Property Complexities

Property Complexities

A chap owned two parcels of land just west of Nelson. On one parcel, he had a shop for car

maintenance next door to a wheel-alignment place. He decided to expand his operations into the

second parcel of land. I reposted the property so that both fellows knew where the boundary line

would be, drawing on those original surveys. Everything seemed to be okay. The lawyer drew up

papers, but lawyers normally do not go out in the field to check the property. The lawyer

arranged it so that the autobody shop owner got title to the land with the wheel alignment shop

on it. The error was discovered quite quickly.

It was basically a mistake that mixed up the two pieces of property. The lawyer did not even

know which land the fellow had his autobody shop on. The transfers were prepared and filed;

mortgages were filed against the transfer and against the owners.

In the middle of this mess, I had to take over and convince the owner of the wheel-alignment

shop that the autobody shop owner was not trying to buy him out: that it was just a mistake made

by the lawyer. It was quite the case. I had a hard time convincing the chap that this was not an

attempt to put him out of business. It was one of those times when someone had to believe that

you were telling the “Honest to God” truth. I finally convinced the chap, after much arguing and

grave concern on his behalf, that it was a simple mistake. It cost the lawyer considerable money

to arrange for cross conveyancing, missed mortgage discharges, and a new mortgage. The lawyer

had to look after all the documentation.

I had another property dispute west of town. It was very interesting and had good earth, good

ground, good sewage disposal, and everything else. The public health officer was of a different

opinion. Generally, we got along well. On one occasion, I rode with him up to Nakusp, about a

hundred miles away. And he said how much he liked working with me—and that we would get

along really well if I doubled the size of the lots in the subdivision.

When you are in a free enterprise system, you must respond to the market. The lots were

supposed to be in the order of half an acre each. The public health officer thought that all the lots

should be one acre. So, he refused to approve the subdivision that I did with half-acre lots. He

stood his ground and tried to force the developer to consolidate two lots into one. The project

was held up for several months because this health inspector tried to force us to make lots twice

the size of what was prevalent at the time. The half-acre lots were already large, probably four

times the size of a normal residential lot in the city. The developer had done everything right. He

was allowing for safe sewage disposal fields. The subdivision had its own water system, so there

was no problem with water supplies.

The health inspector finally agreed to let it go, but only a week before the deadline. I can

remember going out and finalizing the surveys in one day—a week's work in a day, it seemed

like. That solved the crisis. The developer was almost put into bankruptcy because of the holdup.

He was already building a couple of houses on the property. He was not only a land developer

but also a house builder. The delays created hardship for him, and it caused quite a bit of

concern. But we won in the end.

The complexities of property layout and implementation formed a central theme in my

professional life. On another occasion, I did a survey of an old mine road through a private

property that was used as an access for recreation, hunting, and getting Christmas trees. I talked

the developer into dedicating the road for access to lands lying beyond, even though there was

nobody going there at the time. It was the right thing to do.

It took what I called long-term planning. You never knew how that access road might be used in

the future. To this day, thirty years later, nobody is really using the road that we dedicated. But it

did not hurt anybody. One of the responsibilities of the surveyor is to look to the future and say,

“This is the right thing to do.” Then you must do a little bit of public relations and convince

somebody to give up the land for public purposes, even though it was not used by the public. It is

just for the future.