If someone built on your property, the first move is to hire a licensed land surveyor to confirm exactly where the boundary falls, then use that survey to either negotiate removal with your neighbor or, if that fails, pursue a court order. Everything else, from demand letters to lawsuits, depends on having a certified survey in hand. And the clock matters: wait too long and legal doctrines like adverse possession can give your neighbor rights to the land they’ve built on.
Start With a Professional Survey
Deeds and old plat maps are useful, but they can be vague, outdated, or contradicted by what’s actually on the ground. A licensed surveyor physically stakes the property line with pins and produces a certified survey map that holds up in court. Expect somewhere between $500 and $5,500 depending on lot size, terrain, and your local market.
While the surveyor works, pull your own records together: the deed, any existing plat maps, and your title insurance policy. Some title insurance policies cover encroachment disputes, so read yours carefully. If you have coverage, filing a claim could shift the cost of resolving this onto the insurer instead of you.
Document the Encroachment
Once the surveyor confirms the boundary, photograph and video the structure from several angles. Include shots that show the survey markers next to the encroaching structure so the intrusion is visually obvious. Date-stamp everything. If construction is still underway, keep documenting as it progresses. This evidence package does two jobs: it gives your neighbor something concrete to look at during a conversation, and it gives a judge clear proof later if you end up in court.
Talk to Your Neighbor
Many encroachments are genuinely accidental. A neighbor who hired a contractor to build a shed may have no idea it crossed the line. Approach the conversation with the survey map in hand, not accusations. Show them where the line actually falls and ask how they’d like to resolve it. People respond far better to “here’s what the survey shows” than to being told they stole land.
That conversation also does something legally important. It puts your neighbor on notice that the encroachment exists and that you have not consented to it. That matters down the road if adverse possession ever becomes an issue. If the talk goes well, you may be able to agree on removal, relocation, or compensation without ever hiring a lawyer.
Do Not Tear It Down Yourself
When you see a shed or fence sitting on your land, every impulse says grab a sledgehammer. Resist it. Destroying or removing a neighbor’s structure without a court order exposes you to civil liability for the damage, even when the structure sits on your side of the line.
The reason is that the structure, as a physical object, still belongs to the person who built it. Damaging someone else’s property is a tort called trespass to chattels, which applies when you intentionally interfere with or damage another person’s belongings.1Legal Information Institute. Trespass to Chattels If your neighbor turns out to have a viable claim, or a court later decides the equities favor leaving the structure where it is, you could owe the full cost of rebuilding what you destroyed. The legal system is slow, but it protects you from paying for a mistake that is very expensive to undo.
Why the Clock Matters
Two legal doctrines punish property owners who sit on their rights, and both start running the moment a structure goes up on your land.
Adverse Possession
Adverse possession lets someone claim legal ownership of land they have occupied openly, without the true owner’s permission, for a continuous period set by state law. That period ranges from as few as five years in some states to twenty years or more in others.2Legal Information Institute. Adverse Possession If a neighbor’s structure sits undisturbed on your land for the full statutory period, they can petition a court for title to the encroached portion and may actually win it.
A principle called “tacking” makes the timeline more dangerous. Successive owners can combine their periods of possession. If your neighbor occupies part of your land for six years and then sells the house, the buyer can pick up where the prior owner left off, as long as there is a legal connection between them such as a deed or sale. The clock does not reset when the house next door changes hands.
Prescriptive Easements
Even when a neighbor cannot claim outright ownership, they may acquire a prescriptive easement, a permanent legal right to use a portion of your land. The requirements look similar to adverse possession: open, continuous use without your permission for the statutory period.3Legal Information Institute. Prescriptive Easement The difference is that no ownership transfers. Your neighbor would not own the strip their driveway crosses, but they would have a legally enforceable right to keep using it, and that right runs with the land, binding you and every future owner of your property.
The longer you wait, the stronger your neighbor’s legal position becomes.
Send a Formal Demand Letter
If a conversation does not produce results, escalate to a written demand. The letter should identify the encroaching structure, reference the survey by date and surveyor name, and state clearly what you want: removal within a specific timeframe, commonly 30 days. The letter also creates a paper trail showing you asserted your rights and gave fair warning before filing suit.
Send it by certified mail with return receipt requested. The signed receipt proves your neighbor received it, which matters if a court later asks whether you gave adequate notice. Having a real estate attorney draft or review the letter adds weight; law firm letterhead signals that you intend to follow through.
Check the Building Permit
Call your local building or zoning department and ask whether a permit was issued for the structure. Most jurisdictions require permits for sheds, fences, additions, and other permanent structures. If your neighbor built without one, code enforcement can order the structure removed or modified on its own authority. You don’t need a lawyer or a lawsuit to trigger that process, which makes it one of the most cost-effective tools available. Even where a permit was issued, it may have been granted based on an incorrect site plan, giving the building department grounds to revisit the approval.
Legal Remedies When Negotiation Fails
If letters and code enforcement don’t resolve the problem, litigation is the remaining path. Real estate attorneys typically charge between $150 and $500 per hour for boundary disputes, with court filing fees for property actions generally running a few hundred dollars. Several legal tools are available.
Ejectment
An ejectment lawsuit asks the court to order your neighbor to remove the structure and vacate the encroached land. It is the most direct remedy when you want the intrusion gone. If the court rules in your favor, the neighbor pays the cost of removal, and you may also recover damages for the time the structure occupied your land.
Quiet Title Action
When the dispute is really about who owns the land, a quiet title action asks the court to issue a definitive ruling on ownership. This fits best when your neighbor disputes the boundary itself or has raised an adverse possession claim. The judgment eliminates competing claims and gives the winner clear, marketable title.
Injunction
If your neighbor is actively building right now, you can ask a court for an injunction ordering construction to stop. To get one, you generally need to show you will suffer irreparable harm without court intervention, meaning harm that money alone cannot adequately fix.4Legal Information Institute. Irreparable Harm Permanent loss of land use and the difficulty of un-building a completed structure both qualify. Once the structure is finished, courts are more likely to push you toward ejectment or damages instead.
Negotiated Sale or Easement
Even after a suit is filed, courts often push the parties back toward settlement. You can sell the encroached strip to your neighbor at fair market value, giving them clear title and giving you compensation. Or you can grant a formal easement that lets the structure remain in exchange for payment.5Legal Information Institute. Easement An easement allows use of that portion of your land without transferring ownership. Either arrangement should be in writing and recorded with the county so future buyers of either property know it exists.
Winning Doesn’t Always Mean Removal
Many courts apply a “balancing of the equities” test, weighing the harm to you against the cost of removal to your neighbor. If a garage extends two feet onto your land and tearing it down would cost $40,000 while the encroachment reduces your property value by $2,000, a court may order compensation rather than demolition. That outcome frustrates owners, but courts see their role as reaching a proportionate result.
There is one important exception. Courts generally refuse to balance the equities when the encroachment was intentional. A neighbor who knowingly built across the line does not get to argue that removal would be too expensive. The doctrine protects honest mistakes, not calculated land grabs. If your documentation shows your neighbor knew the boundary and built anyway, you are far more likely to get a removal order.
What an Unresolved Encroachment Costs You
An encroachment you ignore creates practical problems the moment you try to sell or refinance. Most lenders require a clean title survey before approving a mortgage, and an encroachment that appears on that survey can stall or kill a deal. Buyers and their attorneys treat an unresolved boundary dispute as inherited liability, and many will walk away rather than take on someone else’s fight.
Appraisers may also knock down your home’s value to reflect the dispute. Lower appraised value plus a smaller pool of willing buyers means an encroachment left alone today can cost you real money when you sell. Resolving it now, through removal, a recorded easement, or a quiet title judgment, keeps your title clean and your property marketable.