Property Survey

A property survey is the measurement and mapping of a parcel of land by a licensed surveyor, establishing where its boundaries run and what is located within or across them. It is the step that connects the words in a deed to the dirt those words describe. A title search reads the record and tells you what claims exist on paper. An appraisal estimates value. An inspection assesses condition. Only the survey goes out and finds where the line is.

The phrase is not a term of art, and the professional product usually carries a narrower name depending on what was ordered. What is a term of art is the practice itself. California's Professional Land Surveyors' Act defines practicing land surveying to include, among other things, locating, relocating, establishing, reestablishing or retracing "any property line or boundary of any parcel of land, right-of-way, easement, or alignment of those lines or boundaries", and determining "the position for any monument or reference point that marks a property line, boundary, or corner". The same section reaches the paperwork: it covers determining the information shown "within the description of any deed, trust deed, or other title document prepared for the purpose of describing the limit of real property", and rendering "a statement regarding the accuracy of maps or measured survey data".

The record and the ground disagree more often than people expect. A deed describes land in words, by reference to a recorded plat, to a government survey grid, or by metes and bounds. Those descriptions were written by people, sometimes a century ago, and the physical world has since acquired fences built by eye, driveways poured to a convenient line, sheds placed where there was room, and hedges that moved. The survey is what reconciles the two, and the discrepancies it finds are the reason it exists: a garage three feet over the line, a driveway that crosses the neighboring lot, a boundary the seller has always described one way and the plat describes another.

Surveying is licensed, and the license comes with public duties. Under California's statute, a licensed land surveyor or civil engineer who makes a field survey must file a record of that survey with the county surveyor where the survey discloses, among other things, "[a] material discrepancy with the information contained in any subdivision map, official map, or record of survey previously recorded", or points and lines set during the survey of a parcel described in a recorded deed that appear on no existing map. The filing deadline is 90 days from setting the monuments or completing the survey, whichever comes first, and the record goes to the county recorder after examination. The practical consequence is that a survey which finds a real conflict in one of these states does not stay a private document; it becomes part of the public record other surveyors will retrace later.

Different products answer different questions. A survey establishing where the lines run and where improvements sit relative to them is what a residential buyer usually means. A topographic survey maps elevations and contours. A subdivision survey divides a tract into lots. An elevation determination is a separate exercise again, and federal flood-map procedure contemplates exactly that: a property owner asking FEMA to correct a mapped designation may submit "[a] certification by a Registered Professional Engineer or Licensed Land Surveyor that the lowest grade adjacent to the structure is above the base flood elevation". Ordering the wrong product and expecting it to answer a boundary question is a common and expensive mistake.

Whether anyone will order one is a matter of practice, not of law. Whether a survey is customary on an ordinary residential purchase is a question of local practice, and the lender's own position varies by loan program, by investor and by state. A buyer who wants to know where the boundary is generally has to ask for the survey and pay for it, and the moment to do that is inside whatever inspection or due-diligence period the contract gives, because a discrepancy found afterwards is a negotiation the buyer enters from the weaker side.

What the survey finds, and who owns the problem then, are separate questions. A surveyor reports where things are. Whether a structure that crosses a line has to move, can stay by agreement, is covered by an existing easement, or has already ripened into someone else's ownership are legal questions decided under the law of the state where the land sits, and they are answered by the title work, the parties, or a court rather than by the survey drawing.

A residential boundary survey runs roughly like this.

1. The surveyor collects the record. The deed description, the recorded plat or map, any earlier record of survey, and the descriptions of the adjoining parcels.

2. Field work. The surveyor searches for existing monuments, measures from the ones that are found, and sets new markers at the corners where the evidence supports doing so.

3. Analysis. The measured evidence is reconciled with the record descriptions. Where they conflict, the surveyor's professional judgment about which evidence controls is the substance of the work.

4. The drawing. The result is a map showing the boundary, the monuments, the improvements, and anything crossing a line, with the surveyor's certification.

5. Filing, where the state requires it. In California a survey disclosing a material discrepancy with the recorded record has to be filed with the county surveyor within 90 days.

A hypothetical, on why the discovery is worth having early. Hana is buying a house on a lot the listing describes as 60 feet wide. Her survey finds the detached garage built by the previous owner extends 2.5 feet across the side boundary onto the neighboring lot. The survey does not decide what happens next; it establishes the fact. Her realistic options are to ask the seller to obtain a written easement or a boundary-line agreement from the neighbor before closing, to have the title company examine whether the situation can be insured over or must be taken as an exception, to negotiate the price, or to walk away under a contingency. Had she skipped the survey, she would have owned the same problem with none of those options, because it would have surfaced when she tried to sell.

Pros

• It is the only step in the transaction that answers "where does my property actually end", and no amount of record work substitutes for it.
• It finds encroachments while the buyer still has contingencies and a seller across the table.
• It locates recorded easements physically, so a right of way described in words becomes a line on a drawing across a specific part of the yard.
• It is done by a licensed professional whose work is subject to statutory standards and, in some states, to public filing.
• A current survey is useful long after closing, for a fence, an addition, a pool or a dispute with a neighbor.

Cons

• It is an extra cost the buyer usually pays, and one that produces nothing tangible in most transactions.
• It reports facts and resolves nothing. Discovering an encroachment starts a negotiation rather than ending one.
• Different products answer different questions, and a buyer who does not know which one to order can pay for the wrong answer.
• Where the record itself is ambiguous, two competent surveyors can reach different conclusions about where a line runs.
• A survey is a snapshot. It says nothing about what a neighbor builds afterwards.