Encroachments and Boundary Disputes in Washington
The fence is three feet onto the neighbor's lot — now what? How encroachments surface, what they threaten, and how Washington buyers should handle them.
Here’s a scenario that plays out somewhere in King County every week. A buyer falls for a house with a mature hedge and an old cedar fence. The survey — ordered late, almost as an afterthought — comes back showing the fence sits three feet inside the neighbor’s parcel, and the neighbor’s shed returns the favor on the other side. Nobody is suing anybody. But the buyer is now purchasing a boundary dispute in embryo.
An encroachment is any improvement — fence, driveway, shed, deck, roof overhang, even a retaining wall — that crosses a property line. They’re common in Seattle’s older neighborhoods, where fences were built by eye decades before anyone imagined the land under them would be worth what it is.
Why “the fence has always been there” isn’t an answer
The fence line and the legal line can diverge for fifty years without consequence — until a sale, a remodel, or a new neighbor makes the gap matter. Washington, like most states, has doctrines (adverse possession among them) under which long-standing occupation can sometimes ripen into ownership — but whether it has in any specific case is a fact-heavy legal question, not something a listing agent’s reassurance settles. If a boundary discrepancy matters to your purchase, the answer comes from a survey plus a real estate attorney, in that order.
How encroachments surface during a purchase
- The title commitment may except “matters that would be disclosed by an accurate survey” — meaning title insurance often won’t protect you from what a survey would have shown. That exception is precisely why surveys exist.
- A survey is the definitive instrument. For most tract-platted city lots it’s optional; for view lots, large lots, water-adjacent parcels, or anything where structures hug the line, it’s cheap certainty against an expensive problem.
- Seller disclosure — Washington’s Form 17 asks about boundary and encroachment issues the seller actually knows of; an honest “yes” deserves follow-up questions in writing.
- Your own eyes. Fences meeting at odd angles, a driveway that grazes the neighbor’s garage, a shed jammed against a hedge — these are the visual cues that justify the survey.
Your realistic options when one turns up
- Quantify it. A survey turns “the fence might be off” into a drawing with measurements.
- Paper it. Many encroachments are resolved without anyone moving anything: a recorded boundary-line agreement or an easement legitimizes the existing arrangement and travels with the land. Neighbors who get along can fix in a week what litigation fixes in years.
- Price it. If the seller can’t or won’t resolve it, the cost and risk belong in the negotiation — credits, price, or the seller curing it before closing.
- Walk. An active, hostile boundary dispute — letters from lawyers, a neighbor who won’t engage — is one of the few problems that’s bigger than the house. A quiet title action can resolve disputed ownership, but you don’t want to buy the ticket to that show by accident.
The honest take
Most encroachments are administrative problems wearing scary costumes — a foot of fence, fixed with a recorded agreement and a handshake. The dangerous version is the one discovered after closing, when your leverage is gone and the neighbor’s goodwill is untested. Spend the survey money when the clues are present, read Schedule B’s survey exception for what it is, and treat any active dispute as a price problem at minimum and an exit at maximum.
Good buyer’s agents flag boundary clues at the first showing — that instinct is part of what you’re paying for, at whatever fee they charge. Manaky Homes is the free marketplace where Greater Seattle agents will publish those fees side by side. Join the waitlist.
