Building a Fence

[Kassandra RPM Alaska]

Joe Asked - 

Hello! I'm looking for advice from anyone that's had a fence put up in their rental property.

I just bought a house (I will live in it for two years then put it up as a rental) and it has an amazing backyard. I had a survey done and found out that the backyard is even larger than expected. It turns out that I own a portion of a heavily wooded area.

I spoke to a fencing company, and they told me that I would need to create a 3-foot wide path for the perimeter where I want to have my fence installed. At first glance, it looks like I'll need to chop down 5-6 large trees to meet this requirement.

Another option I have is that I can fence in just the grassy portion of my land (leaving about 150 sqft unfenced), but I'm concerned that if I don't fence in my entire property, I might run into issues with property disputes in the future.

Has anyone experienced a scenario similar to mine, that could offer me some advice? Thanks!

[Trish Neal]

You should talk to an attorney about that. It could be that by not including this property within the fenced property that you could be leaving it as "public domain" and the potential of losing that portion of the property. That's based only on what I know about if you allow use of a portion of property by the public it can end up no longer under your control. I would ask for legal advice rather than taking the word of the fence company or anyone else --- even me!! :-) Better to be safe than sorry. I would be glad to chat with you about that. 

[Realtor Matt Miller]

I would mark the corners and nail up a couple "no trespassing" signs if you don't fence it.

[Ben Persinger]

You might just consider doing your fence at the edge of the current yard and run a wire mesh fence around through the trees at the actual edge of the property if you don’t want to cut the trees down