Sweets Shouldn't Be Sour and Neither Should Sales

Dessert seems to be a topic of ongoing dispute in my home. Since fifteen year-old boys ingest chocolate cake as quickly as locust strip a field of corn, my younger son has resorted to dividing any homemade goodies up front and hiding his share. So adept has he become at squirreling away these sweets, that he often forgets where he's placed them, only to discover them by accident, days or sometimes even weeks later, too stale to eat.

Property lines are a little like those hidden treats. Over the course of time, neighbors often forget (or never really knew) where their property lines actually exist. Fences fall down and get rebuilt, driveways are relaid, landscape grows and encroaches on adjacent properties and home ownership may be transferred over and over again. And while title companies exist to insure the property and deliver clean title, they rely on the legal description of the property only - not on fences, or retaining walls, and certainly not on here say. Without a professional survey, establishing the property lines is virtually impossible. Even with the legal description in hand, understanding the set markers requires professional knowledge and expertise.

In order to circumvent any discrepancies, many experienced Realtors request a preliminary title search before bringing a property to market. Even with clean title in hand, this does little to offset the contentious neighbor who invariably waits until the "pending" sign goes up to assert his claim that part of the property that just sold belongs to him. This assertion -right or wrong- often delays the close of escrow for weeks, or in some cases, even months. Once the claim has been made, a survey is usually required to settle the dispute. Unlike home inspections which can be ordered in a day or two and average about $500.00 to perform, surveys are typically backed up for weeks and start at about $3,000!

Aside from the cost and time involved, a property line dispute often makes enemies out of neighbors that had harmoniously lived side-by-side for years and can legitimately make the new buyers feel anxious about following through with the purchase altogether. Moreover, if the seller is relying on a simultaneous close of escrow in order to purchase his next property, a dispute that holds up the sale, can have disastrous reverberations.

Unchecked sweets can create infections the same way that unchecked property lines can. If you have any inkling that a problem might exist, if any claim was ever made - even in jest, if a passing comment was dropped - even years ago, clarify it before your property hits the market. Even if you have to pay for a survey up front, it beats losing the deal after a sale is established. Sweets shouldn't be sour and neither should sales. Putting the right ingredients into a cake helps make it sweet, putting the right ingredients into a home sale does the same.