^that is why we all sometimes need an attorney to help us out. 
imho
Here a survey would only cost a couple hundred dollars. It might be worth it just to be safe.
Mr. Ellebud has handled this situation for families (2 of them) and a couple of friends. Call an attorney. Pronto. Do not take calls or call…let your attorney handle this.
I don’t see where he’d have any grounds to force you to do anything. It’s on his property; he has to decide whether to leave it or remove it.
What if while removing it, you injured yourself on HIS land?
I like the idea of waiting to see if HE puts up a new wall …that could save you money in the future.
Whoever put up the fence may have been doing it to establish adverse possession. To do so, you have to openly, hostilely claim possession of the property, claim it as your own. Some states require that you pay the taxes on that portion (and you may have been paying taxes on it, included in your acreage), but others do not.
The question is, do you WANT the extra property? If not, let it go an accept the new boundry line. If you do want it, you’ll have to fight for it. If you don’t want it, leave the fence alone and if the developer wants you to move it, then he needs to prove it is yours. Is it on your deed? (probably not)
If you don’t want it but the developer wants you to move it, tell him you are claiming it under the adverse possession law but you’ll settle if he’ll build you a new fence on the property line and draw up a deed if he feels he needs one.
If the neighbors know that the fence has been there for 23 years, you might very well own the extra land under adverse possession. Don’t take the word of the fence guy whose main interest is building a new fence.
I am not surprised the developer treated you badly, they aren’t exactly known to be the nicest people or the most ethical, they probably have the highest rates of lawsuits of any industry IME (family was in the construction business for a number of years, so this isn’t detached observation. Old joke among contractors "Developer meets the devil one day, who tells him that if he gives the souls of his family to he (the devil), he will guarantee the man great wealth and many, many projects. Developer hems and haws, hesitates, and the devil gets mad, and says ‘what’s the problem, man?’. Developer shrugs, and says “what’s the catch?’”). I tend to agree with others, if you can afford it you might want to get your own survey, while it is likely the survey the developer did was accurate, for your own sake you may want to make sure, it doesn’t hurt and especially if you sell the place, having that confirms the exact property (or if Mr. Developer does something like bulldozes crap unto your property or kills trees, you have the proof of where)
You could do a couple of things:
1)You could save yourself 2.5 K by having the fence moved, as the developer told you to do, but there is a risk to that, knowing how scummy developers are, I wouldn’t be surprised if you later on got a bill for the fencing, for ‘taking the fencing from our land’. Among other things, you only have his word on the phone telling you to move the fencing, so it would come down to your word versus his, and guess who would likely win (put it this way, developers get away with building huge tract mansions on property that violates zoning regulations, you get a 5000 square foot house put on a quarter acre lot, yet the same town will have kittens when you want to put a deck on your house, put on a new garage, or even in my case, drop a shed off the back of a truck that measure 10x6…want to know why? The developer basically threatens the town with bankruptcy by taking the matter into court and running up legal bills…like I said, there are few industries out there lower than developers.).
2)Let him do it. It is likely whoever owns the property behind you will get it fenced, and this way you will be saving yourself a lot of money, whether 2k or 4.5k.
If you really want a fence, then wait until the developer sends you something in writing to move ‘your fence’, and get the fence company to move it for 2k…but don’t do anything until you have something in writing acknowledging he wants you to move the fence and acknowledging it as yours, for the reason I mentioned in step 1.
A new current survey reviewed by your real estate attorney seems in order. There could be other owners with slivers of property wedged between the developers property and your backyard too! Stuff happens.
At this point, a new survey is just a waste of money and the start to a contest of wills.
There isn’t much more cut-and-dried than fence and boundary law, but it differs by state. That’s why you should contact a lawyer.
If the developer is experienced, he doesn’t want any hassles and there are some potential problems for him in this.
The best thing is to make an agreement with him in which he both removes the old fence and puts a new one in that’s mutually agreeable and respects the current survey.
I certainly wouldn’t fight for this strip of property–guessing about 600 sq ft. of mud and poison ivy and a few trees. The last thing I want is a legal battle. Any unplanned expenses are unwelcome right now. So I will probably wait and see what happens.
Well, I would just go silent.
They cannot make you do anything.
Let him figure it out.
If the fence is on his land then he gets to take it down.
Just smile and nod and say that it does not matter to you at all.
Spend an hour or so talking to a lawyer about adverse possession laws in your state.
Who owned the land behind your house before? They never questioned where the fence was? Once the fence was placed it was an open and obvious use of that strip of land by you.
I would not wait. You really want to be proactive on this. Contact an attorney, find out what your options are and then contact the developer with a proposal.
Why does she have to be proactive on this? What does she have to lose? She doesn’t want the property, she doesn’t care if they take down the fence.
I would be like, “What fence? You mean your fence? Why do I care what you do with your fence?”
Don’t waste money on an attorney. Tell the developer tomorrow morning that you bought the house and the fence was already there. It’s not your fence–you didn’t build it and don’t know who did. It’s the developer’s fence on developer property. It will take his guys 2 minutes to knock it down with a bobcat.
And…after you tell him that you don’t care what he does with his fence, that is on his property, remind him that when he removes his fence, he is not to disturb your property otherwise he’ll be forced to repair any damage.
Maybe you’d like a bill for the removal? There are any number of things that might happen if you aren’t proactive.
Definitely take photos of your property BEFORE you tell him, like NOW. This way, you can tell him you want him to be sure NOT to disturb anything on your property, and if he does, he will pay damages or restore to original condition immediately.
I have taken photos. There is not much they could mess up back there. There were some landscaping rocks placed by the previous owner in the drainage area. My kids and I already moved them back inside my property line (by hand, 1000s of rocks, in the summer heat, getting covered with chiggers in the process. . .ugh). BTW, the POA guy made a joke about the possibility of the developer “tearing down my fence and sending me a bill.” I hope it was a joke, but I guess this is the kind of thing developers have been known to do.
Actually, Justadad, time is the friend of the homeowner in an adverse possession matter. The longer the fence is there marking the infringed upon property, the better for the claim.
We’re not talking about that kind of time here.