How are y'all building garages over the building line?

[hookem131]

My deed and survey says nothing may be built over 5 feet from the sides of my lot. However, in my neighborhood about every other garage is over the line. My neighbor's detached garage is about an inch from the fence. 

My garage is old and its foundation is cracked into about 10 pieces. I need to replace the entire thing, however I've been told I can't go over the 5 foot line. Re-using the wall is an option but it must stay on the foundation, which is toast. How do people get around these rules? No permits? Lenient inspectors?

[august948]

1 hour ago, hookem131 said:

My deed and survey says nothing may be built over 5 feet from the sides of my lot. However, in my neighborhood about every other garage is over the line. My neighbor's detached garage is about an inch from the fence. 

My garage is old and its foundation is cracked into about 10 pieces. I need to replace the entire thing, however I've been told I can't go over the 5 foot line. Re-using the wall is an option but it must stay on the foundation, which is toast. How do people get around these rules? No permits? Lenient inspectors?

Don't ask, don't tell?

[hookem131]

On 5/13/2022 at 11:48 AM, august948 said:

Don't ask, don't tell?

Not sure if you're saying that you're going to keep it a secret, or if you're saying just go for it...

[august948]

9 minutes ago, hookem131 said:

Not sure if you're saying that you're going to keep it a secret, or if you're saying just go for it...

Bth.

 

[Reefmonkey]

What neighborhood are you in? We've got the same issues in Ashford Forest at Memorial and Dairy-Ashford, garages that (at least supposedly) are built over the property line. If it is true, one reason for it might be that in the early 60s right after the neighborhood was laid out, the original developer bailed and sold it to someone else, so maybe the new developer was sloppy in checking where the original lot lines had been placed.

The reason I am expressing some skepticism is 14 years ago, a developer bought and razed the mid-60s ranch house next to mine, so that he could sell build-to-suit on it. I didn't mind the old house being torn down, the crazy old hoarder lady who had died in it had let it fall into disrepair, so it needed to be torn down. I wasn't even that annoyed when I found the demolition workers using my hose and my water for dust suppression, I just put a lock on that faucet from then on. What pissed me off is the developer suddenly started claiming that the lot lines on both sides were wrong, so that this property extended inside my fence line, and inside the garage of the neighbor on the other side. Yeah, right, you "realize" your lot extends into the properties on both sides beyond the property lines that had been accepted for 50 years, as you're trying to sell people on building an oversized McMansion on it.

This developer was a jerk in so many other ways. He brought in a bunch of fill to raise the grade of the lot by at least two feet, above the levels of the weepholes on the houses all around it, so that runoff would have flooded our houses. We all bombarded the city with complaints until they made him take off all the fill and return the lot to the original grade. He also insisted that the house needed a new water meter, and put that meter on the other side of their driveway, ie, in my lawn next to my meter box (because according to him, that was "their" property), so they wouldn't have to mow around a meter box in their yard, but now I have to mow around two. (And my meter box could have been widened to have both meters in it, but no, he wasn't going to bother with that). He also had numerous runins with our HOA's architectural control committee, and angrily proclaimed he would never work in our neighborhood again, to which the ACC chairwoman said "GOOD! I am glad to hear that!"

The piece de resistance was one day after the house had been built, but was still being landscaped, I came home from work to find that his landscaper and/or sprinkler contractor had torn into my in-ground sprinkler system on my side of the driveway, and inside my fenceline, because the developer had told them that was his customers' property. I had had enough, I was incandescent. I immediately picked up my cell phone and announced very loudly that I was calling the police, whereupon the landscaper's hispanic laborers all scattered. The landscaper was immediately like "wait wait wait, we can fix this" and called the sprinkler contractor and had him fix my sprinklers and bill it to the developer.

I looked into whether I needed to pursue anything legal with the county about the lot line claims, but ultimately was satisfied that because my fence had been up for decades with no dispute, and the new neighbors then built another fence smack up against my fence on their side, boundary by acquiescence made any of the developers' claims, or even what might be in the depths of the archives from the early 60s down at the county, moot.