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The joys of rural property ownership...

3030 Views 100 Replies 39 Participants Last post by  leenie
I bought another 30 acres right down the road from where we live last summer. It's in land use, so taxes are nothing.
A beautiful piece of land with a small trout stream. My dream to have.
I month after I buy it, the old fart next door that has a 17 acre contiguous tract next to mine, calls to let me know he's clear cutting the 17 acres. Initially I'm like WXF??

I express my serious concerns since most properties up here in Maine only have a meets and bounds deed.

The big oak tree over by the small pile of rocks, down the hill to the creek bank...that kind. Absolutely worthless.
This is the type of deed shared by both properties.

I send him a certified letter with my concerns, he won't accept it.
He calls and says he's having his daughter and son in law using a phone app to delineate the property lines. I still have serious doubts

SO now the battle begins. Timber trucks going by at 6am pulling the jake brake acting like a retard. Of course my Presa's react on a hair trigger, and go ape sxxx!

Temperatures rising and the possibility for a real conflict is rising also.

FYI, timber up here is BIG business. Someone cuts a bunch of your standing timber, and you're talking thousands, probably tens of thousands of dollars of pinched timber.

My lot is entirely forested with mature and soft and hardwood.
Had to call Maine Forestry Service, have a ranger come out, inspect the job-site and open a complaint.

Meantime I'm paying a surveyor $6K to survey the entire property perimeter. Had to be done eventually anyway.
The sooner you get on and record illegally cut timber stumpage for evidence the better for evidence.

The story continues....
Will update.


Maine Guy
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So you are saying he cant cut his own timber on his 17 acres? I lost something in the translation I guess.
Metes and bounds are notoriously unreliable since the original features may be long gone. If the legal description of the parcel relies on an oak tree, now gone, how do you know where the property line is? The line might run for 137 feet in a specified direction, but from where?

If the description is ambiguous, it's hard to know the actual area and the actual boundaries. On a larger property, the difference can be significant, often 10 percent of the area, sometimes 20 percent.

We rented a house in Maryland (also metes and bounds) where the misclosure was 11 feet even though the property was almost perfect rectangle of 3000 square feet. The surveyor walked 200 or 300 feet from their starting point and ended up 11 feet shy on almost level ground.

The OP is worried that his neighbor is going to cut his trees, not the neighbors.
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