Video Summary

Am I allowed to trim my neighbor’s tree that hangs over the property line? The answer to the question is yes, you own from your property line to the center of the earth to the heavens, and so if your neighbor’s limbs or tree hangs over your property line, well, yes you can. Now the only caveat to that is that you can’t go over on his property to do the trimming, because that would be trespassing, but as long as you can trim it in your side of the fence, or your side of the property line, well, that works just fine. The question I get most of the time, however, is not that whether or not you can trim the tree, is whether or not you can make your neighbor trim his tree that’s hanging over your property line and dropping leaves or pine needles, or debris on your pool enclosure, or on your lot, or gets overgrown, and is sort of impairing your use of your property?

I have a standard response to either of these questions, which sometimes begs the question is, is I suggest you maybe talk to your neighbor about it, and ask him if he wouldn’t mind trimming the tree, or taking care of this, because of your problem. Well, usually when I give that sage advice is, “I’ve been there and done that. Unfortunately the neighbor is not very receptive,” and I clean that up substantially, as far as that suggestion is concerned, and has pretty well told me to take a long walk off a short pier, and so we don’t, we’re not making much progress. I tell them, “Well, you’re not in a position to do much other than take care of the problem yourself.” If they had bushes or whatever, you might let them know that whenever you do the trimming, it isn’t pretty, so that they just need to be aware.

If they want to take care of it, fine, but if you have to do it at your expense, well, it’s going to be fairly efficient as far as that concern. They say, “Well, can I sue him or whatever?” The answer to that is is, “Well, yes, but that’s not a very practical remedy, and that landscape guys are a lot cheaper than lawyers, so you could possibly sue your neighbor for nuisance if this continues to drop debris on your side of the property, but by the time you got done doing that with the lawyer, well, you could have probably had a lifetime of maintenance as far as cleaning the property up, and taking care of a matter yourself.”

One other thing as far as trees are concerned is what happens if your neighbor has a tree on his property, storm comes along, blows the tree over onto your property, or it blows it over on your house, or damages your property? Is the neighbor liable? The answer is no, he isn’t liable because it’s an act of God, and so you have to rely upon your own insurance, and oh, by the way, the insurance company isn’t going to pay to have a two year old oak tree hauled out of your back yard, so it’s always good to have good relationship with your neighbor, if that’s at all possible. Now there is an exception to the tree blowing over, is if the tree is diseased or it’s rotted or decayed, you need to put your neighbor on notice if he’s not taking care of matters.

Let him know that he’s being negligent and not maintaining the tree, and if it does blow over on your property, that he will be responsible for your damages, so you would have a cause of action against him for your expenses, which would probably in small claims, up to $5,000, but you should send him a little letter or a notice that’s saying, “Look, you need to take care of that tree. It’s dead. We have a bad windstorm, I’m concerned it’ll blow over on my property, and damage my house, or cause me to have to clean up, and so we’ll look to you to take care of the matter.” Hopefully, you don’t have any problems with your neighbor. Probably you don’t have a good legal solution, but if you do have some questions about real property, give me a call at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

Do contractors have a liability or an obligation to complete their work within a certain time period? We direct you to whatever contract you entered into with the contractor. Most contracts are fairly open-ended … although, the answer to it is, the contract would dictate it. They cannot just drag it on forever. If that’s the case, where they’re not doing it in a timely fashion, or, you haven’t seen them, or they haven’t showed up for 30 days, it could be considered that they have abandoned the job.

You can then notify them that they have a certain amount of time in which to complete the job, or else you’re going to terminate their services and retain the services of someone else to complete the job. That way you would hold them responsible for whatever the cost would be that you had to pay over and above the contract amount. When they’re supposed to perform is dictated by a contract.

My experience has been it’s very difficult to get a contractor to agree to a certain time period, and have them put in there … or, furthermore, even if you do have a time period, or a time when they’re supposed to have it done subject to rain delays and acts of God or hurricanes, or whatever, there’s no penalty if they run over. You don’t want to have to fire them or whatever as far as that’s concerned so you almost get in a desperate situation.

In my career it’s been very few times that I’ve been able to put in a contract between an individual and a contractor that there’s penalty, of, say, $100 a day for every day that they don’t have the job done, that they agree to pay. I have had some contractors say, “Well, if … I’ll tell you what. We’ll give you that penalty clause in there that’s $100 day for every day past this, but, you also have to give us a bonus for $100 day for every day that we get it done before the deadline.”

It’s very difficult to negotiate a penalty. Most contracts should or do have some sort of time period. If you’re dealing with work orders or something, or an insurance company is hiring the contractor, that’s difficult, because you can’t, then, terminate them or fire them because you’re not the one that contracted them to do the services.

If they’ve abandoned the job or haven’t shown up for thirty days, I think that you probably have reason to demand or terminate their contract for … abandoned the job and hire a new contractor. Of course there’s economics of all involved with that. It may cost you more to get it done, and the contractor may not be solvent, or, you may not want to spend the money on a lawyer to try and recover the additional costs.

If you have some questions, I don’t know that I can answer them for you, as far as when do they have to have it done? Give me a call at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

What are my options if my neighbor plants a garden or erects a fence on my property? Well, I get this question asked any number of times primarily as it relates to fences. The first thing that you would need to be very sure of is obtaining a survey, so you know precisely where your boundary line is, so there’s no question about that. Particularly as it relates to fences that shows that the fence or whatever, or garden for that matter, is in fact on your property. Once you know that it’s on your property, then I suggest that you contact your neighbor by written notice, or a nice letter, and say, “Enclosed is a copy of a survey, which shows that you have your fence on my property or your garden, and I would give you permission to relocate your fence onto your property, and to remove your garden from my property. I’d appreciate hearing from you in the next ten days.”

Sometimes I am engaged to send that letter out, particularly if there is a little bad blood between you and the neighbor, but it’s something that certainly you can do. You first try and do it by getting the neighbor to understand what the boundary line is. Now if the neighbor does not remove the fence or relocate the fence or remove the garden, then I would send the next letter is is saying that, “I haven’t heard from you about relocating the fence or relocating your garden. If it is not relocated in the next ten days, or whatever period of time you wish to give them, I am going to remove your fence from my property and lay it onto your property, and also remove your garden from my property.” You send them that letter. If that doesn’t … They don’t do anything, you can then proceed to remove any encroachments from your property.

Fences are particularly a hot point, as long as there’s no breach the peace. If someone comes out there and the neighbor starts shooting at you or comes out and confronts you or wants to fight or whatever, then probably the best thing to do is to call the police. Show the police your survey, and say, “I’ve asked this … My neighbor to relocate his fence a couple of times. He’s refused. I told him I want to relocate it. I’m not going on his property, and he’s out here giving me a bad time.” The officer will usually say, “Send everybody home.” Say, “Well, it’s a civil matter.” If it escalates to the point where you’re unable to remove the encroachment from your property, and you have to hire a Lawyer to do that, of course, it starts getting very expensive at that point. Then we could file what they call an Ejectment Action. That’s wherein you state that this is your boundary line. You own the property, and that you’re asking the neighbor, asking the Court to direct the neighbor to remove these encroachments from your property.

The answer to your question is you have a self-help remedy for these encroachments, and as long as there’s no breach the peace. Then if that doesn’t work and you do need to hire a Lawyer, well then he can file what they call an Ejectment Action. Unfortunately, those get a little bit expensive. If you have any problems, hopefully you can get it worked out with your neighbor, but the first thing to do is get you a survey. Yes, that does cost you some money that shows where these encroachments are on your property, and then see if you can’t get it worked out with your neighbor, as far as removing those encroachments without having a confrontation or having to spend a lot of money with an Attorney.

If you have any problems or questions about that, give me a call at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

Can a landlord change the rent after a lease has been signed? The answer is no, you cannot, because the lease says that you’re going to pay your rent for a certain amount of time and this is what the rate is. It’s a contract between the landlord and the tenant and so the landlord cannot turn around and change the rent in mid-stream. Sometimes, I’m also asked about, by tenants many times, whether or not if the landlord, and sometimes by landlords too, if they sell the property, can they terminate your lease. The answer is no, that whoever purchases property is taking it subject to whatever rights that the tenant has.

If a tenant has a lease, they have a right to occupy the property for whatever the term of the lease is, and if the lease specifies how much rent they’re supposed to pay, as long as they pay that amount of rent, they have a right to remain in the property. Of course, there may be other terms of the lease that they must abide by, but as far as their rent’s concerned, the landlord can’t change the rent that’s set forth in a lease. Now, sometimes you get a lease, that the people have stayed in there for, let’s say a year, and the lease expires. They continue on. They keep paying the same rent. They become a month to month tenant.

Then the question becomes, “Well, can the landlord raise the rent once they become a month to month tenant?” The way that the landlord can do that is they have to send a 15-day notice that they are terminating the month to month tenancy, meaning that they’re going to terminate the tenancy. [In 00:02:09] the same notice or agreement with the tenant, they can say that, “I will continue to lease to you but it’s going to be at a higher rental amount.” That’s how a landlord raises the rent on a tenant by giving him 15 days notice that he’s terminating a month to month tenancy. Hopefully you don’t run into any problems like that.

If you have any questions, give me a call at 727 847 2288.

Video Summary

When do you use a quitclaim deed?

Well, primarily, you use quitclaim deeds to clear up any questionable title issues, when it comes to real estate. The quitclaim deed says that I convey to you whatever interest I may have in the property. Whether you’re not saying that you own anything, or if you do own anything, you’re conveying it to the other party. This is contrasted or different than a warranty deed, and as with warranties, you’re saying, “I’m conveying to you good title to this property.”

So, usually, the quitclaim deeds are used whenever you simply wanna clear up title, or someone is gifting you something, and they don’t know if there’s any liens on it, or just what interest they have on the property. But they’re willing to give you their interest in the property, and many times there’s no consideration for. I caution you, though, if you’re purchasing property, or paying somebody for property, I would not suggest you agree to take a quitclaim deed.

In any real estate transaction, I suggest that you have a contract, and have a title search done on the property, so that you don’t get taken. So you don’t wind up with a piece of property that the person did not own, or that there may be a lot of mortgages on the property. And that way, you can have the title checked out, and it’s not all that expensive to do, particularly with your spending thousands to spend hundreds to determine whether or not there are any liens on the property, and exactly what you’re getting.

So, a quitclaim deed is basically the conveyance of property of any interest in property that a person may have, and they’re saying, “I’m not saying I own any interest in the property, but if I do have an interest in the property, I’m conveying it to you.” The deed does have to be signed in the presence of two different witnesses, and acknowledged by notary public to be effective. And documentary stamps need to be placed on the quitclaim deed for the amount of the consideration. Or if there’s a mortgage on the property, you need to put documentary stamps on’em, also, based upon the amount of the mortgage.

If you have any questions about a real estate transaction, the use of a quitclaim deed, give me a call at 727-847-2288.