Amen!:-)
I'm probably not doing a good job explaining this. But no one involved in mortgage surveys is after trying to pretend that these are boundary surveys, and that they're in any way meant to replace a real survey.
This is a product that's required in some states by the lenders, and as such the requirements of the MLI are tailored to what is desired by them.
We don't topo every lot that we survey, because it's not necessary. The bank doesn't want a full boundary survey in these cases, just a simple plot of the record property and the improvements, etc.
As I said above, I don't do these, and don't intend to start, but I have no illusion that if they were outlawed by the BOR/L tomorrow, that we'd start seeing full boundary surveys being required for every sales transaction. Banks would either delete this requirement with an exception, or get non-surveyors to do the job.
Here in NH, they are not allowed to be stamped.
There is no requirement that they have to be done by a surveyor.
An engineer, surveyor, homeowner can prepare them.
Of course, it is up to the mortgage company as to who they want to prepare them.
Jim in NH
I did those back in the 70's, did tons of them, most of them were for new construction and in new subdivisions. We recovered the new monuments and tied the house and driveway, replacing missing monuments.
The drawings were on a form and took about an hour to do freehand.
Charged a flat fee pretty close to the $145. Most of them took about an hour or two in the field, but when they were in the older sections of town the time escalated.
So the idea was to charge a flat fee using the quick ones to make up for the day long ones in the tough areas.
The banks and title companies complained about the fees anyway and so I quit doing them once the numbers wouldn't work out (actually, I enjoyed them more than many other types of surveys), then title companies just wrote survey exceptions into the policies and the business faded away.
So a time budget of 3-4 hours per survey, a bunch of 2 hour ones making up for the few day long ones.
Having been associated with a number of people who worked for MLS mills all I can tell you is what I've been told.
1) They do them for that price because that's the going rate the banks are willing to pay and they want to keep cash flow when things are slow. Sometimes they lose money but it keeps money coming in. ???? They do more engineering then surveying anyways and just want to keep their drunk crews out of trouble.
2) They're not doing them to meet state standards. They're just doing them well enough not to get sued. A mow line or fence line are the lot line. Just use one and start your measurement. If you try to check two mow lines your in trouble so just grab a tape and go. This way we don't even need to give you a metal detector, saves money.
3) You can pick up a good arial with the property lines on them from the county GIS so just drive by, make sure nothings changed and leave the rest to the guys inside.
4) They've done most of the subdivisions in that area and staked the houses so they already have most of the info in CAD. Just need to put the walks, drives and banks info on it and out the door it goes.
Think of what a two man crew, or even one man and robot generals charges out as and then what a CAD operator gets. Lets say you bill $150 for your crew and $75 for your cad, if you were lucky enough to only have them spend 1/2 hour each that'd be $112.50. That's not a lot left over and that doesn't give you any money for travel to the site or mileage. You'd have to have a lot of properties in the can to make up for the one's you don't have. I had one guy tell me they would have to average 10 a day just to pay for themselves. If your doing 10 a day your not meeting the standards unless they're all in the same block.
They sound more like an insurance product than a surveying product.
The lender really only cares that the payments are made and they get paid off when the property sells again.
They are just looking for a little risk attenuation.
These should be regulated by the department of insurance.
I almost had an apoplectic fit when a European Co-author of mine cited Wikipedia as a reference source for his part of our paper on historical geodesy. He informed me that it is considered a relatively good source to begin looking up something among the Eastern Europeans due to a paucity of libraries.
Isn't this how they get people started on heroin?
I might use it to help me find other references, but I wouldn't put it in my bibliography.
