If you're selling the house or thinking of making an addition to your house, you can get yourself in a lot of trouble if you push ahead without finding out where your property line is. Whether you own Arlington, Texas real estate or real estate here in Virginia Beach, the laws are the same. You have control over your property and your property only. So before you go doing something to it you need to see what exactly you own. This article will tell you all about property lines and how to find out where they are.

Property lines are just the division between your property and other people's property. In a lot of places, like in Bowmanville real estate, it's easy to tell where the property lines are because the developer put up fences along them before they sold the units. In other neighborhoods that sprung up more naturally or in rural areas where people own a lot more property, sometimes finding the property line can be a challenge. The size of your property should be laid out in the sale documents from when you bought your home, but you'll need to translate this into 3D space.

In most cases, surveyors have already done the work for you. Maybe the developer surveyed the property while they were building the Acton homes backing onto yours or the previous homeowner had the yard surveyed for the sale documents. To find out if this is the case, check your yard for surveyor's markers. They'll be low to the ground, so they're often hidden by high grass. They look like giant screws with flat heads with the surveyors' details stamped into the top.

If you can't find any surveyor's stakes, or you think from looking at the property map you were given when you bought your Danforth real estate that the stakes may be in the wrong place, you'll need to have the property resurveyed. Surveying is handled by private outfits, though the results may need to be filed with the city if there's a dispute. The cost is in the range of several hundred dollars depending on the size of the property. Some outfits based out of Virginia Beach include Commonwealth Surveying and Mapping, Precision Measurements, and John E. Sirine and Associates.

So what could happen if you don't get your property surveyed? You could end up building your addition partially on your neighbor's Armour Heights property, and they can sue you into taking it down.