Permits & Rules
Who owns the fence between two houses?
Whichever property it stands on. A fence built entirely on one side of the boundary belongs to that owner, who maintains it, repairs it and may remove it. A fence straddling the line is generally treated as shared, and neither owner can take it down alone. Who paid for it originally, and how old it is, are not what decides ownership — location is, and the only reliable evidence of location is a boundary survey. A recorded agreement between the two properties can change the default.
The default is simple even though it rarely feels that way in practice: the fence belongs to the land it occupies. If it sits six inches inside your neighbour's line, it is theirs entirely, including the face pointed at you, and you have no obligation to contribute to it and no right to alter it. If it sits inside yours, the reverse applies — and the strip of ground on the far side of it remains your property even though the fence makes it look like it belongs to next door.
A fence built on the line is the shared case, and it is the one that generates disputes. Both owners hold an interest in it, so neither can remove or replace it unilaterally, and maintenance becomes a negotiation rather than a decision. That is precisely why most contractors, ourselves included, prefer to set a fence just inside the client's boundary. It converts a jointly held structure into a private one and removes the question permanently, for this owner and for the next one.
In the dense eastern Delaware County townships, and along the older Main Line streets, existing fences very often sit inside the true line rather than on it. That produces two situations worth knowing about. If the neighbour's fence is inside their line, you are free to build your own alongside it on your side, which is how two parallel fences a foot apart come to exist. And if your own fence is inside your line, replacing it out at the surveyed boundary is a change of location — a permit question and a neighbour conversation at the same time.
Before repairing or replacing a fence between two houses, establish three things: where the surveyed line runs, which side of it the existing fence stands on, and whether any recorded agreement, HOA covenant or subdivision plan says anything about boundary fences. If the fence turns out to be genuinely shared, get the plan, the specification and the cost split in writing before anyone starts work. Verbal agreements between neighbours hold up right until one of the two houses sells.
This is practical guidance and not legal advice — ownership questions with real money attached belong with a Pennsylvania property attorney. What we can do is work to a surveyed line, tell you plainly what we find when we walk the property, and decline to remove a fence whose ownership is unclear until it is settled. Where the fence is established as yours, the municipal permit and any HOA architectural submission are ours to prepare and file.
