Something that bothers me in particular to this situation of mowing into the neighbor's property, is how so many people have a lawn service now. Those lawn services (at least in my perspective) don't show any regard for others properties. The yards here where I live are relatively small, yet they all use huge ride on mowers. The lawn service guy is typically a lone male having his own small business, while another might have two other guys there so, again, they created a small business with their own work ethics. I don't know what governs them and speculate they just make up their own rules. The city ordinance allows them to begin at 8 a.m. and in other area's it might be 7:30 a.m.. Here, the services across the street and next door, both sides, all arrive first thing in the morning, roaring loudly, and many times there's 4 or 5 different services arround at once! The riding mowers and the powerful blowers produce noise that is so loud, it's frightening and drowns out phone call conversations. So if the services arrive on a work day when you have a conference call, it's never good. Eagerly, I await when these loud mowers will be against the rules and outlawed. I've been reading how California is headed that route... YAY! I get why they look for fast ways to mow, but realistically, these lawns are not big enough to justify riding mowers. The one service is out there now, it's just him, so he spends over an hour mowing and blowing with professional equipment! We (neighbor and I) have side fencing. The riding mower can't get into small spaces or some around landscaping, so he just mows 4 feet, even 5 feet into my yard so he doesn't have to do any of her yard by hand. He mows so far in that he's mowed over 3 of my sprinkler heads, which are far enough away from the property line to not mow, but he seems to care none. I've gently spoken with him. He blows her yard leaves up against my home side and side fence, creating a large mound. This also happens on the opposite side of my property by another lawn service. Their services cause my property to appear to be a total of at least 8 feet less wide, at times 10 feet. They mow so low they scalp the grass, and, because of the wood fencing, it's visible they've mowed plenty over the property lines. The sad part is the lawn services do it for their mowing conveniences, so it says they have no respect for my property as long as they can more easily do their jobs for the neighbors, yet the neighbors don't ever mention it to say how sorry they are, or that they're trying to remedy it. To add insult to injury, the one neighbor has been burning pinion wood in her patio chiminera that is placed so closely to my yard and blows downwind, that my home often reeks of the burning wood. The smoke fills my yard and the smell permeates into my home. She is too close in proximity to be doing that wood burning. My home will reek like it's on fire, which I used to think it was in the walls. We are not neighbors at odds, so there's nothing going on there. She burns so much pinion wood that I wear a cloth mask to sleep in because my throat has become scratchy, and now I cough a good bit, which I suspect is due to the wood burning. My sinuses seem to be highly irritated by the smoke. My bedroom is in close proximity to her patio. I'm not far from age 70, own my home and have lived here over 25 years. Her inconsiderate styles are becoming such a pain that infringe on my life, and I'm afraid the laws don't care about me in any of these situations.

I don't know if it makes any difference, but our 1031 adventures have all been within a separate trust that was established by my late mother, of which I am trustee with power to appoint. The trust sold one property. The trust bought a second property using 1031 exchange laws. The value of the property is now more than 12 times the base cost -- a very hefty capital gain even at the current 15% rate. I know we could sell and reinvest only a portion, and pay taxes on the rest. I know I could appoint this property out of the trust to, say, our DS and DIL or our DGS (age 2). What I'm wondering is if it isn't best to let them "inherit" the trust holdings. What I don't know is if they will also inherit the tax base or if the 1031 property resets to date of inheritance.

Thanks all, your insights are very interesting. Makes sense too. I have a Fl waterfront story, about my husband's uncle. He and his father (husband's grandfather) were small-scale developers in Miami during the post war boom. In the very early 70s uncle and grandpa bought property in Key Largo and moved down there, building side by side modest stilt-style homes next door to each other. At the time the Keys were still remote-they had to dig their own wells for water for example. Uncle raised his family there, parents lived out the last decade of their lives next door. The uncle died a couple of years ago. However the land is going to be somebody's jackpot someday when the property is sold. Uncle (who inherited grandpa's share) owned *9 acres* of oceanfront property. It's actually one of the largest pieces of undeveloped land in the Fl keys, and he regularly got offers from hotels and resorts in the range of 10-15 million dollars. It was always a trip to go down for family parties. You would turn off the main road (US 1 for those who know the Keys) into the property which was just a bunch of scrub, nothing landscaped. Then down the looooooooong drive (crushed shells, never even paved) to the houses. They were small, not particularly well kept up but were directly facing the ocean. The area around the houses was always full of junk; old boats, cars/trucks that didn't run, rusting outdoor furniture etc. All of that next to the most glorious sea vista you could imagine. Amazing. As I said, it will be an interesting process when the property is eventually sold. Uncle had 4 daughters and one son and left everything to sonny. However, my husband's cousins are some pretty strong women and the uncle's plan that his only son inherit and keep everything is probably not going to fly once the big bucks start being offered. Oh, and many years ago my MIL TURNED DOWN a piece of waterfront property down there that her father offered her as a vacation spot. Crazy woman :). Ann

Something similar happened to us when we bought our cottage on the river in 2000. We bought it from a guy we knew, Joel, and there were no RE agents involved, but we did have a title search done. He had only owned it for a year and was moving out of state. About 2 months after we bought it, we went to the cottage one weekend and found a notice on the door saying the property was being sold for back taxes! SAY WHAT? Promptly on Monday morning my husband appeared at the title company's office and showed them the notice. They apologized profusely and paid the tax bill immediately. The problem arose because Joel had to purchase both the house and the land, the house from the seller and the land from a utility company. It seems the title company had only searched the title to the land, not the property. Joel had no idea about this, either, because he had never gotten any tax bills. It seems they had been sent to the previous owner who had thrown them away. Whew! What a scare that was.