Encroachment: What It Is and What to Do About One

An encroachment is a structure or other improvement, such as a fence, driveway, shed, building wall, eave or retaining wall, that extends past its owner's property line onto a neighbor's land, or into an easement or public right-of-way, without permission. The law treats it as a form of trespass, even when the builder made an honest mistake.

Pillar, a land research software company, wrote this guide. Each rule below links to the statute, court opinion, agency page or form that states it, and we checked all of them on November 13, 2026. Property law differs by state, so each rule applies only in the state named. This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm how it applies to your property with a real estate attorney and a licensed surveyor in your state.

What is an encroachment in real estate?

Cornell's Wex legal dictionary defines an encroachment as "an unauthorized intrusion onto a neighboring property through the creation or extension of a physical structure (including flora) above or below the surface of land" (Wex, last reviewed July 2021). The Washington Supreme Court says it in fewer words: "Encroachment occurs when one builds a structure on another's land; it is a form of trespass" (Proctor v. Huntington, Wash. 2010).

Three things follow:

• It can be underground. In one California case the encroachments included "extensive underground water and electrical lines" and a large motor installed underground (Hirshfield v. Schwartz, Cal. Ct. App. 2001).
• Good faith doesn't change what it is. In Proctor, a couple "unwittingly built their house, well, and garage entirely on a portion of land owned by their neighbor." Good faith matters later, when a court chooses the remedy.
• It runs both ways. A neighbor's building can cross onto your land, and yours can cross onto theirs. The title industry's encroachment endorsement covers both (ALTA Endorsement 28.1), and a buyer has to check both.

Types of encroachment, with examples

Consumer guides sort encroachments into minor and major. We found no statute that draws that line, so here are real cases instead.

• Fences. In Tieton, Washington, a neighbor rebuilt a boundary fence several times in the 1990s, and each time it "crept farther and farther" onto the next lot. The largest move put it a foot over the line (Garcia v. Henley, Wash. 2018).
• Sheds and landscaping. In California, a woodshed and landscaping added in 1994 "partially encroached on the vacant lot next door." A 2001 survey found the shed up to 7.25 feet over the line and the landscaping up to 9.8 feet, covering 8 percent of the lot (Harrison v. Welch, Cal. Ct. App. 2004).
• Building projections. The national land title survey standard lists the ones a surveyor looks for: "fire escapes, bay windows, windows and doors that open out, flue pipes, stoops, eaves, cornices, areaways, steps, trim" (2026 ALTA/NSPS standards, Section 5.C.iii).
• Whole buildings. A Rhode Island developer "erroneously constructed a $1.8 million home" on a park foundation's land (Rose Nulman Park Foundation v. Four Twenty Corp., R.I. 2014).

A lender's line between minor and serious. Fannie Mae lists conditions it "considers minor impediments" to title on a conventional loan. Two cover encroachments by the mortgaged property:

• "encroachments of one foot or less on adjoining property by eaves or other overhanging projections or by driveways, as long as there is at least a ten-foot clearance between the buildings on the security property and the property line affected by the encroachment"
• "encroachments on adjoining properties, as long as those encroachments consist only of hedges or removable fences"

Both come from Selling Guide B7-2-05, dated October 7, 2026. The same section says minor impediments "must not materially affect the marketability of the property," and the lender must indemnify Fannie Mae for losses they cause. It is a loan eligibility rule and does not decide a dispute between neighbors.

Encroachment into an easement

You can encroach without leaving your own lot. Anchorage's water and sewer utility says: "AWWU will not permit permanent structures within an Easement or Right-of-Way. You must remove existing structures at your expense" (AWWU). ALTA Endorsement 28.1 names the risk: "enforced removal" of a building that encroaches onto an easement. Our utility easement guide lists what six utilities and towns allow inside theirs.

Encroachment into a public right-of-way

The public right-of-way is often wider than the pavement. Portland, Oregon says it "often includes a buffer area located between the property line and the back of the sidewalk" and "may look no different than the adjacent private property" (Portland Bureau of Transportation). A front fence, wall or mailbox can sit on public land. Our easement vs. right-of-way guide explains who owns that strip.

Cities and road agencies handle these with permits:

• California state highways. An encroachment is any "fence, billboard, stand or building, or any structure, object of any kind" in, under or over the highway right-of-way (Streets and Highways Code 660). Anyone who places one without a permit "is guilty of a misdemeanor" (section 670). Caltrans lists driveways and mailboxes among the work that needs a permit, and bills staff time at $181 an hour, effective January 1, 2026.
• Portland, Oregon. Most types of encroachment need a "revocable encroachment permit." The city "may at any time, at its own discretion, revoke the permit and require removal." The standard fee is $1,073.09, effective July 1, 2026.
• Palm Springs, California. The city requires an Encroachment Agreement for a privately owned structure, wall, fence, block or stucco mailbox, or sculpture inside the right-of-way. The application fee is $511, under fees effective December 2025.

Time does not cure an encroachment on public land in the two states we checked. Texas bars adverse possession of "real property dedicated to public use" (Civil Practice and Remedies Code 16.030), and in California no possession of property "dedicated to or owned by the state or any public entity" ever ripens into a right (Civil Code 1007).

Encroachment vs. easement

An easement is a right. An encroachment is the lack of one. The Anchorage utility puts it this way: "An easement identifies a legal right to cross or otherwise use someone else's land for a specified purpose." Wex's definition of an encroachment turns on the word "unauthorized." The same driveway on the same strip can be either one, depending on whether a grant stands behind it.

The two connect. A recorded easement for the structure cures an encroachment, because it is no longer unauthorized. And long use without permission can ripen into a prescriptive easement with no agreement at all. Our prescriptive easement guide gives the elements and the periods in eight states.

Encroachment vs. adverse possession

An encroachment is a fact on the ground. Adverse possession is a legal claim that can grow out of it if nobody acts, and it transfers ownership of the land. A prescriptive easement gives only a right to keep using it.

In Harrison v. Welch, the California neighbor who built the woodshed claimed both and lost both:

• No adverse possession. The trial court found she had not paid taxes on the strip. California requires an adverse possessor to have occupied and claimed the land for five years continuously and to have "timely paid all state, county, or municipal taxes" levied on it for those five years (Code of Civil Procedure 325).
• No prescriptive easement. A shed shuts the owner out completely, and an exclusive prescriptive easement "will not be granted in a case (like this) involving a garden-variety residential boundary encroachment."

The judgment the court affirmed made her remove the woodshed.

What to do about an encroachment on your property

1. Confirm the line with a boundary survey. A fence or a county parcel map does not prove where the line is. In Hirshfield, both families "assumed that the chain link fence marked their property line." The 1997 survey found two pieces of the plaintiffs' land in the neighbors' use, and one piece the other way round. Our boundary survey guide covers cost, timing and how to read the drawing.
2. Don't remove anything yet. If the line is not where you think it is, you become the one trespassing.
3. Read your title papers. Find the survey from your purchase and your title policy. An encroachment the policy lists as an exception is not insured. One it did not except may be covered, as explained below.
4. Check for a paper right. A recorded easement, encroachment agreement, boundary line agreement or city permit may authorize the structure.
5. Count the years. Find out when the structure was built and compare that with your state's deadline, covered below.
6. Talk to the neighbor with the survey in hand. Most fixes need both signatures, and talks can fail. In Proctor the parties tried "some kind of trade, a swap, [or] boundary line adjustment" without success.
7. Pick a fix and record it.

The fixes, from least to most permanent

• Removal. The encroacher moves the structure back, to a line the surveyor has staked.
• Written permission. A license or encroachment agreement lets the structure stay on stated terms. Use by permission is generally not adverse, which is why owners use these agreements to head off a later claim. Savannah, Georgia's 2018 template for a basement under city right-of-way gives one example: the grantee maintains the structure and indemnifies the city, the agreement "grants no ownership rights to the property," and it is recorded and binds later owners until a termination is recorded. It also ends automatically if the city decides to use the right-of-way for another public purpose. Between neighbors, an Indiana law firm warns that such agreements "may not bind future property owners" (May Oberfell Lorber), so ask your attorney how to make yours bind the next owner.
• An easement. A recorded grant of the right to keep and maintain the structure.
• A boundary line agreement. In Washington, when a boundary "cannot be identified from the existing public record, monuments, and landmarks, or is in dispute," the owners may fix it in a written instrument with legal descriptions and a survey map, signed and acknowledged like a deed and recorded. It then binds their successors and "runs with the land" (RCW 58.04.007).
• A lot line adjustment or sale of the strip. California exempts from its subdivision map law an adjustment between four or fewer adjoining parcels, where land taken from one is added to another and no new parcel is created, if the local agency approves it. Review is limited to conformity with the general plan, any applicable specific or coastal plan, and zoning and building ordinances. The adjustment "shall be reflected in a deed, which shall be recorded" (Government Code 66412(d)). If either parcel has a mortgage, ask the lender and the title company what they need first.
• Court. The last resort.

Can a court order an encroachment removed?

Yes. In the states below removal is the usual starting point. They differ on when a judge may let the structure stay and make the encroacher pay.

Washington: removal unless five elements are proven. A court may withhold an injunction as oppressive when "(1) The encroacher did not simply take a calculated risk, act in bad faith, or negligently, willfully or indifferently locate the encroaching structure; (2) the damage to the landowner was slight and the benefit of removal equally small; (3) there was ample remaining room for a structure suitable for the area and no real limitation on the property's future use; (4) it is impractical to move the structure as built; and (5) there is an enormous disparity in resulting hardships" (Arnold v. Melani, quoted in Proctor). The encroacher must prove each element by clear and convincing evidence (Garcia). Two results:

• In Proctor, the house stayed. The acre under it was worth $25,000 and moving the house would have cost at least $300,000. The owner had to deed the acre to the encroachers for $25,000.
• In Garcia, the trial court had ordered the owners to sell a 33.5-square-foot sliver to the neighbors for $500. The Supreme Court reversed. The trial court had made no findings on the five elements and the neighbors had not carried their burden, so the fence had to move.

California: the relative hardship test. Because the encroacher is the wrongdoer, "doubtful cases should be decided in favor of the plaintiff." To deny an injunction, three things must be present. First, the encroacher must be innocent, meaning the encroachment was not "willful or negligent"; the court looks at both parties' conduct to decide who is responsible for the dispute. Second, unless the rights of the public would be harmed, the court should grant the injunction if the owner will suffer irreparable injury, whatever the injury to the encroacher. Third, the hardship of removal "must be greatly disproportionate to the hardship caused plaintiff by the continuance of the encroachment," and the encroacher must prove it clearly (Hirshfield, applying Christensen v. Tucker). In Hirshfield a block wall, buried lines and several motors stayed. The court gave the encroachers a right to keep them that ends when they transfer the property or stop living there, barred any additions and ordered them to pay $22,825.

California's good faith improver statute is easy to mistake for a boundary rule. It protects a person who improves land "in good faith and under the erroneous belief, because of a mistake of law or fact, that he is the owner of the land." The improver carries the burden, and the court weighs the improver's negligence both in deciding good faith and in choosing relief. There is no relief if the improver's existing rights to a setoff or to remove the improvement would do substantial justice. Any relief must protect the landowner "against any pecuniary loss" and avoid unjustly enriching the landowner as far as possible. In protecting the owner, the court must consider what the owner spent on the case, including reasonable attorney fees. The court must take account of the owner's plans for the land and the owner's need for it in using other property the owner holds. The chapter does not apply where the improver is a public entity, where the land is owned or possessed by one, or where the owner has put the land to a public use for which it could have been condemned. And it does not affect the rules "when a person constructs on his own land an improvement which encroaches on adjoining land" (Code of Civil Procedure 871.1 to 871.7). An ordinary over-the-line encroachment goes through the relative hardship test.

Rhode Island: removal, even of a finished house. The state's Supreme Court has "generally held that the appropriate remedy for a continuing trespass is injunctive relief," with departures "only in exceptional circumstances." In Rose Nulman, the house intruded on about 13,000 square feet, by the trial judge's finding. The court affirmed an order to remove it, though the developer had relied on a plan from an engineering firm.

How long before an encroachment becomes permanent?

Leaving an encroachment alone can let the neighbor claim the land, or a right to use it, once the state's period runs:

• California: 5 years. No action to recover real property can be maintained unless the owner or a predecessor possessed it within five years before suing (Code of Civil Procedure 318). In Harrison the owners could still sue after "more than seven years," because the encroachment "never ripened into either title by adverse possession or a prescriptive easement."
• Texas: 10 years under one of several rules. An owner must sue within 10 years "to recover real property held in peaceable and adverse possession by another who cultivates, uses, or enjoys the property" (Civil Practice and Remedies Code 16.026). Sections 16.024 and 16.025 set three- and five-year periods, each with its own conditions.
• New York: 10 years, with an exception for small things. An adverse possessor gains title when the 10-year limit for recovering real property expires, if the occupancy was "adverse, under claim of right, open and notorious, continuous, exclusive, and actual" (RPAPL 501; CPLR 212). But "de minimus non-structural encroachments including, but not limited to, fences, hedges, shrubbery, plantings, sheds and non-structural walls, shall be deemed to be permissive and non-adverse" (RPAPL 543).
• Washington: 10 years (RCW 4.16.020). In Garcia the trial court found the neighbors had adversely possessed the roughly 288 square feet inside the 1997 fence line. The extra 33.5 square feet taken in 2011 had not been.

These are four examples. Check your own state's statute before relying on a number.

How encroachments show up when a property is sold

On the survey. Unless physical access is restricted, an ALTA/NSPS land title survey must show "all walls, buildings, fences, and other improvements within five feet of each side of the boundary lines" observed during the fieldwork, along with "potentially encroaching" driveways and structural projections. The surveyor reports them "without expressing a legal opinion as to the ownership or nature of the potential encroachment" (Sections 5.B.v, 5.C.ii and 5.C.iii of the 2026 standards). Optional Table A item 20 adds a table of potential encroachments over boundary lines, into documented easements and rights-of-way, and over setbacks when the setback requirements were supplied to the surveyor or appear in recorded documents. Our ALTA survey guide covers how to order it.

In the title commitment. The 2021 ALTA Owner's Policy insures against "an encroachment of an improvement across the boundary lines of the Land," but only if it "would have been disclosed by an accurate and complete land title survey" (Covered Risk 2.c). A survey exception in the policy can take that coverage away, and what it takes to remove or narrow the exception depends on the policy, the insurer and the state. Texas's commitment form excepts "any encroachments or protrusions, or any overlapping of improvements" (Form T-7, Schedule B, item 2). The company may amend that exception if it accepts a survey and considers the risk insurable (Procedural Rule P-2), and it can still list a specific encroachment as its own exception. Our title commitment guide explains the cost and the steps.

In the seller's disclosure. Washington's statutory forms for improved and for unimproved residential property both ask: "Are there any encroachments, boundary agreements, or boundary disputes?" The seller answers yes, no or don't know, and is asked to explain a yes. Some transfers are exempt, and a buyer can expressly waive the form, except for its Environmental section when any answer there would be yes (RCW 64.06.010; RCW 64.06.020; RCW 64.06.015). Other states use their own forms.

Encroachments when you are buying or developing land

A neighbor's improvements on the tract. The usual ones are a fence, a driveway, a shed or a well, and on raw land they can go unnoticed for years. In Proctor, the neighbors' house and well stood on a 30-acre parcel for about eight years before a survey found them. In Harrison, the buyers of the vacant lot "were aware of a possible encroachment problem, but they did not know the extent." They closed in March 2001, surveyed in June, and won only after a trial and an appeal decided in 2004.

Your planned improvements over a line. A building, driveway, wall or sign can cross a setback, an easement or a right-of-way line that nothing on the ground marks. In Rose Nulman the house was substantially complete when a prospective buyer's survey showed it was on the wrong parcel.

Where it shows up in the deal documents

• Deed. Usually nowhere.
• Title commitment. In the survey exception, and in any recorded easement, encroachment agreement or boundary line agreement listed as a specific exception.
• Survey. Along each line on the drawing, and in the Table A item 20 table if you ordered it.
• Plat. In the easements, right-of-way lines and building lines your site plan has to clear.
• City and county records. In permits and agreements for anything in the right-of-way. Portland says some permits are filed in the county's property records.
• Seller's disclosure. Under the boundary question, where the state has one.

What to check before an offer

1. Walk every line with the parcel map and note each fence, drive, shed, well and pole near it. These are leads; a parcel map is not a survey.
2. Ask the seller for any prior survey and for anything known about encroachments, boundary agreements or disputes.
3. Ask how long each structure near a line has been there.
4. Ask the title company which survey it will accept, whether it will amend the survey exception and whether it offers an encroachment endorsement.
5. Ask the city or road agency where the right-of-way line is and whether a widening is planned.
6. For any easement on the tract, ask the holder what it allows inside it.

What to ask for in the contract

• A due diligence period long enough to finish a survey, with a right to object to what it shows.
• An ALTA/NSPS survey with Table A item 20, or a boundary survey that locates improvements along every line.
• The seller's written statement about encroachments, boundary agreements and disputes.
• A cure before closing for anything the survey finds: removal, or a recorded easement, boundary line agreement or lot line adjustment. Failing that, a right to terminate or a lower price.

Where Pillar fits

Pillar's property search shows a parcel's mapped outline, its acreage and the owner of record, so you can see who owns the land next door before you call them. Parcel lines in Pillar, or in any GIS map, are not a survey and cannot show an encroachment.

Quick answers

What is the difference between an encroachment and an easement? An easement is a legal right to use someone else's land for a purpose. An encroachment has no such right behind it, though a recorded easement can cure one.

Is an encroachment a crime? The cases in this guide were all civil lawsuits between adjoining owners. On a California state highway, placing an encroachment without a permit is a misdemeanor.

Can I remove a neighbor's fence that is on my property? Get a survey and legal advice first. If the line is not where you think it is, you are the one trespassing.

How long before an encroachment becomes legal? Time alone does not make it legal. It depends on the state and on what the neighbor can prove. California's period is 5 years, and a claim to own the land there also requires paying the property taxes. The examples above include 10-year rules in Texas, New York and Washington, and other periods and conditions can apply. New York treats small fences, hedges and sheds as permissive.

Does title insurance cover an encroachment? It depends on the policy, its endorsements and its exceptions. A survey exception can remove the coverage, and an insurer that accepts a survey may still list a specific encroachment as its own exception. Ask the insurer about the encroachment you found.

What is an encroachment agreement? A written, usually recorded, agreement that lets an encroaching structure stay on stated terms. Cities use them for private structures in the public right-of-way, and neighbors use them between lots.