buried and then there is the cliff and vegetation, making it impossible to verify the back lines without some serious work on the front end. So I carve a hole (literally) through the vegetation and up the only part of the cliff a human could climb. I get to the top and find my back neighbor who has a really nice and perfectly landscaped yard on the other side of my wilderness. The shape of my parcel is a trapezoid, so it is very difficult to figure out the lot lines, but it does appear my neighbor is over the line, but how much I can't tell. I also find a trail from his property to mine, in a place there ought to be no misunderstanding, where he has been dumping trash. I also find he has made a habit of throwing his tree, shrub and grass clippings over the cliff. I find one property marker stake, but not the other, and even if I did find the second, the problem is again the vegetation, which is so thick that I couldn't see through it in the winter (he didn't clear the forest along his entire lot line, just on one side). So I'm stumped, and I decide to introduce myself and see what he has to say about it, expecting him to not be aware himself, and apologetic if it turned out he was encroaching, and we might have beers and laughs after that right?

Instead, my neighbor was instantly adverse. He was not friendly whatsoever, and acted annoyed I would even approach him on the subject, as if I was being the bad guy (how dare I!?!). So I pushed on with the awkward conversation, stating I was unsure of the lot lines, but from my initial impression, thought he might be over the line. So he goes on to tell me that he knows exactly where the lines are, and admits to the encroachment. Then he has the audacity to say, "I thought it was just a wasteland, and what are you going to use it for anyways...?"!!!! He then gives me a rough point of where he believes the line is, I ask him to remove the trash and retreat his encroachment (landscaping) and that was the end of that conversation (while my cat is rubbing all over his legs - lol). He promptly removes the trash, and retreats his landscaping a bit.

So the next year I go up there again to do some more work on the plateau. Turns out I have a nice chunk of level ground at the top, spanning the entire length of the cliff line, and I own the highest "lookout" in the entire subdivision. You can see over a massive valley from there, and it is quite the view. I can certainly understand how my neighbor wanted to cut down my forest for the view. During this season, I find the property marker I had found the previous year had been pulled up and was laying on the ground!?!? What the? Also, my best efforts to identify the lines suggested the property line was much different that what my neighbor had roughly pointed out and retreated his landscaping to. So, time to pony up some $ and get a survey right? Only problem with that is the property is so over-grown you can't sight the lines in winter, forget about summer. So, I wait another season. Two years have gone by at this point.

So I go up at the end of winter to find my neighbor has redone their landscaping, including planting numerous trees, half of them clearly beyond his line (the line he himself defined to me). I also found the stake that had been pulled up and laid on the ground had been put back in...hmm... So, I hire a surveyor at the referral of my other neighbor, who shares a marker with me and our adverse back neighbor. Turns out that surveyor was the one who actually set the controversial stake in the first place and sure enough, it was put back 2 feet in my encroaching neighbors favor. So, the surveyor sets a new marker, leaves the tampered marker in place, and then writes a survey up that shows both markers, noting on the survey that one marker appears to have been tampered with, and submits that for public record (YES!). He finds the other marker from the original plotting and finally, I know where the lines are. So I go to town and start cutting a hole along the lot line so it can be sighted. I had the surveyor place a few stakes along the line too, and then strung a line along the entire thing. I put up orange cones too, along with the red flags, and the string line went right through all their stuff. So then the wife comes out and starts asking me what I'm doing, like I'm trespassing or something. So I explain to her I just had a GPS survey done, accurate down to the 1/4 inch, this is the line, their NEW landscaping is STILL over the line and I further don't appreciate the dumping of vacuum cleaner crap (with glass in it) or garden clippings on my property (which they were still dumping over the cliff). Instead of being embarrassed and apologizing, she had the audacity to mention the other neighbor who is encroaching on their property with a dog fence (the neighbor who referred the surveyor), and said they are ok with that because that neighbor is "nice" (as if I am not a nice person and as if that has any relevance towards an argument for them taking over my property), and then asks me to remove the cones and red flags as they are not attractive. Unbelievable. I just looked at her in astonishment, pondering if there was any way I could sue them for the cost of the survey and walked away, right after I sat in front of her and took about 1000 pictures. I decided those two were made for each other. They then promptly retreated their landscaping beds, but left the trees planted on my side, along with a couple of large decorative boulders. I started pulling out the tree stumps they threw over the cliff over the years and placed them on top of the decorative boulders. I placed rocks along the line. I removed the cones and string line, but left the flags the surveyor placed. They removed the stumps from the tops of the rocks (well, they are unattractive of course, not going to let a little trespassing get in the way of that right?) and bent over the flags, but left the rocks and flags in place. That's where we stand today. I am going to have an attorney send them a certified letter stating they must remove their trees and any other property or it will be considered abandoned, just to button up the whole mess once and for all. 

I am a property appraiser and am aware of adverse possession. This is why I was savvy enough to make a stink about it. Turns out, they had been occupying my property for 16 years and after just 4 more, could have made a claim of adverse possession. In my case, it would have made my property less valuable and theirs more valuable, due to the view. Because of the way they acted, I have a feeling they knew exactly what they were doing (or maybe they really are that variety of a-hole, like the people who think they have exclusive rights to the common arm rest on an airplane). I consider it a close call. They are also lucky I did not install a fence, paint it rainbow colors, and add no trespassing and no dumping signs every four feet for added measure...but you know...I'm not a nice guy remember? 

That was a long story I know, but you need to take control of your property immediately with zero reservations or worries if you are being aggressive or rude - it is the other parties who are being rude to you - you need to put that into perspective.