My wife and I want to begin the process of settling a dispute with my neighbors. We would like to go by the book on this endeavour and will begin with a land survey…one that goes by the “pins”. I guess there are some pins buried somewhere on my property…everyone’s property methinks.
We live in a suburb with many other homes and would like to see if anyone here has ever gone through the process of getting a survey done. Could we get some info on what is involved, maybe an idea of how much it would cost? And how “rock-solid” is the survey once it is completed? Would my neighbor be able to make a claim that my survey doesn’t hold water because of x, y, or z? Or maybe be allowed to challenge my survey with a survey from some other company?
The reason we want to do this is to verify the “mortgage survey” that everyone gets when they buy a house. He (my neighbor) claims that they have about 1-foot of my property (which is part of my lawn), but the mortgage survey says right on it that it is not to be used to determine property boundaries for fences and the like. Why would a document like a mortgage survey be used when a home is bought? Seems like a pin survey should be used when a person(s) buy a home just to make it actual-factual…and settle any disputes down the road.
Thank you for your time for reading…and answering too of course .
The mortgage survey’s purpose is not for constuction (of course!). It’s merely to determine if there are any current issues regarding the boundary. Is part of a house too close (or over) the line. Similarly the driveway, outbuildings and such. If everything looks far enough away from the line, they are happy. They really don’t need to determine the exact line.
Surveys aren’t perfect. If your guy screws up, of course others can challenge it. As to the pins, there’s no reason to believe they are accurate. There’s one on our property that’s off several inches. (The original plat and the survey I had done proves it wrong.) This was used by an ex-neighbor to build a fence. But luckily the error means that one end of the fence is well inside their line.
GPS just makes things worse since people don’t realize the difference between relative and absolute error. Folks, just because a number is on a computer screen doesn’t make it correct.
Simple metes & bounds would be around $ 300 - 400. 600 - $1500 is what a more involved residential survey of the type you are indicating would cost around here. Definitely price several vendors. Costs will vary wildly depending on how busy a surveyor is and how bad they want the work. With the current economy there are deals to be had.
I doubt you really need a new survey done; it’s done as part of the new home construction process, at least here in Texas. As a matter of fact, surveyors come out several separate times:
Metes & bounds of the development- they trace out the exact boundaries of the development in relation to some benchmark- this is more of a land sale thing.
Layout survey- when the surveyors lay out the entire development and all the lots. This is when the pins get put in, and what the plat for the development is made from (or the metes & bounds; I can’t remember)
Form survey- (assuming you have a slab, there’s probably something similar for pier & beam) which is the process of recording where the foundation form is in relation to the lot, and what exact size it is.
Final survey - the surveyors record the exact size of the house in relation to the lot and any easements that may pass through the property. This is cleaned up at the home office, and produced as the actual survey of the property that the homeowner(s) get.
I bought a house about a year and a half ago, and we got a copy of the original survey showing exactly where the property boundaries were, and where our house is in relation to them.
If you have that, you can probably use a 100 foot measuring tape to figure anything out that you’d ever need to know.
Your first step should be to head to the county Registry of Deeds. There you’ll be able to obtain copies of deeds for the relevant properties, which usually mention pins and other boundary markers, and might include reference to survey documents on file.
If a deed mentions boundary markers, it’s usually possible to locate them (possibly with the help of a tape measure). If you can find those that define the boundary in question, you can probably resolve the question without the need for a survey. As ftg notes, pins are not guaranteed to be accurate - but they usually are.
If a dispute still exists after these steps, it’s time to consider a survey. But your neighbor will not (and need not) necessarily accept that as the absolute truth.
If you want a tight case, call a professional land surveyor, and pay for a certified and signed map of your property lines. If your neighbors are bugging you, waving an official document – signed by a licensed professional and admissible as evidence in court–is a good way to tell them to shut up.
Be aware that land surveyors are like doctors,–they often disagree on the diagnosis. And then the lawyers have a lot of fun (expensive fun), till a judge decides who was right.
If you live in a modern subdivision built in say, the last 10-20 years with lots of documentation, and lots of survey markers still in place, then it should be a pretty simple issue. Call several surveyors from the phone book–if you find one who has recently worked in your neighborhood, he’ll be cheaper than somebody who has to start from scratch.
If you live in an older neighborhood , there may be a legitimate reason for surveyors to disagree over where a boundary runs, since there may be surveying documents that contradict each other.
(Any survey of a boundary affects not just the owner’s lot, but also the neighbor’s-- so there can be a domino effect. One bad fence line (even if you can’t see it from your property) can affect everybody else on the block.
Laws and prices vary hugely from state to state, even from county to county. The only really good advice you’ve gotten so far is to call several local surveyors. Most will be very happy to answer any and all questions you may have. If not, move on to another.
Per the OP he’s looking to put an authoritative smackdown on an encroaching neighbor. Telling the neighbour you pulled the courthouse survey and used a measuring tape to confirm his metes and bounds survey is wrong is not likely to have much traction.
Here in Connecticut, what is usually definitive is an “A2” property survey with a raised stamp from a licensed surveyor. This is the gold standard for settling property line disputes.
Practising land surveying in a “limited, do-it-yourself” fashion is akin to practising law or medicine in a “limited, do-it-yourself” fashion (and in most instances instances is illegal.) You’ll get back exactly the value you paid.
Honestly, the first and foremost advice is to get with your neighbor and try to come to a mutually agreeable solution if you can. The next step is to call in the professionals, either legal or practical, id est a lawyer and/or a land surveyor. For what it is worth only the courts can determine what an actual, legal property boundary is. However, only a licensed land surveyor (and in some instances other licensed professionals) can afix that legal description to the ground.
True. But locating the pins that define the boundary and pointing them out to a neighbor has at least a decent chance of avoiding the expense of surveys and lawyers - which can readily be called in should this simple approach fail.
As far as getting with the neighbors and trying to settle the dispute amicably…I just don’t think that it would be worthwile. It has been an ongoing feud that has wasted a lot of time and energy, and really needs to be settled once and for all. I just want exactly what astro said…a legal smackdown on these people to get them to cease and desist. However, when I brought the issue up again with the husband he mentioned his mortgage survey.
To be honest I am aghast at having to even go through all this trouble, and it looks like expense too because these people refuse to stop driving on what I believe to be my lawn. It is a mere foot of lawn that I am talking about, and every Spring I get yet another ugly mud slide, and yet another repair job to do yet again. The polite thing to do on their part would be to be careful, but i guess it is just too much to ask.
Of course the survey could go either way, but at the end of the day I would like to know if they are right of if I am right…
One party can get a survay, but that does not make it so. It can be contested and now you need a lawyer.
Funny story. Until the 1970’s the last time the ranch had a survay was in the 1800’s. the place next door had a different survay. When the place next door was sold to get a clear title the property had to be survayed. We got a notice of the new bouondry lines between the two properties, and we could protest if we wanted to. If we did not protest in 60 days the neew boundry became permanite. It left the back corner with the two property lines not meeting. The 1893 deed was in degrees and tenths of degrees. the new line was in degrees, minutes, seconds, and tenths of seconds. That is like move the line one inch.
Not illegal to try and locate them. However, they may in fact, not be the actual property line. If you and your neighbor can agree to accept them as such that is fine, but that is not necessarily binding on the person who might buy your neighbor’s property. There are other circumstances that affect their true placement, circumstances the layman, even an informed layman won’t know and isn’t equiped to deal with. Most of the time, especially in modern subdivisions there are no problems and the preceived boundary is located where the true line is, but even that isn’t always the case. For certainty, seek out a professional.
The deeds to most property – not the mortgage document, but the actual deed passing title to the house and land – contain metes-and-bounds description of exactly what land is included in the transaction. Both you and the neighbor who is disputing the property line should have such deeds.
Note that in many jurisdictions, especially if the property financing is done not by a mortgage lien but by a deed of trust, title may be in someone other that the occupant/mortgagor/beneficiary of the deed of trust. For example, here in North Carolina, if you buy a house under a deed of trust arrangement, during the period you’re paying off the financing, title to the property is held by a trustee in a fiduciary relationship to you and your financing body (bank, finance company, or whatever) – you get to live there as if you owned it, but he holds title to it for you. His job is threefold: to sign it over to you when the financing is paid off; to sell it at auction when the financer pronounces a default and you don’t correct it; and to transfer it to the next owner if you sell the property and the buyer pays off your financing by his own financing.
Anyway, if you hold the deed, you can look up precisely what it is you own on it – and if you don’t, either your finance company or the property trustee does, and he’ll be able to provide you with that description.
If you are where there are “God Rocks” You can win the fight.
How it works:
Your surveyor starts from a known and accepted section corner, say, N/E of you and works into your line. He is accurate.
The other guy’s surveyor comes from the S/W and his survey is accurate also. But the boundary line is different. Happens all the time because when, how, and from what direction the section corners were set.
Now the odds that in a single subdivision, two different surveys were used on adjacent lots is pretty small. So, getting the maps or descriptions as Polycarp suggests will settle it. But… if you are really lucky ( joke ) and there were two different surveys from different directions, see if your surveyor can find the “Center Stone” that was set in the original survey of the land. ( The original surveys in Okla. for instance did not set section corners but center of sections. )
In Oklahoma, there are still a lot of those stones. They are “GOD”… No matter what the best GPS says, if you come off one of those, even if it is off by a bunch, it is still the “GOD” rock.
Now I have seen that only ever make a 18 inch change in a property line at the most but when that stone was found and used, the other side folded their total station, fired their lawyers and went home. You do not argue with “GOD” rocks…
But probably not the description from the neighbor’s deed. Whereas a short visit to the Registry of Deeds will produce both.
If they are mutually consistent (as is likely in a suburban development) and especially if they make reference to pins that can be located, the OP will know himself to be on solid ground in this dispute - or, possibly, learn that the neighbor’s notion may be correct.
If they are inconsistent, the need for a professional survey is probably compelling.
First lesson to be taken from this thread, never, ever buy property that doesn’t already have a legally recorded and monumented survey on it. Second lesson, deeds don’t always tell the full story.* If land surveying was cut and dry there would be no need for land surveyors. Third lesson, lots of people have a transit or total station (or steel tape) and no license, but think it a simple matter to lay out boundaries. Some of those people will cheat you, most are breaking the law. Fourth lesson to take from this, always consult with and hire only a legally licensed land surveyor and make certain that he or she conforms with everything your state requires regarding a land survey. In my state California, that would mean filing a Record of Survey or Corner Record with the County Surveyor as well as setting fixed, durable monuments. Contact your state board for referrals. Or like other referrals, ask your friends. Perhaps one of those have already worked with a land surveyor.
*Xema, let’s say you have both deeds in your hands, but they are not in agreement as to where the disputed property line should be. By the way, this situation happens all the time. Do you know which one takes precedence? One of them does. Now let’s take this hypothetical situation one step further. Let’s say you are in a different subdivision from your adjoining neighbor with whom you have this dispute. This happens all the time as well. What steps do you take then to determine where the boundary falls upon the ground? One subdivision will have precedence. Or, let’s cause yet a different problem in a single subdivision, another one that is all too frequent in this profession. The subdivision in which this dispute is taking place is found to have errors in the original survey that set the monumentation establishing it. Even a metes and bounds description (assuming your deeds have this, not all do) isn’t going to reveal that, only a retracement of the original establishing survey will. As a result of this new survey the block you and your difficult neighbor live on is found to be 1 and 1/2 feet short of the length shown in the tract map. Your deed says you have 50 feet of frontage. How much frontage do you actually have, less? More? Those are just three of a myriad of potential situations that surveyors run into day in and day out. Problems can be encountered singly or in combination. The professional surveyor will know how to approach and solve these problems. Hire a good one and you can be more assured of the final results.
If anyone wants a little levity now I can share an amusing anecdote about George Washington when he was working as a land surveyor.
GusNSpot, I used to fly mapping as a photog, that’s how I got into the surveying business. And the company I work for now still does photogrammetry.
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