New Trend in Survey Calls

Try this one (from Tuesday)...no kidding

Ring...Survey Office...

"Aw, yea, I need pawperty survay (a most distinct S.E. Asian accent). How mush?"

Don't know. Where's it at?

"Fiteen-aw-foe Pinsurvanyah Abenoo."

OK. Lemme look that up. Residential, right? Looks like your in the older homes (one BAD neighborhood, BTW) that share a driveway with the neighbor.

This is a unique area with 10' driveways between the houses. The property lines run down the middle of the drive. Neither side has enough d/w to call their own. Done lotsa work down there.

"Yea. My nay-baw he brock driveway and I no can get my cah out. He mean man, call me names and no move cah."

I told him I didn't think a survey would really help the situation. He was probably going to have to work it out with the 'nay-bah'.

"I need put fence up. Naybah steal my air conditioner. He laugh. I see him tear cooper metal out to sell."

At this point I'm pretty sure I'm NOT going to do them any good. But I had the County Aerial up on the screen and was looking at the record owners. Came across 'Nay Mo Nguyen'.

Mr. Nguyen?

"No. He nay-baw. My name Steve."

I looked and the house next door, 1504, was owned by a Esteban Vincente.

Mr. Wincente?

"Yea."

I'm sorry, you sounded Asian. I just assumed...

"No. My name Steve. I not Ashun, I Cathorick."

Listen man, lemme give you the number of a surveyor that's just around the corner from you. Ask for Zach or Tim.....thank you...good luck. (whew)

Weirdest phone call of the week for me, for sure.

Shared driveways

One of the dumbest ideas ever thunk up.

Even dumber are shared garages, intentionally built to serve both residences.

Shared driveways

> One of the dumbest ideas ever thunk up.
>
> Even dumber are shared garages, intentionally built to serve both residences.

Amen brother. I've been working on one for over 3 years now that has a shared driveway and a shared garage. Major headache. Sometimes I want to choke both landowners.

Shared driveways

My first house was in a single family neighborhood with pairs of 1 car driveways. It was popular to pave the whole gap (about a 10' strip of lawn) between the driveways. My neighbor wanted to do that. He was one of those people, a real nice guy, but his junk tended to migrate my way. Occasionally I had to ask him to clean it up. I figured if we did that his vehicles would take two or three feet on my side of the line and I wouldn't get the benefit of the expense and trouble of paving the whole gap. So I declined. Sure enough, even so, his tire would hang off the edge of the concrete or even get parked on the grass when it was dry in the summer. A constant source of annoyance. You would think people could be reasonable and recognize the line.

My current neighborhood has all the driveways on the same side, not in pairs like that.

In the older parts of Sacramento (1920s) they have paired garages in the backyards. Those are actually good evidence of the original position of the lot lines (there isn't much else). There is usually about a 1' gap between the garages.

Shared driveways

All we need is a friendly reminder...

Who says we can't be good neighbors? ;o)

JBS

Shared driveways

Had a survey one time in the older part of Ventura where the neighbors shared a detached garage. One neighbor had one garage and the other had the other two. All one physical structure and they constantly argued over the use of it. They even had a 3" line painted up the driveway, up the wall, across the roof, and down the other side in line with a fence separating the backyards. Les Nessman-like actions...it was a big mess.

Ric

Shared driveways

> One of the dumbest ideas ever thunk up.
>
> Even dumber are shared garages, intentionally built to serve both residences.

The concept is right up there with a shared wife.

Shared driveways

Most of the houses that share driveways lie that were built when people had only one car, if they had one at all. The intention was for the driveway to be used to drive to the backyard and not to park in them.

Shared driveways

Actually a shared driveway, providing access to the back yard and access to a garage, shared or not is a good idea. Judging with today's norms is only showing how narrow minded our society is today. Those lots where it was the norm to share a driveway were narrow lots and sharing a driveway allowed for a larger home to be constructed on the available space. Today sharing anything requires a good well thought out legal document stating the full agreement and all of the terms of use and maintenance. Why that wasn't the norm when narrow lots were being platted? Different population, different values and people needed and respected each other then. Also the little fact that if you were having trouble with the neighbor, you took care of it yourself and if you couldn't, you kept your mouth shut. No, judging the past with modern eyes only shows how far society has digressed into the need for Attorneys and Government to take care of our every discomfort, can't learn to get along that way and today we are divided like never before.
jud.

Shared driveways

> The concept is right up there with a shared wife.

Well, not exactly. The neighbors usually fight over who gets to use the driveway/garage more. :-O

Shared driveways

it's a common mistake to think there was some mythical past time where everyone loved each other and got along.

That time never really existed.

complaints about the neighbors are almost as old as time itself.

We don't have Appellate decisions going back hundreds of years just because those people got along together; they had their disputes too.

People are people and have always been people.

Shared driveways

There is an ancient joke, that is sometimes ethnically based, that involves a man coming home and finding his wife in bed with his best friend. The husband's comment runs along the lines of: Bert! I HAVE TO sleep with her. But, YOU????