Help us get our lives back

Matt and I purchased a home with large yard and fence around entire thing. We made one mistake that has cost us a year of mental anguish, as well as every penny of our savings.

We didn’t get a survey.

After a year of owning the house and planning our future, we found out we only own half of the property included in the fence.  We only own 3 feet of our driveway and sidewalk. The house was listed as a large side yard with off street parking, all of which, are included in the lot we don’t own. The seller also didn’t get a survey. In the photo, house and lot are numbered. This is what the fence and house looked like before everything happened. 

The person that sold the home to us purchased it out of bankruptcy, when this bankruptcy happened, the person that owned the house and the lot, only lost the house. Therefor, they own the 35 feet that are on the side of the house.

We’ve talked to lawyers, combed though our closing papers, talked to everyone involved in the home purchase, contacted the county, and we hit dead ends everywhere we looked. No one will take responsibility for this clear issue, because not getting a survey is an easy scapegoat for anyone we approach.  Our lawyers suggested we refinance our home and hope we get enough money back from that to purchase the property from the current owner. She listed the property at 45,000, but it has since dropped to 19,000. We offered her 10,000 cash, but we were denied. We then waited, and offered 15,000, and she accepted. The only issue, we only have the 10,000  
We’ve tried talking to the current owner, in order to get a variance or something similar so we could sell the house and startnew without taking a giant loss on the house, but the current owner wanted to keep the lot full so they could sell it for more money  

The owner told us if we do not give them the money for the lot, they will build a tiny home there. Which might cost us even more, because we would have to completely redo the front of our home. Our walkway goes to the driveway we don’t own enough of to actually use. And we have to re install the fence.

first, just the front of the fence, where they installed chicken wire and a small gate. Then, they ran chicken wire down the entire lot, on their side, because the actual property line is on our sidewalk connected to our home.

Then, that was removed and left like that until the weekend. During the weekend, they put a privacy fence up  
I found this very unnecessary, they left a gap on the property line so I was able to get in and out of the back yard  

Later though, they removed access to myback yard entirely by placing a fence/post in both sides of my gate  now making it impossible to leave my backyard without going though my house. This made mowing the front lawn a very big task.

And finally, they came and took the entire privacy fence we installed when we moved in, leaving an empty space

Which brings me to the next part of why I started this gofundme, because our fence was removed, our backyard has a giant open hole on the side bordering the empty lot. We were fearful of putting a fence up out of fear the current owner would take it down since we cannot block off our lot without placing a fence on the outside of our property, due to the back porch and sidewalk. We take our 3 dogs out on leashes every time they have to go to the bathroom, they’ve completely lost the big yard we purchased the house for. The yard we wanted so we could have dogs play in it.

Last night when we were taking out our dogs, one of them got away from us, and ran a block over into the busy street we live off of. He was hit by a truck, it was the most gut wrenching thing I’ve ever witnessed. He now has his front leg shattered, dental bills, and a shorter tongue. Which is going to cost us anywhere from 2,000-5,000 dollars if his splint doesn’t heal the bones properly, maybe more.  If it doesn’t heal at all, he has to get his leg amputated. 

We see the light at the end of this dark tunnel, but we need some help getting there. Please help us heal our pet and get our life back on track.