Verification of fence locations

The simple answer is the Board and/or homeowner should hire a surveyor to survey the property and determine whether the fence is actually built on the line or on the property line.

The potentially cheaper answer is that the subject homeowner can be asked where the survey pins are, if any corner survey pins have been placed. If found, a straight line can be drawn between the two corner pins to show where the property line is.

We dealt with this in my neck of the woods (Washington State) and convention here might be different.

But, the landowner (fence builder) is required to make sure that the fence is on his property. Thus, if he doesn't know where the property lines are, he should hire a surveyor to locate them so the fence is built in the right spot. It is fine if the fence is offset on his side of the property line (no issues with an internal fence) and often there are good reasons to build inside the property line. However, if built on the line, one darn well better have that line figured out.

Your HOA could ask the fence builder to pay for the survey.

I'll kindly suggest that you are in error on this. The surveying profession is setup specifically to avoid confrontation between competing surveyors. Two surveyors will in all liklihood give identical surveys regardless of who paid them because of the standards. What standards?

Well, surveyors first look for corner pins or monuments that have been set by previous surveyors. If they find these, even if they think they are in the wrong location, they are required to use them to define the property boundaries. Surveyors cannot just set new corner pins because of a disagreement in the location of previously set pins. Only a judge can move a pin.

If there is reason to be that they have been destroyed, or they cannot find them after reasonable attempts, they may set a new pin. But in this case, it is likely that old pins would be found and thus surveyors would use those to mark the property line.

Entrenching a Requirement to comply with lawful boundary lines

1 - Respectfully, a licensed, accredited professional surveyor/ supervised survey technician would be expected to have & apply "the expertise to survey a property to confirm fences have been correctly placed" .

As with other professionals, respectfully the VERY LAST SCENARIO it would be prudent for a professional to GRATUITOUSLY apply this - or allegedly to give free advice - would be to neighbours within a shared ownership community. They may be tin-eared when it comes to any advice, free or not .

If - IF - the complaint is true, did ARC members expressly condition the private fence to include compliance with lawful property lines ?

BUT I respectfully don't know how they would themselves need to be surveyors /supervised techies "exercising the expertise" to conduct a boundary survey etc

2 - The ARC and the PMgr should have the brains to include EXPRESSLY a condition to comply with property lines.

3 - Whether or not there would later arise a compliance issue, any serious pre-construction uncertainty should be addressed by a survey professional.

That's unless someone has the SKILLSETS to make ZERO mistake - absolutely ZERO ! - in locating the boundary line "on the ground".

That may require competently locating & applying survey drawings , finding survey monuments, renting a specialized survey bar detector , roping the lines etc.

Or further applying for a FENCE REVIEW BODY if your jurisdiction actually has such A.D.R. framework to resolve loss of boundary integrity etc "on the ground" .

( It's no longer frequent in my own rural / farmbelt area, but it used to be )

4 - Survey pins can disappear by natural processes or crime or careless excavation.

Or - as lotsa litigation has shown - may UPFRONT have been cheapskate surveyed without adequate sightlines predictably required to guide fence-making and/or road-building. ie the Big Cheap of developers long gone.

Private owners should locate & adequately keep markered their own property's external pins, as well as responding to trespass construction , unlawful pin interference.

5 - Paying or allocating the costs to rectify is another big issue, maybe for you attorney.

6 - Do "good fences make good neighbours" ?

1936 - 37 St Catharines Ontario DOUBLE MURDERS after the accused returned from getting legal advice about locating the backyard fence. Found the neighbour doing self-help / erecting a fence that violated property lines !

Lost it. Took an axe. Killed the self-help scofflaw.

Seconds later, the scofflaw's wife runs out the back door : "What's going on ? "

Within less than another second or two she is told in Ukrainian : "Here's one for you too, you old rascal" . . . Kills her too . . all within seconds. Was that the legal advice given ?

( outcome : maybe this could have been handled better. Unknown is how the fence-line issue was ultimately sorted out.

For the first axe-murder the killer was convicted of lesser manslaughter. That's instead of being hanged.

But what about the second just seconds later ? Would provocation be available there ?

This one went through numerous criminal trials until Canada's Supreme Court accepted the appeal court rationale of William Edward Middleton - Ontario's first & maybe only superstar of shared ownership disputes. Accepted a second manslaughter conviction and let the axe-murderer die in prison . . . R v Manchuk )

So, did good fences make good neighbours ?

David

Throw the complaint back and tell the complainer to prove it.