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> Specifically, in England and Wales there's usually no record of the exact boundary between two properties I think that the logical explanation for this is th

by OldHand2018 6y ago

> Specifically, in England and Wales there's usually no record of the exact boundary between two properties I think that the logical explanation for this is that it just isn't important enough to record the exact boundary between two properties. In the US, most of the land was (dubiously) obtained by the government from the natives, divided into large tracts, sold to land speculators who then divided it into smaller tracts, who then sold it to individuals and families far, far away from the land. The owner then had to go find it. This system pretty much required exact boundaries be known from the start. In the modern US, most land boundaries aren't super important anymore. Want to build a shed in your backyard? Your local zoning rules probably say it has to be 10-15 feet away from the property boundary. If you build it 10-15 feet away from what you think is the property boundary, nobody is going to send in the surveyors to make sure and then tell you to move your shed 1.5 feet to the left. The situations in the US where the exact boundaries are needed are probably the same situations where the exact boundaries are needed in the UK.

DanBC 6y ago
Property disputes cause huge amounts of distress and financial cost in England, partly because ownership of boundaries is unclear. Some people spend years and tens of thousands of pounds arguing over that 1 foot strip of land. For the other stuff we have "party wall" laws which help a bit. > Want to build a shed in your backyard? Your local zoning rules probably say it has to be 10-15 feet away from the property boundary. In England you can build a shed right up to the boundary. Potentially you can have bits (like guttering) that overhang the boundary. I think this site is a nice explanation of how complex it can get: https://www.lyonsdavidson.co.uk/can-homeowners-overhanging-eaves-gutters/ https://www.lyonsdavidson.co.uk/can-homeowners-overhanging-e...
- panzagl 6y ago
  In the US we also have right-of-ways granted to utilities, and while they usually work with you to avoid damage to structures and landscape, they don't have to. There may also be separate mineral rights (if I find gold ore on my property it doesn't belong to me) and water rights (I cannot legally collect the runoff from my roof in a barrel).
- tim333 6y ago
  I suppose it's been technically hard to do - plans in the registry office aren't going to be accurate enough to distinguish a 1 ft strip. Maybe on a good aerial photo you could mark it? In Thailand they put concrete maker stakes in the ground with serial numbers on.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    I have a metal stake at the corner of my property. It is possible for me to dig that stake up and move it. Thus there needs to be a record of where that stake should be so that if I do such a thing I can be caught.
    - tim333 6y ago
      In the Thai system the distances between the stakes are measured and recorded on the registry document.
  - 7952 6y ago
    And a lot of the boundary features predate accurate mapping. It could be a 500 year old ditch with a hedge planted on one side that is cut back every year. To draw a line hou would have to make an arbitrary decision that ignores the practicalities of hedges and ditches. Also being able to locate things to a global reference system is a very new thing. Before GPS everything had to be measured relative to something else on the ground. That was never perfectly accurate and could have absolute errors of a few metres.
    - tim333 6y ago
      I was thinking in the UK there are usually historic walls, hedges etc. that form the boundaries. In Thailand the land is often just a patch of jungle that nothing has been built on before so I guess the marking stakes are a solution to that.
- OldHand2018 6y ago
  > Property disputes cause huge amounts of distress and financial cost in England, partly because ownership of boundaries is unclear. Some people spend years and tens of thousands of pounds arguing over that 1 foot strip of land. How frequent is that? Based on the original link, it appears that there is a process in place for when disputes arise. Disputes happen in the US too. We have legal descriptions that exactly specify property boundaries, but converting them from paper to dirt also costs a lot of money. And land shifts! A survey from 200 years ago might not be accurate anymore! EDIT - your link says "These days, it is rare to obtain planning permission to build right up to the boundary" My main argument is that the US and the UK have kind of settled on the same solution, which is to try to avoid situations where you need to know the boundary exactly. In both countries, if the exact boundary is important, you can pay lots of money to find out (and it will take a long time too). I think that the "exactness" of the American property system gives people a false sense of precision that doesn't actually exist in real life. I live in the US state of Illinois. In the southern half of the state, the legal definition of the state (as defined by the US Congress when the state was created) is based on 3 different rivers (the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Wabash). That was a long time ago, and now the river banks have shifted a little bit. So you have parts of Illinois west of the Mississippi River, parts of Missouri east of the Mississippi River, and even parts of Indiana that are west of the Wabash River. Legally - what is written down as law - this is not possible!
  - DanBC 6y ago
    > EDIT - your link says "These days, it is rare to obtain planning permission to build right up to the boundary" Not all structures need planning permission. Someone can build a 2 metre wall right on the boundary. https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects/20/fences_gates_and_garden_walls https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects...
- ghaff 6y ago
  Furthermore, things that are non-issues between amiable neighbors on large parcels of land can easily become expensive nuisances when it comes time to sell. For example, I have a dumpster that's probably sticking a couple feet into my neighbor's property. It's absolutely not a big deal, especially given that it's logically on "my land" given it's on my side of a driveway. But when the property was split up before I bought it, a survey line was drawn in an easy but not especially logical way. I'd never build a shed there because that would be an issue I'd have to deal with in the event of either property being sold.
bluGill 6y ago
In the US we saw the beginnings of the problem of inexact boundaries in England, so we carefully surveyed most of the country after getting land from the natives (I won't touch that issue). In the far east cost things were not done well (nw to the old stump that rotted away 200 year ago...), but most of the rest of the country has land borders known to within a few cm. England land dates back to pre-history in some cases, so it isn't a surprise that it is hard to pin down where some boundaries are. It is also hard to fix this when two different owners disagree - someone will be screwed out of land they think they own (or given a fence they don't want to maintain)
jefftk 6y ago
> In the modern US, most land boundaries aren't super important anymore. This depends enormously on density, lot size, and land value. My town has recently updated zoning to allow the construction of accessory dwelling units ("backyard cottages"), but whether a specific lot has a room for one often comes down to less than a foot. They are definitely going to require you to bring out a surveyor before you can get a construction permit.

DanBC 6y ago

Property disputes cause huge amounts of distress and financial cost in England, partly because ownership of boundaries is unclear. Some people spend years and tens of thousands of pounds arguing over that 1 foot strip of land. For the other stuff we have "party wall" laws which help a bit. > Want to build a shed in your backyard? Your local zoning rules probably say it has to be 10-15 feet away from the property boundary. In England you can build a shed right up to the boundary. Potentially you can have bits (like guttering) that overhang the boundary. I think this site is a nice explanation of how complex it can get: https://www.lyonsdavidson.co.uk/can-homeowners-overhanging-eaves-gutters/ https://www.lyonsdavidson.co.uk/can-homeowners-overhanging-e...

panzagl 6y ago
In the US we also have right-of-ways granted to utilities, and while they usually work with you to avoid damage to structures and landscape, they don't have to. There may also be separate mineral rights (if I find gold ore on my property it doesn't belong to me) and water rights (I cannot legally collect the runoff from my roof in a barrel).
tim333 6y ago
I suppose it's been technically hard to do - plans in the registry office aren't going to be accurate enough to distinguish a 1 ft strip. Maybe on a good aerial photo you could mark it? In Thailand they put concrete maker stakes in the ground with serial numbers on.
- bluGill 6y ago
  I have a metal stake at the corner of my property. It is possible for me to dig that stake up and move it. Thus there needs to be a record of where that stake should be so that if I do such a thing I can be caught.
  - tim333 6y ago
    In the Thai system the distances between the stakes are measured and recorded on the registry document.
- 7952 6y ago
  And a lot of the boundary features predate accurate mapping. It could be a 500 year old ditch with a hedge planted on one side that is cut back every year. To draw a line hou would have to make an arbitrary decision that ignores the practicalities of hedges and ditches. Also being able to locate things to a global reference system is a very new thing. Before GPS everything had to be measured relative to something else on the ground. That was never perfectly accurate and could have absolute errors of a few metres.
  - tim333 6y ago
    I was thinking in the UK there are usually historic walls, hedges etc. that form the boundaries. In Thailand the land is often just a patch of jungle that nothing has been built on before so I guess the marking stakes are a solution to that.
OldHand2018 6y ago
> Property disputes cause huge amounts of distress and financial cost in England, partly because ownership of boundaries is unclear. Some people spend years and tens of thousands of pounds arguing over that 1 foot strip of land. How frequent is that? Based on the original link, it appears that there is a process in place for when disputes arise. Disputes happen in the US too. We have legal descriptions that exactly specify property boundaries, but converting them from paper to dirt also costs a lot of money. And land shifts! A survey from 200 years ago might not be accurate anymore! EDIT - your link says "These days, it is rare to obtain planning permission to build right up to the boundary" My main argument is that the US and the UK have kind of settled on the same solution, which is to try to avoid situations where you need to know the boundary exactly. In both countries, if the exact boundary is important, you can pay lots of money to find out (and it will take a long time too). I think that the "exactness" of the American property system gives people a false sense of precision that doesn't actually exist in real life. I live in the US state of Illinois. In the southern half of the state, the legal definition of the state (as defined by the US Congress when the state was created) is based on 3 different rivers (the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Wabash). That was a long time ago, and now the river banks have shifted a little bit. So you have parts of Illinois west of the Mississippi River, parts of Missouri east of the Mississippi River, and even parts of Indiana that are west of the Wabash River. Legally - what is written down as law - this is not possible!
- DanBC 6y ago
  > EDIT - your link says "These days, it is rare to obtain planning permission to build right up to the boundary" Not all structures need planning permission. Someone can build a 2 metre wall right on the boundary. https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects/20/fences_gates_and_garden_walls https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects...
ghaff 6y ago
Furthermore, things that are non-issues between amiable neighbors on large parcels of land can easily become expensive nuisances when it comes time to sell. For example, I have a dumpster that's probably sticking a couple feet into my neighbor's property. It's absolutely not a big deal, especially given that it's logically on "my land" given it's on my side of a driveway. But when the property was split up before I bought it, a survey line was drawn in an easy but not especially logical way. I'd never build a shed there because that would be an issue I'd have to deal with in the event of either property being sold.

bluGill 6y ago

In the US we saw the beginnings of the problem of inexact boundaries in England, so we carefully surveyed most of the country after getting land from the natives (I won't touch that issue). In the far east cost things were not done well (nw to the old stump that rotted away 200 year ago...), but most of the rest of the country has land borders known to within a few cm. England land dates back to pre-history in some cases, so it isn't a surprise that it is hard to pin down where some boundaries are. It is also hard to fix this when two different owners disagree - someone will be screwed out of land they think they own (or given a fence they don't want to maintain)

jefftk 6y ago

> In the modern US, most land boundaries aren't super important anymore. This depends enormously on density, lot size, and land value. My town has recently updated zoning to allow the construction of accessory dwelling units ("backyard cottages"), but whether a specific lot has a room for one often comes down to less than a foot. They are definitely going to require you to bring out a surveyor before you can get a construction permit.