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Perhaps we should mandate reading comprehension.
Strawman arguments are amusing but not very useful. Mandatory recording of plats did not arise from centuries of policy debated ad infinitum. Unlike the Statute of Frauds, there’s not a clear rationale for Mandated recording of a plat. It came from small groups who seemingly focused on all the good without considering the bad.
You are fortunate to live in a part of our country that is largely passed over. If you lived on either of the coasts, the idea that a municipality might use mandatory recording as a means to extort your clients might not appear far fetched.
This is a recording vs non recording issue because in a non recording state a PLS can still provide a valuable service to his client with or without the blessing of the state.
Recording is not the issue. Cedeing regulatory power to non surveying entities is the issue.
In the long term, you can bank on the fact that recording will cost more (the least concern) and become a tool in which municipalities steal valuable data from the individuals who purchase a survey. I am mostly concerned about the latter.
I agree that a recorded plat provides more and better information. I just don’t believe the value of a recorded plat is greater than that of the right to privacy. I’m not against requirements for new subdivisions to be recorded. I’m against compelling people to share data that they purchased without being compensated for it.
Privacy concerns are warranted about information concerning the interior of parcels, but I don’t think any recording requirements intrude into the interior. What is the privacy concern about boundaries? Not wanting your neighbor to know you are encroaching?
It came from small groups who seemingly focused on all the good without considering the bad.
Kinda like when praising the virtues of non-recording while ignoring the potential for fraud and unnecessary expense.
Recording and fees are not a zero sum game but you seem to refuse to acknowledge that out of, I guess, sheer pessimism.
I don’t think location has anything to do with it– it’s a matter of the people in charge of spending having no concept of what it takes to generate wealth and drive an economy.
In NJ, surveys are not recorded so surprisingly, we don’t face those costs but are taxed to death on virtually everything else.
And there is the hidden cost of not recording surveys to consider. Unnecessary resurveys attorney fees, paying a surveyor for copies of surveys (or the surveyors free time answering requests ), the coat of moving encroachments…..
- Posted by: @murphy
In the long term, you can bank on the fact that recording will cost more (the least concern) and become a tool in which municipalities steal valuable data from the individuals who purchase a survey. I am mostly concerned about the latter.
I am generally curious as to what sensitive/valuable data are on a typical ROS (in your area of practice) that could be “stolen” (devalued) by a municipality.
Around here, it’s not unusual for commercial clients – some of whom wish to keep development projects and their interest in certain areas as quiet as possible – to request an ALTA/NSPS survey with Table A Item 1 checked. If we have to set monuments, or find any discrepancies, that will trigger an ROS.
It’s a pretty simple process to convert that ALTA to an ROS, which only shows that which we are required to show by statute. Basically everything to help the next retracing surveyor, and no indication of why the record of survey was performed or who we were dealing with to produce the ALTA.
The only thing I can think of that might be “valuable” would be evidence of overlaps/gaps, or evidence of possible encroachments or lines of possession that might indicate title issues – which we are required to show. But that’s the only item shown in addition to the data that only a surveyor would really find useful.
I don’t know if I would consider that valuable in the sense that it could be stolen.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman 1. Preparing a ROS having completed an ALTA survey is simple indeed, seldom taking an hour.
2. If you have surveyed the site but not filed the almost mandatory ROS, that means I can’t refer the client to you to update your survey, so both you and the client suffer. Once I start the survey and find your monuments there is no stopping for me.
Yeah, we want surveys recorded, so we tax the life out of it.
We do not include the fees in any estimates.
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong.@aliquot I’m not sure what you state you practice in but in NJ, even if you could retrieve a copy of a survey from the County Clerk, it likely wouldn’t help you much. I certify my surveys to the parties who have retained me to perform them and include the disclaimer that only the title company and party certified to may rely on them, followed by the survey should not be relied on for any other purpose than to depict the boundary and existing improvements related to the boundary as of the date of the survey. The Client gets six signed and sealed copies of the survey and one is usually included in their title insurance policy binder.
If a client returns and says that they want additional copies, I will charge them for the cost of reproduction only with a note stamped on them that the certify strictly represents conditions that existed on the date of original survey. Nobody else can use that survey. If a buyer wants to rely on a survey I did, he or she needs to pay me to visit the site to see if conditions have have changed, recover and reflag the corners and recertify the survey.
Even if my client wants to build a deck, pool or add a shed, if the survey is more than a year old to the day, the municipal permitting agencies would not accept it without it being updated. As a surveyor, I am not concerned with encroachments being moved after I have shown them until I have to update my survey. I don’t spend much time answering questions on surveys, unless they are larger ALTA surveys with endless questions from clueless title clerks and lawyers. I typically include 4 hours in my proposal for that with an extra T & M fee if that time is exceeded.
I don’t see the public benefit in recording surveys, it seems to me that it’s more beneficial to us surveyors searching for control in areas we have not worked much in.
- Posted by: @chris-bouffard
I don’t see the public benefit in recording surveys, it seems to me that it’s more beneficial to us surveyors searching for control in areas we have not worked much in.
Yeah, it’s not like the public will be benefited by surveyors having a complete historical record of previous professional boundary opinions and the evidence thereof.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman I can more readily put together a projected cost estimate for a specific job by taking a quick look online to see how many of the nine section corners have been reported as found (with references) over the past 30 years or so. A trip to the courthouse to discover other surveys tied to the remaining corners can be very helpful. Plus, that is where the field notes and plats are stored along with railroad data, road data, etc. That leaves much less to chance. I am far more confident of doing the job correctly. When I stumble onto a section with only one or two corners online I know this one will be a bear and probably involve digging with a backhoe at several locations.
I think you just described the public benefit very well.
Municipalities generate a list of requirements that must be met prior to receiving a signature from the review officer. The items on this list can be expanded to items that are beyond the scope of what most would consider a typical retracement survey. For instance, the municipality might want information regarding structures on adjacent lands, information concerning green space, impervious surfaces, wells and septic systems on the subject parcel and adjoiners, tree surveys etc. The municipality is using this information for short and long term planning but they’re not paying for it. In recording states there is zero recourse when planners start adding more and more requirements. In a non-recording state, you give copies of the plat to the owners, then write a description and tell the planner to pound sand. Of course, it is not that black and white, but data has value and mandated recording is the only tool a planner needs to be able extort this valuable data.
A secondary reason that I object to mandated recording concerns the rights of my clients to privacy. It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally I will be hired by someone who thinks they are encroaching on their neighbor. They want the data generated by my survey so that they can make plans to address the problem. In one case, my client was “being secretive” because their neighbor was a total jack*** and was capable of buying much more justice than they could afford. They needed time to save up money to hopefully purchase the land.
In a mandatory recording state, I would either have to give them an unsigned copy of the plat or tell them, “Sorry folks, but the integrity of the cadastre demands that I immediately show this survey to everyone as it would be unconscionable to expect your neighbors to hire a surveyor and get the data for themselves. I assume ill intent whenever I see someone unwilling to share everything with everyone. After all, if you’re not doing anything wrong then why would you need to be so private?”
That is one possibility. Others could be the exact location of access easements, springheads, acreage, or my favorite, just because they want to be private for private’s sake.
Nothing my client does prevents adjoiners from hiring a surveyor or, oh the horror, walking their boundary once a decade. A presumption of ill intent cannot be automatically applied to someone hiring a PLS to obtain knowledge. I have read through the Federalist Papers, and cannot find arguments relating to 4th or 5th Amendments or others that suggest that in America we should dismiss privacy concerns with unsubstantiated assumptions of ill intent. Again, adjoiners have every right to inspect their real property.
Also, why are monuments, blazed lines etc, deemed to be the better evidence of location than courses and distances? Because they are physically present. A plat in the Registry can prevent problems but if the price is a denial of privacy then I think the cure is worse than the disease.
Our privacy is effectively gone and it is largely everyone’s fault.
Every time you use a credit/debit card or a vendor rewards card you are making information about you available to anyone willing to buy it. Every time you use the internet information is being mined about you. If you have a cell phone you are leaving a trail. If you have a relatively new vehicle you are being tracked.
I gained a client yesterday. Before we sealed the deal I already knew exactly where he lived, his age, his marital status, where he graduated college, his degree and that he was the fourth generation of his family to graduate from that college, his family’s religion preference, the three businesses that he operates from his home, etc. He lives 900 miles from me but already owns a small tract about 35 miles from me and is buying another small tract that requires a survey. I know who told him to call me. That is also a sign that another survey firm is overloaded as that individual normally recommends them to his clients as they are closer to his main area of work.
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