It was a lovely plan. It was also entirely on my land. I sent her a cease and desist letter via my lawyer, a calm, firm document that pointed out the very clear property lines on the county plat included a copy of my recent survey. Her response was dismissive. She claimed there was a discrepancy in the surveys and that the HOA was relying on their own more recent plat map.
This was the first I’d heard of it. I went down to the county records office and there it was, a newly filed survey map for Lake View Pinnacle Estates. It was a masterpiece of subtle forgery. The surveyor, a name I didn’t recognize, had ever so slightly shifted the boundary line, jogging it out a few hundred feet along the entire length of the lake.
It was just enough to absorb about 50 acres of my prime shoreline, including the gentle cove where they planned their recreation area. The document looked official. It had a seal, but I knew it was wrong. My family’s deeds went back a century. So, I did what I do best. I dug. I’m an engineer. I live for data.
I pulled the original 1,920s deeds, the 1,970s sale documents, and my own recent survey. I then spent a weekend with my GPS rover, a high precision surveying tool, and reshot every single boundary marker myself. The result was a point cloud of data that proved with centimeter level accuracy that the HOA’s map was a fiction.
The real kicker, I looked up the surveyor listed on their plat. The man had lost his license 2 years prior for falsifying documents in a commercial zoning case. He was legally barred from submitting any plans at all. This was my smoking gun. I compiled everything into a neat, damning report and sent it to Brenda and the entire HOA board again via my lawyer.
