When investors or private citizens in Nevada buy a piece of land, they expect that they will get what they see. In other words, if the land has a fence around it or if it is otherwise visibly clear where the piece of property ends and the neighbor’s land begins, then the would-be buyer expects to have all of that land as part of their purchase.
Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, residential boundary disputes do occur in the Las Vegas area. These are certainly not trivial matters, particularly when land is scarce and valuable. The loss of even a few feet of land can spell the loss of thousands of dollars in value to the land. Moreover, there is a principle at stake that a person should get what they bargained for after buying real estate.
Usually, boundary disputes get handled through other aspects of real estate law. For instance, the most formal way a person can clarify the boundaries of a given piece of land is to file a quiet title action to get a court order saying who owns what. A person can also claim a small piece of property on the boundary of one’s land through adverse possession, so long as they meet the legal requirements. These requirements have been discussed on this blog previously.
However, especially since litigation is time-consuming and expensive, there are less formal means of resolving boundary disputes as well. For one, neighbors can simply engage in some give and take and record an agreement on where the boundary is located. Alternatively, they can agree on a surveyor who will interpret prior legal descriptions and give the definitive word on where the boundaries are located.
