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How much does it cost…
Posted by not-my-real-name on January 1, 2024 at 7:25 amWhile taking some time off, and browsing You Tube videos by real estate sales people, part of their advice always mentions that the National average for a survey is $200 or $300 and it is really hard to beleive. Aren’t these the same people that ask for six percent of home sales as their commision?
What is even worse is they sometimes suggest using an “app” to find boundaries. This goes way beyond their field of “expertise”, and can be considered fraudulent unlicensed practice of land surveying. I rarely see any comments on these type of videos that criticise their efforts to avoid hiring a land surveyor.
The conclusion is that anyone can be a surveyor. All it takes is a “smart” phone, or if you are willing to spend $200 a surveyor will complete the work.
dmyhill replied 3 months, 3 weeks ago 18 Members · 44 Replies- 44 Replies
Oh that like to inflate the purchase and selling prices as well. I am in the process now of buying raw land to build a retirement home on. I said this is what I would like to offer. He said that might insult the seller. I said I don’t care I can walk away. They are running prices up for sure. But some will spend that. Not me. lol. I think $200 -$300 is some numbers from the 80’s and 90’s that’s stuck all over the internet. It’s a shame for sure. One can hardly crank the truck for that.
The $200-$300 number is, almost certainly, for a mortgage certificate (or whatever they call them in your area). Which all surveyors know is not a survey. But for homeowners and real estate agents they are a product of a surveyor, and are, therefore, surveys.
I found a bunch of them on You Tube. My New year’s resolution is to troll them for being frauds.
The $200 ‘survey’ is indeed a psychological fact. How they were ever approved as a survey work product is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps pressure from title insurance companies.
The Board does rules them to be Mortgage Inspections, but clients, closing attorneys, and unscrupulous real estate sales people will always call them surveys. I do not do them.
Historic Boundaries and Conservation EffortsUse them to educate the customer base. If you can get past the Realtors. I have some friends and companions that are realtors. Almost everyone of them recommends an actual survey before purchasing so they actually give the surveyors contact information to their clients. They say the biggest hurdle is finding a surveyor that can do them in the short amount of time before closing on these homes in subdivisions not enough license folks. They usually let the client know it will be from 1500 to 3k depending on evidence and what issues are discovered. I honestly think it’s a little niche market waiting to bust if one could build the right relationships. I have bought a few houses in my time and I never revealed I had been in the survey market. If I ask a realtor about a survey and the first thing out of there mouth is no need waste of money. I smile and show them the door. They have proven that my interest is not important . They are supposed to be taught thes
“If I ask a realtor about a survey and the first thing out of there mouth is no need waste of money.”
There’s a regional aspect to this. In CA, for example, it’s unusual for residential property sales to involve a survey unless there’s a known or suspected boundary problem. It’s rare enough that I’ve probably only been asked to survey a residential property as part of a sale maybe half a dozen times in 30 years.
Rural parcels are a different matter, but I’d say that the majority of those are sold without benefit of a survey.
If you are surveying a parcel prior to a sale who pays? Does the buyer make it a condition of their Purchase and Sale agreement.
Historic Boundaries and Conservation EffortsNot exactly the same thing, but I was talking to a long time surveyor acquaintance who lives in rural western Maryland. He commutes to Baltimore for a well paid infrastructure job. I asked him what it was like where he lived, he said there are people doing construction surveying for $25/hr. Not as employees, but as contract work. The large rural properties in the area sell for pretty low per acre, so paying many thousands for a proper survey is a tough sell.
Ironically, it seems most billionaires make their fortune in real estate yet oddly this major part of real estate is somehow supposed to be $300? Makes zero sense… 😏
In my 30 years of being licensed in NJ, I have never been asked to prepare a survey certificate and don’t think that they exist in NJ, with the exception of Condo certs.
Most land value in NJ is high and it is rare that a mortgage company or title company will waive the requirement for a land survey as they want to make sure that their own interests in the property are covered in case there is a default by the mortgagee or a title dispute. Most cash buyers will still want to know where their boundaries are and pay for a survey. Regardless, for $200 or $300, my crews are not even looking at their rig, regardless of property size.
There is no such thing as a Mortgage inspection here in NJ.
We have good relations with a couple of title companies. They will call us prior to a closing if they have reason to believe that a survey was performed. They will be checking to see if we have been paid. We call occasionally for a deed, they call occasionally for a survey plat. Works out good for everyone. I know that they will give us as much of a headsup as they can for a closing dependent upon a survey, but mostly, we can’t oblige due to backlog.
When the housing market crashed in 2008, I was one of the victims of the economy that lost their jobs. I was fortunate enough to have a long list of contacts and clients that followed me from place to place, many of them real estate agents.
With what unemployment was paying back then, there was no way that I could afford to feed my family and keep a roof over our heads, so, I rolled the dice and started my own shop, based out of my home office.
In 2009, with the contacts that I had, almost no surveyors in my area had work but I had a steady workflow. Even in an extremely depressed market, I was charging a minimum for $700 for a residential 1/4 acre title survey and ended up working for most of the larger residential real estate companies in my area. I was only offering that price because my overhead was low but, after about a year, I had to lease office space outside of my home and increased my prices accordingly.
In NJ, for a residential resale or new construction, the buyer pays. 99.99% of mortgage companies require a complete survey. The cost of the survey is usually escrowed and paid on closing day in a check from the closing agent.
It is impossible to do construction surveying for $25/hour when you consider the costs of equipment, insurances, supplies and payroll, even if it is a one man crew. You won’t even find a half decent PC for less than $30/hour, if he or she is worth anything.
I guess it depends on where you are located. In about 2007 I found a great retirement property in West Virginia. After scouring the state, I finally found 168 acres of flat meadow mountain top. The mineral rights had already been sold and there were natural gas wells that existed on the property, guaranteeing free gas for heating, cooking and other uses.
Being a surveyor and having a retired fire chief in the family who was also looking for a mountain property, we made several trips to the property located 300 miles from home, we liked it and met the sales agent on site during our final trip, to make sure that we wanted to make an offer.
When we met the agent, I had already done a ton of research in the year I spent looking for properties in the state. At the time, buildable property was selling for $1,000.00/acre. I was aware that there was an access easement through a neighbors property because the main entrance to it was pretty steep and eroded. I started the Q & A, session with “how much do you think it would cost to have the property surveyed?”, answer, “what do you want to pay for a survey for? You can just walk the lines with your neighbors and they’ll show you where the lines and corners are”. Next question, “we want to build two custom log cabins, log cabins, what is the process as far as approvals of the plot plans, inspections and the like. The answer, “what are you talking about? If you want to build, you go to town hall with a sketch of what you want to build, tell them how much it will cost and they’ll issue a permit based on the cost. There are no inspections, they figure that if you are comfortable living in it, so are they”.
After the Q & A session, I figured that he was full of crap and called both the Town Hall and County and both confirmed what we were told. After hearing this from the source we made an offer of $1,100/ acre, knowing that I had the resources to do the boundary work, topo, etc. to design the work and one of my techs was a W. VA LS. We ended up in a bidding war that we lost by $8,000.
It was a mind blowing experience for me, being from NJ, a completely different culture. In NJ, you can’t put a shovel in the ground to build something without having a current survey, grading and drainage designs, planning/zoning board approvals, inspections and more, all of which are paid for out of the applicant’s escrow account.
I would say, whoever signs your contract.
Chris is NJ one of the only states where the LS actually rules in regards to boundaries vs lawyers and judges on determining the boundaries. I might be off the mark a bit but seems in NJ you have a bit more weight vs the rest of the USA when determining a boundary vs a judge . Seems I had a conversation once at a seminar recently might have been under the influence at FIG last year but the way the LS from NJ phrased it one night was a bit different than I am use to hearing. I am more under the impression we simply show the evidence and are called as witnesses and a judge decides. Vs what this fella was stating but it was a late night and we all know ho that can go. I still would love to come just sit down with you for a bit just to learn. You most definitely always have some great statements to make and man if I could go back and re do several years be nice to have worked under you for sure. I am sure you would have worn steel toes to put a boot in me. lol. I have always asked way too many questions.
OleManRiver,
I’m no expert on NJ Law, but I would like to address the old wives tale of ‘just giving the evidence’. That oversimplification has led to many horrid district court decisions, and perpetrated gross fraud on more landowners than I can count. Please keep in mind my comments are directed at the profession in general..
If a court does not agree with your placement of a boundary, somebody failed. The options for who and how aren’t terribly complex. If the Surveyor failed it is usually one of two things.
First, we took the wrong case. It amazes me the number of ‘experts’ who manufacture, twist, and contort evidence to justify collecting a fee. Now there are a lot of subcategories here. Failing to know relevant fact patterns, refusing to accept clear evidence, or even attempting to intentionally mislead the Court. It doesn’t matter the reason, just don’t take cases that are not supported by facts and law. Learn to be honest with yourself and prospective clients. Most know this before the I-Man stage, but many seem to forget.
The second type of failure is simply not leading the Court to the correct decision. Do not confuse this with advocating. I’m talking about working with counsel to ensure the facts are presented so that a non-surveyor can see the the pattern they create. No manufacturing or obscuring evidence, but not simply laying out the facts and hoping the audience gets it. Walk them through the law and how each piece of evidence makes the path to the legal conclusion. Again, lots of subcategories here. Incompetence, hubrus, or just plain mistakes. These are important to us for growth but the client doesn’t care. His outcome is the same.
I have found that structuring the right case and leading the hearing officer to a correct conclusion is a rewarding experience. It forces me to learn more about myself than any other pursuit. I am exceedingly grateful none of my mistakes have led to an incorrect outcome, and I’m under no illusion that’s because of me. Work with the right people, take the right cases, do your best to be less full of crap every day. That’s my recipe and it’s worked well so far…
“If a court does not agree with your placement of a boundary, somebody failed.”
This. My semi smart alecky answer whenever questions about boundary determination come up is that there is always one location for the boundary, and it’s always the same… “where, if adjudicated, the court of proper jurisdiction would place it.”
The original 13 colonies (colonial states) are much different than the PLSS states when it comes to how boundary lines are constructed. We are metes and bound states and are not bound by the rectangular system. There are no section corners, quarter sections and the like.
No matter how you look at it, our job mostly comes down laying title lines on the ground based on filed documents, original intent and best available evidence. We do not determine ownership, title lines and ownership lines are completely different issues in certain cases and in some cases, the two can conflict when certain factors like adverse possession come into play.
In another thread somewhere in this group, somebody described our role as being quasi judicial and I do not agree at all with that statement. Except for in extremely rare cases, we are not licensed to practice law. When a dispute arises over title versus claimed ownership, ending up in court, it is our obligation to layout our findings to the court based on the chain of title, sometimes involving searching back to colonial era documents, physical and parole evidence and all other matters revolving around boundary laws. It is our responsibility to clearly walk the courts through, what we found, how we applied both physical and recorded evidence and explain it as clearly as possible in layman’s terms. Where title lines conflict with claimed ownership, only the judge can make that determination but, if we have done our jobs correctly and explained our conclusions correctly, it should lead the judge to agree with our findings, except for very rare situations like adverse possession, prescriptive easements and other technicalities come into play. We are considered expert witnesses in these situations, there to educate the courts, but do not have the judicial powers that the judge does.
In my 30 years as an LS, I have only been involved in three cases, two of them involving being called as an expert witness in construction error cases and the last being defending my survey where an adjoiner was constructing improvements over the line. My survey was based on an actual field survey and showed the control found and held, the adjoiners survey showed nothing found or held. There was a pretrial conference held by zoom in the COVID shut down and both of us surveyors attended the zoom meeting.
We two surveyors were not sequestered and both were questioned on how we arrived at our conclusions. I spoke first, explaining what I had found and accepted, and then hinted that in prior conversations that I had with the other surveyor, he was not relying on an actual field survey but a paper copy of a 30 year old hand drawn survey, purchased in a collection of records prepared by an LS who passed away years ago. When the other surveyor was forced to admit that I was correct in my insinuation that he had not done an actual field survey, the case ended there with my line being ruled the correct line, the other surveyor’s line being the errant line and it moved on to what he was going to pay out in damages. We are experts, but we are not judges. While it is true that we, as surveyors, should understand common and case laws, it is not our position to apply them.
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