So I have a meets and bounds legal description to my lot. Between my neighbor and I is a 10 ft un improved alley way. My neighbor legal description is just from the plat that was made from 1922. Plat. Lot. 100' x 150'.. So my meets and bounds pob starts from the intersection and works it's way around the parcel to close it off.. My neighbor survey starts from the other direction and works towards the alley way. Pretty much their survey shows they own the 100' x150'.. My home was being built they sent a cease and desist letter stating I was on their property. Well they had a survey done of their home again and it showed that my home was on the alley 5' of my home. The question lies.. Who survey is correct? Mine starts from the east and goes west.. Their survey starts from the west and goes east.. So in other words if you go by their survey my home is on the alley way. If you go by mines their home is 2.5' away from their lot line and part of their driveway in in the alley.. They purchased their home 3. Years ago I started building recently.
You don't state which state is involved, and we can assume you are the fee owner.
I'm thinking the classic case of JR v SR rights. They think it depends on which side of the road you're on as to whether it is right or left, or even the other East or other West.
I'm sticking with deed issues and Jr/Sr rights. You may lose this struggle, but you may win. Regardless, any attorney will say - get it surveyed. If for other reason than to map it out, with boundary lines indicated, and he can pass the bubble as he cash's his check. Define your scope to all and save yourself lots of future problems.
Good luck in court, seems that it is heading there.
I'm in the state of fl. I recently purchased the lot. My neighbor purchased their home in 2011
> So I have a meets and bounds legal description to my lot. Between my neighbor and I is a 10 ft un improved alley way. My neighbor legal description is just from the plat that was made from 1922. Plat. Lot. 100' x 150'.. So my meets and bounds pob starts from the intersection and works it's way around the parcel to close it off.. My neighbor survey starts from the other direction and works towards the alley way. Pretty much their survey shows they own the 100' x150'.. My home was being built they sent a cease and desist letter stating I was on their property. Well they had a survey done of their home again and it showed that my home was on the alley 5' of my home. The question lies.. Who survey is correct? Mine starts from the east and goes west.. Their survey starts from the west and goes east.. So in other words if you go by their survey my home is on the alley way. If you go by mines their home is 2.5' away from their lot line and part of their driveway in in the alley.. They purchased their home 3. Years ago I started building recently.
There is but only one boundary line. This line is derived by many factors such as Deed showing Fee Title, lines of possession on the ground, right of the parties over time as they relate to original intent of the person dividing the land, junior and senior right. IE who's property was conveyed first from the original larger parcel these lots were cut out of. Feel free to post actual details such as maps, deeds, assessor tax lot. State you live in. EVERY survey decision / opinion is given based upon the factual evidence at hand. Without small details, the opinion can vary widely.
Maybe the alley has been vacated.
The junior / senior rights question would go back to when the original parcels were divided from the same land. Generally a subdivision is on one of those original parcels.
You have a survey, they have a survey. The surveyors should sit down and review their notes.
If you truly have a situation where the record distance between two points (lines) is short and your surveyor relied on the point(line) at one and and theirs relied on the point(line) at the other end, then it comes down to that Jr.Sr. rights question. Someone loses land if there is a deficiency.
The surveyors should have checked the whole block to see how the lots fit and not just picked one corner and measured from there. It is not uncommon for a re-measurement to find a larger or smaller distance than the original plat, particularly an old plat.
It will matter whether the lots were created simultaneously in one subdivision plat or created sequentially by selling off pieces of a larger parcel, or in some states what order the lots on a subdivision plat were first sold.
Was the alley created on the same plat that created the lots? Is it still officially an alley or has it been abandoned?
Lots of details. The two surveyors should definitely compare their results.
The alley was made the same time the plat was created all at once. My neighbor legal description is the see page 75 plat 5 number 15/16.. My parcel was in the original plat too but around 2003 ended up have a legal description of meets and bounds... The plat was created 1922
The details of why and how that 2003 document changed the description are critical to understanding this.
Trivia point: it is spelled metes and bounds.
Need info to help.
Bacalao, You came to the right place to learn about surveying and land law. Florida is one of the more complicated places to practice because of its long history, and frequent land fraud. There are laws and remedies for almost every ones protection.
We do however need some important information to achieve more than idle speculation. You should start by posting your parcels full legal description. This is not the street address but is enough for us to find your property and start our research.
Need info to help.
My legal description
LAKE VIEW PT OF LOTS 17, 18 & 19 ALL DESC BEG MOST E'LY COR OF LOT 17 TH S30D10'35"W 162.48FT TH N59D41'51"W 67.4FT TH N30D05'08"E 150.20FT TH S63D45'40"E 28.34FT TH N25D58'36"E 7.03FT TH S64D27'33"E 40FT TO POB
My survey. 
My neighbor survey
Neighbor legal description... Lot 15/16. Lakeview according to plat book 5 page 76
Plat
May or may not be a sr./jr. rights issue. If there is a platted alleyway, there is a good possibility that the lots on each side of it are the result of one subdivision and the one having been sold with a metes & bounds description was written to follow the record distances according to the plat. If that's the case, the plat, or more accurately, the survey that the plat reflects would control the boundary locations.
It sounds more to me like two surveyors that simply laid out the record dimensions of each lot from opposite sides of an existing block, each without doing the work of determining if the block had any significant excess or deficiency within it. In other words, each of the surveyors was likely negligent in cutting the corners of determining the existing conditions that controlled the obundary before determining where the existing boundaries were and marking them accordingly.
The first step is the same as if you were looking into the order of seniority of the parcels, investigate the chain of title to see if your parcel was always sold according to the same description or if it had at one time been described by Lot & Block. Determine how it was first conveyed.
If it was by Lot & Block of the same subdivision as the neighbor's, then find a knowledgeable surveyor who will do the job properly by first measuring the full block, and then determining precisely where within the block each of your lots actually sits.
If one lot was created through one subdivision survey & plat, and the other by another, have a knowledgeable surveyor determine which came first and if the second was properly related to the first when it was created. That would be an element of sr./jr. rights come into play.
Even if sr. rights is a factor here, I am highly suspect of a resurvey that places either lot at precisely the record dimensions according to each original conveyance. In very new subdivisions happens as often as not. In older subdivisions that were measured very well in the original surveys, it rarely happens that a new survey fully agrees with the record dimensions. In very old subdivisions or those that were not measured with a great deal of care, the measurements of a new survey never match the record dimensions exactly. It is more often a sign of negligence on the part of the recent surveyor if he shows his measurements matching all of the record dimensions.
First Contact Your Surveyor
We have much less information than he has.
Paul in PA
The pictures posted of the plats aren't quite good enough to read everything. Possibly due to the forum site reducing the resolution from the original? If the original files were clearer, do you have a way to store them somewhere on the web and post a link?
The legal description you posted earlier is obviously much abbreviated by the tax people to fit where they want to put it. Those usually come with a disclaimer that they are not to be used for other purposes because of that shortening. The full legal description is probably what the surveyor quoted on the plat.
The fact that the legal description starts at one point does not mean the surveyors necessarily measured only from that point. They should have and maybe one or both did measure the whole block to see how things fit. If one did not, then certainly we might expect some discrepancy.
That long description refers to right of way boundaries for multiple roads. That would suggest that some land was taken and/or exchanged in the course of the roadwork and altered the original lot dimensions so that the new very long legal description was needed. The surveyor should have and probably did research the documents associated with that.
It's complicated. I don't think the people on the forum are going to be able to come up with a definitive answer with the data we have and the time they will be able to put into it.
OK that helped every one but you.
From what you gave us I was able to track down the tax parcel numbers.
Looks like yours is: 16 27 08 48870 000 0172
and theirs is: 16 27 08 48870 0150
The Pinellas Co, FL Property Appraiser web-site has a lot of good information including section maps in DXF format.
I am concerned about a few things. First thing i see is that alley was originally 10', now it is 10' on one end and 15' on the other. Second is all those different road row takings, they may or may not have been monumented at the time. That old 30' or 60' road is now 100' and 120'. The best test for that is a monument set in the marsh at the edge of the lake. Third, a lot of surveyors in Florida used non-magnetic monuments, cement poured into clay sewer pipe, sandstone, un re-enforced concrete and lighter wood post. I always laugh when the young guys of today wave a metal detector around and report "no monument found".
Guys there is not a lot we can really do for him without being there on the ground.
OK that helped every one but you.
Gotcha thing is my land surveyor says the survey he created is correct. Which he only measured from the main road towards the alley. As too my neighbor survey is from their corner all the way to Lot number 7.. The homes in the neighbor hood have been on the lots since the 1970's. My neighbor legal description has never changed since that lot was made. Yes as you said some of the lot was taken for road right of way. My ? Is which direction is the 15'. Overage and which is just 10' for the alley way. Also the big question at hand is which is the proper direction one should measure?? I.e. My surveyor went from the main road towards the alley way and stopped. As to my neighbor survey went from lot 7 all the way up to the alley way.. Do homes that have been established for so long take priority? If one were to go from what my surveyor did and start from my lot and work all the way down to lot 7 a bunch of property lines would shift I believe. Vs the other way around my home is in the alley way?
OK that helped every one but you.
Repeating what I posted below:
The fact that the legal description starts at one point does not mean the surveyors necessarily measured only from that point. They should have and maybe one or both did measure the whole block to see how things fit. If one did not, then certainly we might expect some discrepancy.
I've read most of the comments to this point and there's no clear cut answer that we on the internet can give you. You're probably going to have to gather as much information as possible and take it to a 3rd (different) LOCAL surveyor and have him/her survey much more of the neighborhood than the other two probably did. Expect him/her to do their own research, and don't expect them to give you an answer upon the initial visit. Things like this take time to research and investigate. You're probably going to have to get a real estate attorney involved also.
Please don't walk into either office and say "the guys on the internet said that I am supposed to get ___________". You will get an eye roll right away and not have a good feeling about it. You need somebody familiar with local laws and custom, it's absolutely necessary. I'll bet things are tense with your neighbor, but you should talk about this and try to come to a resolution. See if you can meet at your local planning department and make things work for both of you and be in compliance with the local zoning/planning codes. Going to court is really the last thing you want to do... the only people that really win there are the lawyers and the courts. Not you or your neighbor.
Good luck.
Carl
sorry I was away been at work for a couple days. just got home.
Bill,
check his reply to my post below yours. It has better pics. I think he just posted/replied in the incorrect place.
Still not sure what we can do for him.
Carl
