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Building lines
I recently surveyed a platted reserve in the City of Houston that has a small jog in its South line. I sent the survey out showing the building line as its shown on the plat. The land owner has taken issue with the way the building line is shown, I think he may have a point. The recorded plat shows a 10′ building line along the row. If you join up the line segments in cad and offset them 10′ it ends up looking like the plat, but it creates a small area, if measured perpendicular to the row line, greater than 10′. If you explode the line and offset, the small rectangular area will not be covered by the BL. Attached is a portion of the recorded plat.
He is designing a building for the property and wants to build in that area. Thoughts?
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14 Replies
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Maybe?
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Seems to me that if you’re dealing with a platted line of record, you would be ill-advised to use something different. My 2?›.
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I would have done what Richard depicts. Swing a 10′ radius so that no point of the BSBL is more than 10′ from the street margin. However, I have not seen the plat and am usually loath to opine on how things are commonly done in other locals. Perhaps visit the planning authority and see how they would review this? Certainly there are other examples out there.
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If the document calls for a 10′ o/s from the road ROW, I believe how you have it shown would be proper. It wouldn’t just be 10′ north, it would be 10′ in all directions, in this instance west of the ROW. If there is already a plat recorded that created this o/s, I wouldn’t want to go against.
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I’m with Andy. Show what’s on the recorded plat. I would probably tell the client I might be tempted to agree with him…and maybe he should contact the building permit folks for clarification.
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I would match the Platted Building Line, also does this have any platted Utility Easement lines? If the land owner wants to change the building line, he needs to pay you to replat the Lot.
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I’m pretty sure what he posted is a clip of the actual plat. You can see the start of the Plat Notes on the right edge.
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The plat clearly establishes the building line. Give the gentleman a quote for a zoning/planning variance application package, but otherwise that line is not up to you.
Paul in PA
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The platting surveyor probably should have fought harder to get the configuration that RPLS#’s client wants. But now it’s a fait accompoli. Possibly a variance could be applied for. But we can’t just ignore it because it doesn’t suit our wants.
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I wasn’t viewing it from the perspective of a recorded plat (my bad), since I’ve seen very few plats that depict the building setback line. I was interpreting as though it was a definition in zoning regs. I agree that if it’s platted, that’s where it is.
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I think it depends. If building setback lines are governed by plats in this AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction) then it’s pretty clear what the intent was via the graphic depiction. If building setbacks are governed by some other means, City code or some zoning document for example, and the graphic depiction on the plat is merely that Surveyor’s interpretation then I would seek guidance from the planning and zoning department of the AHJ. Just because there is a line on a plat doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gospel but I would certainly do my due diligence before disregarding it.
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Somebody should have double checked their coordinates.
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yeah, the plat has several issues, coordinates being the least of which.
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Good points Cameron, and a good example of why this type of crap should not be shown on plats. It is subject to administrative change but the plat is basically forever. Setbacks, fire department, traffic (site distance triangle shown on example) and other administrative conditions should be tracked on a different type of media. Administrative types should not use the “surveyor’s media” to display their ever changing rules and conditions. That is my 2 cents, Jp
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