Encroachment: What It Means in Real Estate

When you buy a new house, you will need to pay special attention to few important things. Maintaining a healthy relationship with neighbors is one of the most important things to do. If you fail to do that, a lot of frustrating problems can arise. Encroachment is one of the most prominent examples for such problems.

What exactly is encroachment?

Encroachment is where a property owner goes ahead to violate the rights of another property owner by extending or building a feature, which crosses the property lines. Encroachment is not always intentional. However, some people tend to do it intentionally. No matter what, structural encroachment can lead you to challenging issues, and you should be careful not to build or extend your property to a land that you don’t own.

Even though encroachment is relatively harmless, it can lead you to liability issues. On the other hand, it can lead you to issues when you are selling a property or might even cause damages to your property.

How to deal with encroachment when you are selling the property

If you are dealing with a minor case of encroachment, you might overlook it. Even though it doesn’t cause any problems in day to day life, you will end up with problems when you are about to sell the house. That’s because you pay special attention to the property lines when you sell the house. Due to encroachment, there can be challenges in establishing property lines. This may eventually lead you to title problems as well.

How to deal with encroachment

The best thing that you can do when you are dealing with encroachment is to have a chat with the neighbor. You can simply get in touch with the neighbor and explain the problems you have. Then you will be able to figure out whether you can simply come to a common solution or not.

Another thing that you can do is to go ahead and sell the land to your neighbor. Or else, you may sell an easement as well. This will help you to overcome the uncertainty. Since you are selling the house to problematic neighbor, you can overcome future problems from taking place as well. If nothing works, you may take things to the court. This is where you will have to seek the assistance of an attorney and come to a solution at the court.

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