This episode chronicles a three-week sprint to resolve a small boundary encroachment on a North Carolina property days before a 3X exit closing. The survey revealed a neighbor’s newly-installed fence crossing roughly 60 feet into the rear of the five-acre property, creating a title issue that the buyer’s attorney required resolved before proceeding with the $60K+ sale.
Key Takeaways:
- AI Polishes Adversarial Communications Running the broker’s initial letter through Claude with Cal Faulkner structure (role/context/request) transformed passive-aggressive corporate jargon into a friendly-yet-firm approach that opened dialogue instead of triggering defensiveness.
- Recent Installation Creates Resolution Opportunity Learning the fence went up during survey fieldwork (within two weeks) signaled the neighbors likely made an honest mistake with potential warranty coverage from contractors, making them more amenable to correction.
- Code Enforcement Rarely Helps Boundary Disputes The local code enforcement office immediately classified the encroachment as a civil matter outside their jurisdiction—going directly to neighbors with a diplomatic approach proved far more effective than involving authorities.
The broker successfully walked the property lines with neighbors who acknowledged the mistake using decades-old survey markers still visible on-site, agreeing to relocate the fence before closing without needing the formal letter.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious. So there were just a number of fires, small, mostly small this, this week. but you know, key lessons learned things where you just have to kind of drop, to sort out in a relatively time sensitive manner. So one of the deals, that we had in North Carolina that, we were under contract to sell for roughly three X the purchase price.
pretty slow market too. Like it wasn’t a buyer that I would want to let go on and they needed to extend, a couple of times because survey was just taking forever. It’s not too unusual. but the buyer was also really generous and they were just sending over some non-refundable DD deposits. So they sent over 700 bucks, directly to us twice, just to get some money in the door as the extension was going in. like, that’s a.
a nice little additive bonus there and so we were set to close in roughly three weeks and the survey came back and there was a small encroachment at the rear of the property. To give you an idea this is like a roughly five acre property. You know the encroachment is definitely not in the buildable area of the target or the subject lot that we had but the buyers
agent had expressed, mainly relaying over what the by-side attorney, closing attorney was saying is, you know, either need to work with a code enforcement officer locally or, you know, sort it out with the neighbor. But either way, you know, we want to take care of it before closing. So actually our primary agent on the deal had a family emergency.
So we were working with one of his partners on the deal that came in for this. And he was just saying, yeah, I can try reaching out to code enforcement to see what that first option would be. And I’m like, okay, let’s see what we can do there. But like, let’s also plan to go directly to the neighbor as an alternative to see if we can address this too. And code enforcement was not that they weren’t helpful. And I’ve rarely…
You know, we’ve occasionally dealt with encroachments, usually pretty minor, but I had never heard of bringing in code enforcement in the first place. And they kind of, you know, just said, Hey, that this is not our concern. This is a civil matter. you either need to sort it out with the neighbors or you’re to have to take them to court. That’s like kind of the only two options and like avoiding a court case, especially a small property like this is, you know, maximum priority. So like, okay, let’s really try to figure it out with the neighbors here.
or get a better sense from the buyers, like, this a, you know, issue that they’re just going to walk from or can we potentially get a concession? So once code enforcement came back, the broker was saying, all right, I’m going to go visit them today. And here is also a letter in case they’re not here to, you know, try to prompt a response and
So again, this is just kind of like middle of the day, know, interfering with plans. But you kind of got to drop and figure out, okay, what’s going on here? It’s an encroachment, right? And you’re about to close in like three weeks. You got to figure this out and solve the problem, especially like a decent amount of profit, especially in this market. Again, you know, recycle my capital, my funds out. And, you know, just as a default now, like,
even, you know, especially when you’re busy and you have some of the language, like you really don’t want to deal with it. If people are already doing some of the work just by default, my, um, you know, responses, okay, before sending anything, let me just like run this through, uh, you know, Claude or Chachi PD, whatever, uh, LLM model and just kind of really consider the copy again. So I just, you know, set up my full prompt again, using like the Cal Faulkner structure. Hey, what’s the, this is just becoming standard business owner stuff at this point. Like it’s kind of table stakes.
to be a business owner at this point, you gotta set the role, the context, what’s your request, and ask any clarifying questions to any AI model. So I set that all up within Claude and I gave it the copy that the broker had indicated. And I’m like, yeah, we want a friendly yet firm draft.
of a letter, how would you grade this? What would you suggest with all this in mind? And here’s some of the other context about the deal. And I should have mentioned, you know, the encroachment was quite tiny. It was, you know, maybe 10 feet deep on our property, but deep in the rear and like maybe 60 feet across, but on a five acre property, like triangular shaped, was just super, super minor, like less than 1 % of the property.
And so I presented it Claude and it was immediately saying, yeah, this is just like reading very passive aggressive and just way too formal, like corporate jargon. And again, I didn’t write the initial draft, but I’m just trying to get some feedback before we can send it back. And of course it’s asking for some clarifying questions. And I, you know, wanted to figure out more of what was going on too. So Claude was like, you know, okay, how significant was the encroachment?
You know get the exact measurement so it’s trying to get that you know what type of fence is it how difficult might be to move how long has it been there The timeline pressure is gonna block the sales. That’s I’m also like okay. What’s the temperature of the buyer at the moment? Is this like a walk risk or no? You know would we be willing to offer any compromise yes, definitely to avoid going to court So you know just trying to get additional questions here before it can really frame the response so then I got
on the line with the broker and started running through it and It turns out that when the surveyors were doing the survey which was I don’t know within the last two weeks or so Doing the field work that is when the fence was going up So that to me was like a very optimistic sign because it’s like okay Maybe these the fence contractors just screwed up and might have some warranty period on it You know, it’s not like the fence has been there for
10 some odd years to be put up. So, you know, they should be more amenable to getting something that was literally just done changed because yeah, it’s just a mistake. And also, you know, just getting more clarity that the buyer is like, seemingly not going to walk from the deal that they would want to sort it out. But, you know, if we really had if it turned out that, you know, the neighbor is going to be difficult to work with.
or just flat out hostile that, you know, maybe we could work out some concessions since it was not a major impact on the property. And so then I had more ammo to go back to Claudette. And again, I was hoping, you know, with the broker strategy, hey, he’s going to go after 5pm. Hopefully somebody’s home, just talk him through it first off before leaving a letter. But, you know, we have to account for that.
Contingency of leaving a letter so like yeah, let me drop the copy here and so I went back to Claude and I gave him all the follow-up I could have just used the transcript. I just use you know whisper flow to cover the main points for What I discussed with the broker and then it came back with what I thought was just much much better approach Again really referencing the recent Fence installation and
just thinking, you know, would you mind reaching out? Like it, it’s not, it wasn’t as forceful or like threatening legal action behind it. It’s more of just a conversation starter. Hey, you know, we noticed this boundary dispute and also laying down our timeline. Hey, you know, my clients are about to sell this in three weeks. Um, buyer’s attorney had said we need to address this. Like, can you reach out to your, um, uh, contractors who put up the fence to see if they can move it. Uh,
You know, here’s my information. I’m happy to walk the property with you to walk along the line. So it was just a much, again, more friendly yet firm set up. No, that’s always a risk. Like if you start putting people on their back foot, especially if it’s an honest mistake, which we were hoping it was, you want to leave that opportunity to build up some rapport and then kind of, again, gauge the…
the temperament of who you’re dealing with. And then I got a call later from the broker. He was able to talk with the neighbors and they did walk the property lines. Like, they thought our surveyors screwed up initially, but they were very friendly. But then it turned out that there was even a previous survey done on our property decades ago, it seems like. And some of those survey lines were still there and they realized it was going through the garden. They just put the fence around. like, yeah, we’ll take care of this before.
you guys close, no worries. So we didn’t even need to drop the letter. this to me is just another example of, again, use AI to your advantage here that just any time there is kind of like you’re making any type of assumptions or there could be some decent downside risk, you just want to polish up communications, especially potentially adverse.
Communication just just run through and see okay. What what am I risking here? What should I be considering before? Following up with these folks and just strategizing like take a pause and set it up. Unfortunately that it worked out You know, we didn’t even leave our written agreement or written letter rather. We’re gonna sort it out buyers gonna close as planned But you know, it’s it’s like a small fire, right? You can’t just ignore that and and hope for the best cuz you know
could prevent a 60K sale from happening. that is where we ended up on this one. So hopefully that helps you strategize within your own business as well. And SeriousLand.Capital for any of your funding needs. Again, 50K minimum, 150K purchase price preferred, zero cost review, your land deals at Land Daily Diligence Facebook group and.
landpricer.ai for the most reliable land pricing tool on the market. With that, subscribe and share. Take care, everybody. Talk to you next time. Bye.
