Long story short, we had an industrial "park" built behind us and they've just kept adding more buildings. During this last round of building new buildings directly behind us, they dug down right against our property line, creating a out a 3'-4' direct vertical drop from the fence to a ditch that water flows between our property line and their new "road".

Fast forward to last night's 4.5" of rain and high winds and several sections of the fence was knocked down. Only reason more didn't blow down was because of the power line pole supporting it and stopping the further downing of fence line.

Now, he did build the fence, so probably no legal basis to force him to put it back up, but the only reason it went down was them cutting that drop right along the property line and removing any support that fence had from not blowing down that direction.

The bigger issue I just saw before dark was that since the natural flow of water has always been along our property to his, is now every time we get a good rain, we are going to have our ground eroding right on off our property and down his ditch and gone. So he has created a situation that we will lose property with every rain

I'll attach some pictures tomorrow but wondering what if any legal ground we may have to stand on to losing our dirt and property due to his cutting that vertical drop directly along the property line.

I did do the nice thing and nicely reached out to him today. He said he had his property manager "working on it" but I have yet to see anyone looking at or doing anything about it. Our neighbors had already brought this to their attention weeks ago because their fence is sagging for the same reasons. Again it was "my property manager is working on it" and I think they even talked to the property manager and he said he was taking care of it, but obviously did nothing.

cupofjoe04 said:

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So, the neighbor is tearing down his own fence? Did I read that right?

That's a first…

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Im less worried about the fence than I am him causing a situation where we could end up losing actual ground with every rain. The fence is a secondary concern.

As it is, I probably couldn't even replace the fence along our property line because the concrete would have absolutely nothing to support it on his side

Seems like the neighbor isn't a "he" so much as a corporation. I doubt there a person to walk over and talk to. Unless there's a leasing office or site/facilities manager.

Kenneth_2003 said:

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Seems like the neighbor isn't a "he" so much as a corporation. I doubt there a person to walk over and talk to. Unless there's a leasing office or site/facilities manager.

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Oh I have talked to him a lot and even met him face to face. Never had much of an issue with the guy up until all of this and we've BSed about guns, hunting, etc.

Of course I called to talk to him today and got a voicemail and then an "I'm busy all day in meetings but I have my property manager working on it" reply to my text today. Same thing my neighbor got from him when they brought up that their fence is sagging due to the same issue.

Of course the "property manager" hasn't addressed that either and now the concrete to his corner post at our property line is now clearly exposed as well. So that fence is probably one good storm away from going down as well. And that's a fence that my neighbor paid for himself.

Things have just really gone to crap lately with this guy feeling the need to have Security lights on all night that shine into our yard and house, and now this..

Trust me, my first option would be to solve this by having a friendly talk with him and him addressing it Just curious what our options are if he just says "so sorry" and does nothing.

Been in a similar situation wait until the noise level picks up the light issue drove me to sell.

Go talk to the owner or GC. Dealing with a commercial situation like this is substantially easier that a homeowner. Theyll get with their civil engineer and devise a solution. To them it's an incidental cost whereas to a homeowner it's their summer vacation money.

Looks like an opportunity to get them to put a giant gravel pit between the properties and buy you a new fence.

man that sucks

Wow. That really sucks. The good news is that the impact is so obvious they will have to fix it. A taller, nicer fence is probably in order. Not ideal, but it might block some of the sound and light.

agnerd said:

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Problem is that they legally aren't allowed to block water flowing from your property to theirs, So they made absolutely sure not to block your runoff and avoid that legal liability. That's the easiest lawsuit to lose.

Now you have an issue that can be solved by adding a retaining wall or grading the land at the proper slope to prevent erosion and moving the road if necessary (solution should be obvious out of those 2 choices). Ask the owner for the engineer's name that designed the site and the the geotech report that specifies the maximum allowable slopes for the soils.

Get the engineer's name from the county or city if the owner won't provide it. Call the engineer and ask them if the land was built to the specs they provided. That will determine whether its on the engineer or the property owner to make it right. Ask the appropriate party to fix the problem, and involve a lawyer if they refuse.

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What County department would I reach out to in order to get this information?

TarponChaser said:

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Take as many photos from as many angles as you can. And retain an attorney ASAP. You may not have to go that route if the other property owner will fix things properly but you need that option just in case. And I don't know what county or jurisdiction you're in but there's not a chance that what they did meets the development code or drainage requirements.

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I'm in Denton County.

And what type of attorney should we speak to? I'm guessing real estate attorney?

Might be able to get my neighbor to go in with me since they are getting adversely impacted as well

Search for any permits that were pulled during construction and call whatever department makes the most sense. The fire department might have had to sign off on the road if it was a fire lane.

Stories like this is why I hate developers. My subdivision has been built in several phases by one particular scumbag developer who half-asses everything, but then waits a few years before moving to the next phase, where he changes the name of his LLC each time so nobody can look him up easily. They are building the new section higher than all of us and trying to tie into our existing drainage which of course is gonna flood the rest of us.

Cromagnum said:

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Looks like an opportunity to get them to put a giant gravel pit between the properties and buy you a new fence.

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Looks like a nice opportunity for a concrete retaining wall with steel fenceposts bolted to the top or cast inside.

Just went out to take more pictures. It's even worse than I thought. Dude built a culvert under his "road" shooting more water from his property into that "ditch" to run along our properties.

And it's eroding the support to a main power line as well.

I'm sure CoServ and the County would love this

The fact that there are a bunch of issues that impact more than your property might actually help you. It's easier to ignore/pacify one neighbor than multiple neighbors, power company, etc.

Fair warning, as soon as the owner gets notified of the issue, they are going to immediately notify their civil engineer. Expect there to be an argument on that side of the table about whether it is a design issue, a construction issue, a maintenance issue, etc.

Hopefully not... but expect they're having that discussion.