Lot Lines: they can really freak people out in Cincinnati’s greater Hyde Park real estate market.

A Columbia Tusculum home we recently sold had to suffer through the lot line drama most recently. (It happens more than you think - we had a shared driveway scare in Hyde Park just a few months ago.) Following is a recipe in managing lot line drama:

In a nutshell, an opportunist  neighbor’s backyard abutted our home selling client’s backyard. There was a retaining wall on the neighbor’s yard that was failing. In a hilly neighborhood, that’s not exactly chump change to fix. So the neighbor started serving notices first to the Seller - and then when he saw the home go Pending, directly to yours truly - in an effort to spook the Buyer and gain leverage over the Seller by putting the transaction at risk until the issue was resolved.

The Neighbor cited historic precedent (stating that a previous owner of our client’s home had fixed it once 20+ years ago), intimated a law suit, and even told us he had a report from a Geotechnical Engineer citing previous evidence that the wall was part of our client’s property. (We asked for a copy of the report, which he failed to procure. And a geotechnical engineer’s job is to study the movement of earth et al, not identify where a lot line is. Silly neighbor!)

And when this kind of thing happens, there is nothing like a survey to settle the score. Surveys trump shenanigans every day of the week. So we had a survey done and sent the results to the neighbor, along with a friendly little love letter from an attorney, and the neighbor disappeared. We CC’d the prospective Buyer who felt confident moving forward with the legal opinion and the survey, and we closed 2 weeks later.

Don’t be bullied by lot line claims. Get the information from a professional surveyor and coordinate with your Realtor and attorney. Lot lines are no joke but are also not overwhelming to resolve.