If your neighbor’s garage is on your property, your first move is to confirm it with a licensed boundary survey, then protect yourself from losing the land by giving your neighbor written, revocable permission while you work out a permanent fix. Ignoring the problem is the one option that can actually cost you ownership, because the law rewards neighbors who occupy land long enough without being challenged.
Confirm the Encroachment With a Survey
Fences, hedges, driveways, and old stakes are not property lines. The only reliable way to know where your land ends is to hire a licensed land surveyor, who will pull your deed and recorded plat maps, walk the lot, and physically mark the boundary. The result is a map showing exactly how far the garage crosses, if at all. A residential boundary survey typically runs between $1,200 and $5,500, depending on lot size, terrain, and how buried the original markers are.
The survey is the thing every later step rests on. Without it, you have an opinion. With it, you have evidence an attorney, a court, a title company, or your neighbor can’t wave away. If you already have a survey from when you bought the home, check that it was done by a licensed surveyor and that it actually shows the garage; older surveys may predate construction.
While you’re at the county, stop by the planning or building department and look up permits for the garage. Many jurisdictions post permit records online. A garage built without permits, or in violation of the zoning setback that keeps structures a minimum distance from the property line, gives you extra leverage and a complaint the code enforcement office can pursue on its own.
Why Waiting Is the Worst Option
An encroachment that sits long enough can harden into a legal right. Two doctrines do the damage.
Adverse Possession
Adverse possession lets a person who uses someone else’s land long enough become its legal owner, with no money changing hands. The use has to be actual, exclusive, open and notorious, hostile (meaning without the owner’s consent), and continuous for a period set by state law.1Legal Information Institute. Adverse Possession A garage checks almost every box by just standing there. The clock varies sharply by state: as little as two years under certain conditions in some places, 20 or even 30 in others.2Justia. Adverse Possession Laws: 50-State Survey If the garage, or an earlier version of it, has been there a long time under previous owners, you may be closer to the deadline than you think.
Prescriptive Easements
Even if your neighbor can’t claim ownership outright, they may win a prescriptive easement, a court-recognized right to keep using that strip of your property. Ownership stays with you, but your ability to do what you want with the land is limited.3Legal Information Institute. Prescriptive Easement The elements mirror adverse possession, and for a partial garage encroachment, this is often the more realistic claim because your neighbor only has to prove they used a slice of your land, not the whole parcel.
Stop the Clock With Written Permission
Here is the fastest, cheapest thing you can do today. Give your neighbor written, revocable permission to keep the garage where it is, and have both of you sign it. Both adverse possession and prescriptive easements require “hostile” use, meaning use without the owner’s consent. Documented permission ends the hostility, and the time your neighbor has banked toward a claim resets.1Legal Information Institute. Adverse Possession
The letter should name the specific portion of your property, state that permission is revocable at your discretion, and be signed by both of you. Keep a notarized copy with your deed. You’ve committed to nothing permanent, and you’ve given yourself room to negotiate without a deadline hanging over you.
Approach the Neighbor
With the survey in hand and your rights locked in, bring the map over and show your neighbor what it says. Treat it as a shared problem, not an accusation. Many encroachments were built by a prior owner, and your neighbor may genuinely not know. People respond to “I just had this surveyed and we have something to work out” far better than to a lawyer’s letter.
If the response is cooperative, move toward one of the formal fixes below. If it’s defensive, stay calm and write down what was said and when. That record may matter later.
Permanent Fixes That Don’t Require Court
You have several ways to settle this on paper. Which one fits depends on whether you want the garage gone, whether you can live with it, and what your neighbor will agree to.
Encroachment Agreement
An encroachment agreement is a recorded contract that acknowledges the garage crosses the line, sets the conditions under which it can stay, and spells out what happens when it’s eventually removed or replaced. A standard one requires the encroaching party to restore the land if the structure comes down and bars rebuilding over the line. Because it’s recorded with the county, it binds future owners of both homes. For reasonable neighbors, this is usually the simplest and cheapest route.
Easement
An easement is a formal property interest giving your neighbor the right to use that strip for the garage while you keep ownership. Unlike a revocable permission letter, it survives a sale and generally can’t be revoked unilaterally. Have an attorney draft it to cover maintenance, liability, and what ends the easement (demolition of the garage, for example). Your neighbor typically pays for the right, and the amount is up to the two of you.
Lot Line Adjustment
A lot line adjustment redraws the boundary so the land under the garage becomes part of your neighbor’s parcel. Your neighbor buys the strip, a new deed is drafted and recorded, and the encroachment stops existing. It’s the cleanest ending because nothing has to be worked around in the future. The tradeoff is cost and time: a new survey, local government approval, and new deeds.
Revocable License
A license is the lightest option: permission that you can pull back at any time. It isn’t a property interest, and it ends automatically if you sell. For a permanent structure like a garage, a license is a poor long-term answer, but it’s a useful placeholder while you negotiate something more durable, and it keeps the adverse possession clock stopped in the meantime.
Mediation
If the two of you can still talk but can’t close the gap, a mediator can help. Mediation is a structured negotiation led by a neutral third party, costs a fraction of litigation, and the resulting agreement can be made binding. Many counties run low-cost dispute resolution centers. It works best when the real obstacle is communication rather than a genuine disagreement over who owns what.
Going to Court
If your neighbor refuses to negotiate, denies the encroachment despite the survey, or has already asserted an adverse possession claim, court may be the only path left. It’s slow and expensive, which is why the earlier options deserve a real try first.
Quiet Title Action
A quiet title lawsuit asks a court to declare who actually owns the disputed strip. If your neighbor is claiming they’ve acquired rights by adverse possession, this is the proceeding that settles it. A judgment in your favor wipes out the competing claim and shuts the door on future challenges.4Legal Information Institute. Quiet Title Action
Ejectment Action
Ejectment goes further than a declaration of ownership. It asks the court to order your neighbor to remove the encroaching structure, and it is the remedy available to an owner entitled to possess land that someone else is physically occupying.5Legal Information Institute. Ejectment If granted, the encroaching party usually pays for demolition and restoration. Courts don’t always order removal for minor encroachments, though. A judge may find that tearing down a whole garage over a two-foot intrusion is disproportionate and award money damages or impose an easement instead.
What to Expect
Plan on months at minimum. Your neighbor has to be formally served and given time to answer, which alone can run 30 to 60 days. A contested case adds discovery, motions, and possibly a trial. You’ll need a real estate attorney who handles boundary disputes, and the fees add up quickly.
If You Ever Want to Sell
An unresolved encroachment makes a future sale harder in two concrete ways. Most states require sellers to disclose known material defects to buyers, and a garage sitting on your land qualifies. Once you have a survey, you know, and failing to disclose can expose you to liability after closing.
Title insurance is the other hurdle. Standard policies generally don’t cover boundary disputes or encroachments unless they’re specifically noted. A buyer’s title company will likely catch the problem during underwriting, which can delay or kill the deal. Extended or ALTA policies with survey endorsements offer more protection, but plenty of buyers simply walk from a property with an open boundary issue. A recorded encroachment agreement, easement, or lot line adjustment on file is a far easier conversation with a title company than an unresolved dispute with nothing in writing.