Updating ALTA Survey

I deal with this a few times a year. All situations depend on the players involved and the future work you will get from them.

If the bill goes to your regular client i would bill for a Site Visit (6 month since your survey is to long not to), time for review of new Commitment, Calcs/Draft for the updates, and percentage of your expertise.

If all goes to new client then it is a new job considering the less amount of time for field work since you know where you are looking and checking.

My 2 cents! Good Luck!

Terry

I sure would do a site visit / inspection if they are expecting a current date!

I agree. I would update the record and recover and reflag the corners.

Thanks for the advice.

The more I think about it, I will revisit the site. It is about a 3 hour drive one way.

The corners will be in, unless they have replaced sidewalks. They are cut "x"s in a sidewalk all the way around the site. The whole site is occupied by the building, literally. There is no vacant property on the site.

Thanks again

Contact the client, explain to her what procedures, actions, expenses, liability, etc., you will need to take to perform the update and negotiate a fair price with her. I'd hate to spring a surprise upon a client, especially a long term good one.

> I got a request to update an ALTA that I performed in December of last year. My original contract has been fulfilled, and I have been paid for the job. This is through a client that I do a lot of work for, and is the "middle man" between me and their client
>
> Fast forward to yesterday, and I get a request to review another title commitment, and update the survey from a third party. My original contract with my regular client says that everything is supposed to go through them, for the duration of the contract, which I don't have any issue with at all.
>
> When I get the request, I contact my client, and speak with her, to make sure that I am not in violation of our contract, and that we are okay. (I have multiple projects with them under contact right now).
>
> I get an email from her this morning, telling me to consider this a new survey order, and get her a price to update the survey. I won't have to revisit the site, because of the nature of the project, nothing will have changed, and I will clearly state on the face of the survey the date of the fieldwork.
>
> My question is, how do you charge for that? The business man in me says full price, but the stay on good terms with my client says charge a percentage of the original fee.
>
> I have never run into this before. (This has been a weird week for sure!)
>
> Thanks in advance

Jimmy,

What value are you creating for the client? Please note that the answer to that question is independent of and mostly unrelated to what it will cost you to provide a plat and associated paperwork.

If you decide to provide your work at a discount in the name of good client relations, that is your choice to make. But, I urge you to let your client know the value and the discount provided. No one benefits if you discount your work and the client is unaware of that discount.

Larry P

> Contact the client, explain to her what procedures, actions, expenses, liability, etc., you will need to take to perform the update and negotiate a fair price with her. I'd hate to spring a surprise upon a client, especially a long term good one.

Respectfully I suggest that the client does not care about Mr. Clevelands actions, expenses and liability. Instead, the client cares about themselves. They care about the value of what Mr. Cleveland will provide them. They care about how they can use that work to benefit themselves.

This is not new and there is nothing wrong with that attitude.

What it does mean is we must learn to focus on what does matter to our clients. Only when we do that, can we and our client fully benefit from our knowledge and efforts.

Larry P

NEVER charge a client what it costs to do the work.

ALWAYS charge the client the VALUE of the services provided.

Full fee

From what you described above you have a case of virtually the entire tract being covered by the same building as six months earlier. How difficult could it have been to do the first ALTA? They should be dancing in the street that the new ALTA can be provided for such a reasonable price. You need to verify that the corner monumentation is still in place, precisely where it was when you last left the site. Assuming there are no new protusions on the building footprint and assuming there are no new actions by adjoiners that might need to be added to the plat you are actually doing almost as much work as you did the first time. The financial liability is the same, however.

The general case of an ALTA where you have numerous buildings, utility lines, weird easements, encroachments by others, etc. etc. is a different can of worms. There are so many details from the first survey that MUST be checked on the second survey the amount of work required can vary tremendously from case to case. That is where some are willing to discount their previous fee because they know the field effort will only be a fraction of what it was before. They may, for example, be willing to assume the parking area has not been resurfaced and restriped such that there is now a different number of parking spots. I would expect most surveyors to overlook this possibility and merely show the same parking stripes as before, which may be incorrect, especially if some new handicap spots have been created. Utility lines do sometimes get moved, in drastically different locations. Fire hydrants sometimes move or appear in greater quantity, which is not an easy thing to catch by merely looking at the old plat while cruising around the site.