Reasons to Get a New Land Survey

What is a land surveyor? A surveyor has the tools and experience to provide mapping and boundary services to property owners. They provide plans, maps, property boundaries for construction, remodeling, title insurance, and other real estate projects.

The surveyor researches titles and documents to obtain an accurate description of your land. They may also research neighboring property documents for any problems or conflicts. Next, they obtain physical measurements from the property. These measurements are compared to the records on file to check for any problems and verify any disputes.

A land surveyor will use various methods to determine boundaries, including electronic equipment, photo mapping, GPS positioning, measuring tape, and may even employ an old-fashioned compass to give accurate measurements.

Costs for a land survey can vary. It depends on how much work is involved to research records, the size and scale of the project and the land itself, the time of year, weather, and how many visits are required for complete and accurate comparisons. The more effort required, the more it can cost.

Reasons to Get a New Land Survey:

From the website Colorado Professional Land Surveyors: "In recent years, few and fewer property buyers are getting a professional land survey done. This is due, in large part, from advice from real estate professionals, mortgage companies, and title insurance companies.

Simply because a mortgage company or title insurance company does not require a survey for their underwriting requirements, that doesn't mean they are looking out for the best interest of the buyer of the property or the seller for that matter. Buyers and sellers should be aware of matters that could adversely effect the title, marketability, or value of their property.

Many new home buyers are relying upon old outdated surveys to evaluate survey matters. This is unwise. An old survey is certified to the seller, not to the buyer. Therefore, the new buyer should not rely on the old survey for obvious reasons of assurance and liability. A new survey should be conducted and certified to the buyer. A new survey will address encroachments onto and off of the property, access to and from a public right-of-way. A current survey will identify and locate new structures, fences, walls and additions. A new land survey will also identify recent, missing, destroyed and erroneous property corners. Flood hazard areas will also be delineated, as they relate to the subject property and the improvements.

A recent development has property owners signing a survey affidavit as a substitute for a survey for the new buyer. This practice puts the homeowner (or seller) in an awkward position of certifying an old survey, and stating that there have not been any changes since the date of the old land survey. These homeowners have been persuaded into signing the so-called affidavit do not have any way to determine if the old survey is correct, much less a way to identify any changes or if there was an error. Nor do the sellers know what matters and to what standards a survey should be conducted for a survey to be correct. This practice might also put the seller in a position of covering up and not disclosing issues in order to save some money.

The request for the survey affidavit usually comes from a title insurance company for their motivation of shedding liability. The seller, by signing the affidavit, assumes the survey related responsibility. The buyer, in turn has no assurance or recourse if there are survey related matters that adversely affects the marketability and value of the property. The buyer cannot seek recourse from the title company, because they usually take exception to survey related matters and any matters that a 'correct' survey would disclose. The only course of action would be to seek damages from the past seller of the property.

All parties should also be aware is that a survey is an original creation and is protected under the federal copyright laws. Any unauthorized reproduction of an old survey can result in a lawsuit. The original survey is certified to the original homeowner and is not transferable. A third party cannot rely upon an old survey. A new survey should be conducted and specifically certified to the new buyer. Also the Tennessee Real Estate Commission recently noted, 'if the surveys given to prospects are not accurate, a court could hold (real estate) licensees liable for providing a party with misinformation.'

In conclusion, buyers of real property should have a new survey conducted. Those buyers who do not have a new land survey will be purchasing property without reliable information as to encroachments, overlaps, boundary line disputes and other matters that might be disclosed by an accurate survey of the property by a registered professional land surveyor."

If you need to have a land survey done on your property, you can post your request with Construction Deal.com. We'll match you with a <a onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/article_exit_link');" href=”http://www.constructiondeal.com/category/Land-Surveyors.112.html?rid=36&aid=112”>local land surveyor</a> for any type of property survey that you need done.

And it's a free service to find a local property surveyor in your area.