Land surveying is a profession that requires technical skills, legal knowledge, and specialized equipment. You may employ a land surveyor only once or twice in a lifetime and not be aware of the steps necessary to select a land surveyor. The surveyor creates maps for architects, engineers, landscapers, and urban planners for use in designing houses, shopping centers, recreational areas, etc.
A licensed land surveyor should be employed:
The services of a land surveyor can prevent the worry and expense of moving astructure or defending a lawsuit. The land surveyor and lawyer work as a team in resolving property disputes.
Explain why you want the survey. The surveyor can then advise you as to what standards and type of survey is required. You should furnish the Professional Land Surveyor with a description of the property along with all other information or documents that you may have regarding the parcel. These would include abstracts of title, title reports, previous survey reports and maps, and the location of any corner monuments. The Professional Land Surveyor may request a retainer and written authorization to proceed prior to conducting the survey
The Professional Land Surveyor's fees will be based on the anticipated difficulty and time required to complete the project. Routine survey projects may be estimated as to cost, but the client should be aware that in many situations, the Professional Land Surveyor cannot predict the amount of work that will be required to recover necessary monuments, restore lost or obliterated corners, research city and county records, collect field data, complete mathematical calculations, and prepare descriptions and maps of the property. All of this must be combined and analyzed to establish the location of property corners and create the final map.
One of the most uncertain and costly parts of the survey is the recovery of various types of monuments. It is important for land owners, contractors and the general public to be aware that the careless treatment and destruction of survey monuments adds time and cost to subsequent surveys. Competitive bidding for the lowest price does not necessarily protect the interests of the client, the public or the Professional Land Surveyor. The competency, reputation, education and experience of several surveyors should be considered.
Since a fence is a relatively permanent structure, you will want to be sure of the location of your property lines before construction. Although some public agencies will issue a building permit (if required) upon presentation of an Improvement Location Certificate, it should not be relied upon for the establishment of any permanent structure. The prudent course of action is to locate existing property corners that delineate your property line and have the validity of the monuments verified by a surveyor. If you are not able to find your property corners, ask for the assistance of a surveyor. He may be able to find monuments using a magnetic locator and cloth tape. If the surveyor is not able to locate existing monuments, you may need to have a monumented land survey performed and possibly a land survey plat prepared. Residental Permits
When a lot or parcel of land is surveyed, the surveyor is responsible for any accepted evidence or monuments. At a minimum, the surveyor will need to perform enough survey work to be certain that all the monuments accepted reflect the true location of your boundary. Therefore, in order to be certain that the monuments are in the correct locations, a full boundary analysis of your property is required
Hire a private surveyor to verify the accuracy of the neighbor's survey.