Semi Lost Parcels

Google Earth:
41°42'27.27"N
70° 1'56.11"W

The gravel pit expanded over the years. A friend has a deed somewhere in the middle (the ancient way the lot fronts upon is long gone). It would cost more to survey than the land is worth and even then it's likely lost to adverse possession.

Not really the same, but I bought a single lot in a now non-existent little town from a couple in New Mexico (Arizona?) that had never set foot in the State of Kansas. So, I could have done that for them. The fellow explained that he had participated in some huge swap meets through the years where people would trade virtually anything for anything else imaginable. He had traded some turquoise jewelry that was nearly worthless for a lot at the corner of Main and Broadway, that was also nearly worthless. Owned it for over 20 years. After moving a couple of times, the County was sending the property tax notice to an address that was not forwarding mail so the property had ended up on a list for the next tax sale. He completely forgot about owning it until I tracked him down.

Tax rolls can be very interesting.

The property around my place here in Norman was platted prior to 1900. There has been vacations, park dedications, street closures and the like to where the plat and the occupation don't really even look alike.

The widow across the street has owned her place for almost fifty years. On the assessor's map there is a small triangle shaped piece in her back yard that is formed from a street vacation, an alley and a park dedication. The assessor's info reveals the 300 some odd square feet parcel is owned by some fella in Alaska. And a with little more looking around, he's current on his taxes.

After I found that out I saw her digging in her flower beds one day and asked her if she knew anybody in Alaska. "Oh dear, no" was her reply. Her and her husband bought the place in 1965 from an older couple that she assumed had owned it since it was built.

I never mentioned to her that part of her back (side) yard was actually listed as being owned by someone in Alaska. Who, by the way, apparently knows it because he pays taxes on it. Sometimes it's best to let a sleeping dog lie. 😉

My father-in-law bought a 10 acre lot in the desert when my newly minted brother-in-law (his newly minted son-in-law) was just getting started in real estate sales.

He owned it for decades when he got a letter from a lawyer offering 1/2 what he paid for it. Since he almost forgot about it (except at tax time when he paid the minuscule taxes). He asked me what he should do. I said to take a day and go visit the property, you never know what's happened in twenty-plus years. If not that, at least get a hometwon newspaper and read what's going on.

Turns out the county was going to build a sewer treatment plant at the lowest point in town. Guess who owned it? My father-in-law sold it the county for triple what he paid and had no real estate commissions or escrow fees to pay.

(And people wonder why lawyers have such a lousy reputation.)

> So how often have you as a surveyor taken and showed someone land they own but didn't know where it was and had never been there? Land they had owned for years or even decades?

I have done this several times. I don't remember ever doing it for someone that had not hired us for a survey though. Not saying I haven't and certainly not saying I wouldn't, just don't remember that ever happening. A couple of times I have shown land to people that did not hire us to survey that particular tract, but were former customers (and probably future customers). The most common example would be land purchased/listed at auctions for delinquent taxes. Usually the taxes are not paid because people don't know where the land is, or it has no legal access. Also usually, the same handful of folks show up and bid at every one of those auctions.

When I read the subject- line I thought it was going to be about a USPS tractor-trailor who lost a truckload of packages... 😀

The property we live on is in the middle of nowhere. About a mile to our nearest neighbor's driveway. In 1988 my Dad and I surveyed it for three cousins that inherited it. They were from all over the Eastern US and had never been to it. They couldn't find it even with the assessor's maps. The 5000 acres surrounding it was swallowed up in the 1980's by a timber company. Ours and a 50 acre tract to the North were the only two tracts in the area not absorbed by the timber company. They planned to build a large paper mill not far away and the timber companies bought everything they could to be close to the mill. The mill didn't happen. It wasn't much trouble for us to find it. Convincing the timber company that they never acquired it was another story. The chain of title was a mess and took 15 pages of affidavits to close a gap. And there was a sliver of land (0.5 acre) not taken in by the timber company that they had listed on their tract maps as being a part of what is now our tract. But this old plat didn't include it either. When we bought it in 2001, our attorney had quitclaim deeds prepared from the heirs to us and issued a title policy. Deeds and plats were recorded. According to our attorney, seven years+ have passed and we have no worries. The timber company paints the lines and puts up signage without taking in the sliver. We fenced and maintain it, still not building anything on it though. I'm a little gun shy.