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The potential survey is more expensive than the land being surveyed
Posted by holy-cow on March 25, 2021 at 2:43 pmFor many of you that scenario is hard to imagine. But, for many of us in areas of declining population that is a reality.
It happened again yesterday. A lady that I sort of know a little called about getting a survey of her land in a little town that currently has a population of maybe 60. At one time there were 400-500 people there and a bustling little burg servicing the nearby farm owners. The only place one can spend money any day of the week is a pop machine outside the city offices/library/community building. If someone offered to give me 20 vacant lots, I would refuse to take them.
The lady thinks a new neighbor is using part of the back end of her property. All she needs is the house and maybe the front 80 feet of her lots that extend back about 400 feet. She would be ahead to sell the neighbor most of her property for $5.
I have done exactly one survey in that town in all my years of surveying. I am aware of one other survey of record that was performed in the 1960’s. Neither of those help with surveying her tract beyond knowing where the section corner is located. She had thought a survey might cost around $100.
BStrand replied 3 years ago 13 Members · 30 Replies- 30 Replies
While in Oklahoma I was offered the chance to survey the town of Wynona’s water system. Wynona was once a town of nearly 3000. 10 blocks by 8 blocks. It now has under 500. The money available for survey was $1600. Hard pass, although I did do a drive through to photograph some of the existing facilities, which were to large extent white 1″ PVC lying on the ground. The whole design budget was, I think, $6000. In the end some “design” sketches were made based on GIS.
This happens all of the time in the remote desert areas in southern California. People purchase lots at tax sales and want it surveyed. Surveys can cost 4 times or more the price they paid. This is because recorded surveys in these areas are sparse and old.
Most people also don’t understand the process and time involved to perform a legal survey. As stated above most people think it will $1000 or less. The county review fees alone for a record of survey are $500 plus.
It’s one reason lake lots can be a nightmare. Back 100+ years ago when they were platted out, and no monuments set, the lots were dirt cheap. People bought and built camps without paying “big money” for a survey.
And now……those same lots are worth big money, with big houses, and ironically, the people who own them still don’t want to pay “big money” for a survey.
Had a woman call me recently for surveying at her second home and told me that she needed a survey, didn’t want one, that it was such an “unglamorous” to be spending money on………uh, what?
I’ve been known to take on such projects just for the fun of it. Last one I did was in Washington, OK, I think. An old man that lived in a little shotgun house was complaining about his neighbor’s newly constructed fence.
I wouldn’t have bothered but on the phone he told me he knew where his pins were located…and referred to them as “pipes”. They were. I was out of there in a hour and half including a consult with his neighbor.
Didn’t charge him a thing. But the trip did take me by my favorite ‘truck stop fried chicken’.
You should try it sometime. It helps keep my blood pressure at bay.
Did you ever happen to notice the “old man” is beginning to look more like us?
I know. He was closer to being the age of an older bother rather than a parent. This was only about 2 years ago. I need to drop by and make sure he’s doing OK…and pick up some fried chicken while I’m down there. 😉
I work in a non-recording state (NY) and there are no fees and essentially no reviews if someone wants to record a map. Subdivisions are a different matter and are often reviewed by the Town Planning Board typically with a much more modes fee than $500. I quite often see on here these high (in my opinion) administrative fees for getting projects surveyed and/or recorded.
So is a $500 fee to review a map actually some version of an appropriate user fee for the effort expended in that process? Or is it government “gotcha” because you’re a captive audience.
I truly don’t know what’s involved. Thanks in advance for shedding some light on this.
From what I can tell, it is mostly a gotcha. Once a state decides to mandate the recording of all surveys, it is only a matter of time before municipalities figure out that they can increase their fees and appropriate information from the purchasers of surveys. The best personal example I have of the latter was a town in NH that required all structures on lands of abutters be located if within 100′ of the any portion of the subject parcel’s boundary. I know for a fact that the town used this information to reassess tax rates, which in my book makes it a mild form of theft.
As has been mentioned here before, there are a few recording states that haven’t exploited the purchasers of surveys but I have faith that they will eventually come around.
Our rates are quite low compared to California. The review fee runs from $0 to $50 and the actual recording fee is almost always either $21 or $38. Many counties have separate files for the surveys so there is no recording fee. Many counties also ignore the recordation requirement, so there is no review fee.
$5 to record a survey in Idaho. I’m not sure what the subdivision platting fees are as I haven’t worked on that end of things yet. I worked with a PLS who thought the $5 fee was kind of silly– he thought if we had a real fee we could have a county surveyor in each county and that a resource like that would be well worth it.
The fees are suppose to cover the cost of the review by county surveyor staff to ensure the map is in conformance with the Land Surveyors’ Act. The fees vary from county to county and range from 0 to thousands of dollars. There are 58 counties in California and each one has a different way to determine the actual cost.
The fees are of great debate in the surveyor community. Some surveyors’ want to bypass the review and go straight to the recorder.
That’s strange and insulting. Our license should be all that’s needed to ensure that we’re complying with the rules and standards.
Sounds like another government bureaucracy with the incentive to find mistakes to justify their own existence.
The history of this goes back to the days before licensing laws allowed a potential multitude of surveyors to screw up surveying on a local level. The County Engineer/Surveyor was THE SURVEYOR. He could appoint deputies to do the work and then submit it to him for his approval. Many counties, in essence, still adhere to that practice in order to minimize the chaos than can occur otherwise. Having a license doesn’t ensure you know diddly about finding the boundaries of Lot 17 in Block 4 of Lehigh Addition to the Town of Vietsburgh because the only known record of the Town of Vietsburgh is in a very old, dilapidated book buried in a drawer in the County Surveyor Office.
Well, I’ve heard in some states with county surveyors the county guys actually drive around and check up on PLSS corners and help maintain them. I think that would be a nice thing to have. If they’re just sitting at a desk pushing lead though then yeah maybe we could do without that.
“Once a state decides to mandate the recording of all surveys, it is only a matter of time before municipalities figure out that they can increase their fees”
Not if the municipalit has no part in the process. See Alaska for how it should be done. Mandatory recording is vital. Requiring reviews of surveys that don’t create or change boundaries is not.
Every time mandatory recording comes up people speak up about opposing reviews of their work. One doesn’t mean the other.
In many PLSS states getting to the PLSS corners more often than not requires something more than driving around.
Many years ago county surveyors did things like this in the flat states, but that is pretty rare now, and many of them did an awful job perpetuating the records of what they did.
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