My property extends approximately 110 wide and 208.5 feet deep. The south side has a cyclone fence that was built (1973) 6 inches short of the survey marker. (The markers have mysteriously vanished ). There is a narrow strip of forested land 30 foot wide on the backside (east) that was never fenced.

There was no problem until the neighbor decided to sell and is including 8 feet of my back property. He is ignoring the cyclone fence corner claiming a dead wire fence at 200 feet in as the boundary. The Realtor says he doesn't have to survey and is selling by owners verbal statement of ownership. They have a sale pending. The buyer doesn't know and is going by owners/realtor's description. Can't the buyer demand a legal survey?

My assessor says my property is 208.5 deep and unused flat wires do not constitute property lines in Skamania County. The property has no easements or permanent structures. Owner is a bully so we have always avoided any encounters ( that is why we
Never fenced the back). This is the time for us to act while it is up for sale. What steps should I take?

Have it surveyed and drive large pipes in the ground at the property lines
The buyer can demand a survey but does not have to but on relay on the sellers statements, the real estate agent has a obligation to tell the buyer if anything is in dispute, so inform the agent and the buyer that they were lied to.

But again it is not the assessors word it is what the actually deed says, pull a copy of it from the court house, it will show the layout of the land, and the sizes of the lots. But for your protection, hire a survey and have it marked ,

If I understand the situation correctly, it seems the best thing to do is to contact the seller's agent, and the buyer's if you know who it is, and advise them that you disagree with the description of where the back property line is. Because it seems to me that, even if the new person purchases the property with the assumption that it includes that 8 feet, that doesn't mean that it does. Which means that he will then be in a dispute with the seller for misrepresenting the facts, which he may want to avoid. Or he may not care about that 8 feet at all.

But you may want to get a survey and get the boundary staked, so that the new neighbor doesn't try to build something there before he knows the situation. And yes, he should be asking for a survey. But when I bought my place, I got the survey drawing... doesn't mean that I took a measuring tape and measured exactly where the boundaries were! And figuring out where the back line is on 208 feet versus 216 is hard to do by eyeball.