WWTBAM Bored

Today the same neighbors that encroached upon my property had a contractor in their backyard taking all sorts of measurements from the edge of the house and across the backyard. Humm.. now I think I know why they decided to take part of my yard. They wanted to add an addition and didn't have enough room in their backyard.
The addition probably wouldn't have had enough clearance to the boundary line, so they tried to add my yard to make it work.

They still are encroaching upon my neighbor's yard and I bet that is the side where they will put the addition. No wonder they fought so hard on this issue. Now it makes so much more sense.

geoffil wrote:Today the same neighbors that encroached upon my property had a contractor in their backyard taking all sorts of measurements from the edge of the house and across the backyard. Humm.. now I think I know why they decided to take part of my yard. They wanted to add an addition and didn't have enough room in their backyard.
The addition probably wouldn't have had enough clearance to the boundary line, so they tried to add my yard to make it work.

They still are encroaching upon my neighbor's yard and I bet that is the side where they will put the addition. No wonder they fought so hard on this issue. Now it makes so much more sense.

If this is the case, you might see if you can find out the contractor's name and do him a favor. Let him know of the situation here. He may not want to get into the middle of it. Your neighbors sound sleazy enough that a) they won't have told him about it, and b) they might blame him for building the addition too close to a boundary. The permitting for the addition may alert him to the situation, but you never know.

At least locally, you need a variance to build too close to a boundary. This requires appearance before the zoning board to get it, before which you need to send certified letters to all abutters and anyone within 100' of a boundary letting them know of your variance request. When we put our second floor up, the overhang was going to be about a foot too close to the street. A couple of the people who got certified letters were across the street that runs in front of our rear abutters. I'm sure they were wondering who the heck we were and why were they getting this certified letter from us.

geoffil wrote:Today the same neighbors that encroached upon my property had a contractor in their backyard taking all sorts of measurements from the edge of the house and across the backyard. Humm.. now I think I know why they decided to take part of my yard. They wanted to add an addition and didn't have enough room in their backyard.
The addition probably wouldn't have had enough clearance to the boundary line, so they tried to add my yard to make it work.

They still are encroaching upon my neighbor's yard and I bet that is the side where they will put the addition. No wonder they fought so hard on this issue. Now it makes so much more sense.

Are you going to tell your neighbor?

I talked with the (nice) neighbor that also had his yard encroached upon. They are expecting twins any day now and don't want to "worry" about encroachments. The evil neighbors brought the nice neighbors maternity clothes, baby items etc. in an effort to bribe them.

The nice neighbors both lived in condos in downtown Chicago all their lives and so this type of stuff is new to them. They don't want to rock the boat. I don't think they get it.

geoffil wrote:I talked with the (nice) neighbor that also had his yard encroached upon. They are expecting twins any day now and don't want to "worry" about encroachments. The evil neighbors brought the nice neighbors maternity clothes, baby items etc. in an effort to bribe them.

The nice neighbors both lived in condos in downtown Chicago all their lives and so this type of stuff is new to them. They don't want to rock the boat. I don't think they get it.

It will impact them if they try to sell their house.