Castanet

There was a story on CHBC News last night about a neighbour building a fence on his own property, but in front of another neighbour's garage.

It sounded very odd, what is the real story here? Hatfields and McCoys?

The property boundaries were drawn up wrong and a house built in the wrong place. The owner of the fence then installed said fence right across the house's driveway. That's all I know.

Just watched the Video. Pretty obvious that the ONLY reason the fence was put up was to block the neighbors driveway. Story says that the property owner had requested they relocate their driveway , but they didn't. It appears that now , he is trying to force them to do just that. On one hand , they have obviously been driving on his property to access their garage , on the other hand , the fence is just ignorant. I would assume if the blocked owner would have tried to work things out with his neighbor the fence would not have been put up. It is hard to tell from the video , but it looks like the folks could still enter their driveway on an angle. I am betting that the guy who owns the land above would be interested in selling $$$ an easement to his neighbors. If i were them , I would angle my driveway and put up either a nice cedar fence and shrubery to border the property line and block the view of the ugly chain link fence , ......... or ......... I would put up an 8 foot high wall of those ugly huge concrete loc-blocks. Two can play this game.

The people were allowed to use his driveway for years. But the owner of the driveway put picker trailers on his property and the users of the dw complained about the noise of the pickers to the bylaw officers. Thats when the owner of driveway put up the fence. Users of the driveway have road frontage but will have to take out some trees and irrigation and put in a driveway..very expensive. The moral of the story is.... Don't look a gift horse in the mouth! lolololol

mountainmama wrote: The moral of the story is.... Don't look a gift horse in the mouth! lolololol

More like make sure you hire a good surveyor before you build anything! Or know where your property lines are.

Apparently there were serious surveying/mapping errors made when the area was sub-divided thirty or forty years ago. If that's true, shouldn't the Regional District be responsible for fixing this mess?

Getting along with your neighbours after a nasty dispute is always difficult if not impossible. It seems to me the parties involved could've handled it in a far less acrimonious manner.

Desparate measures like the fence blocking tactic are usually a direct result of civil talks gone wrong.

I'm with mountainmama, should have watched ps and qs more carefully with the real owners of the property in mind.

mountainmama wrote:The people were allowed to use his driveway for years. But the owner of the driveway put picker trailers on his property and the users of the dw complained about the noise of the pickers to the bylaw officers. Thats when the owner of driveway put up the fence. Users of the driveway have road frontage but will have to take out some trees and irrigation and put in a driveway..very expensive. The moral of the story is.... Don't look a gift horse in the mouth! lolololol

Well....... this sheds some light on the story. I have to wonder though , how he found out who complained to by-law , that info is suposed to be off limits.

Unbeliveable the 2 parties cannot work this out. If they both agree, and so does the city, that a mistake was made, then fix it instead of putting up a fence like that right in front of the driveway. Wonder who owns the big house with the fence.

John500 wrote:Unbeliveable the 2 parties cannot work this out. If they both agree, and so does the city, that a mistake was made, then fix it instead of putting up a fence like that right in front of the driveway. Wonder who owns the big house with the fence.

The person who owns the home with the fence is the owner of the land in question.....the interesting thing is that the guy whose driveway is now blocked said that he was told a long time ago that the fence would be installed and he just didn't believe it. Now he is surprised.
Yes, it is unusual that they cannot work it out but there is a dominant person, the landowner, and he is in control of the situation. For it to work out, it is in the best interest of the other person who is using the neighbours land to be appropriate in that usage and be a "good" neighbour. Apparently, he failed at that. Dumb move for him.

John500 wrote:Unbeliveable the 2 parties cannot work this out. If they both agree, and so does the city, that a mistake was made, then fix it instead of putting up a fence like that right in front of the driveway. Wonder who owns the big house with the fence.

I know ernie solid very well and it strikes me odd he would not work things out with the land owner in question however
when I see him I will have to ask why he never had or looked at a survey certicicate before he purchased the house
to begin with.There is no doubt of coulpabilty on the jurisdiction that allowed such a subdivision to go forward or at least have a caveat imposed on the position of the house on this perticular lot

The neighbour could have payed a yearly usage fee.