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What’s The Difference?
Posted by RADAR on March 7, 2021 at 6:52 pmWhat’s the difference between an ALTA Survey and any other Survey? (Asking for a friend)
If a client calls you up and says: I need a Boundary/Topo survey. I have a commercial piece of property and I want to make some renovations. He signs your contract and makes a deposit, but then, once you’ve started; he decides he wants to have an ALTA Survey done. It’s the same scope of work, accept that it needs to have the ALTA certification added.
Do you tell him you need more money? How much more money? What do you tell him when he asks: Why do you need more money, it’s the same scope?
This is something that has been on my friends mind for a long time. Thanks in Advance, for all of your help.
I hope everyone has a great day! I know I will…
Dougie
vasurvey3004 replied 3 years, 1 month ago 17 Members · 29 Replies- 29 Replies
Disagree with the premise of same scope of work.
ALTA = Revised scope of work => revised fee schedule.
True, the only difference is the certification. I will provide the same professional service, whether I certify to it or not, right?
Posted by: @dougieIt’s the same scope of work, accept that it needs to have the ALTA certification added.
I hope everyone has a great day; I know I will!Table A gets negotiated prior to getting on the schedule. It is rarely the same scope as a boundary topo around here.
I totally disagree that it’s the same scope of work.
Read the requirements in the new standards. Do you normally do all of the Table A items?
The bid difference is the extent of your liability. In a typical title/topo survey, you are certifying to your client and a single insurer of title. In an ALTA certification, you are exponentially extending your liability by including Attorneys, Financial Institutions and various other interested parties and often revising or adding to the list of those certified to on multiple occasions, not to mention sometimes spending hours on end with clueless paralegals reviewing work they know nothing about, demanding added or revised wording and meaningless revisions. Additional liability and time spent in consultation equates to additional compensation.
Different level of liability and you have to deal with Attorneys or their underling minions. The second item adds a good bit to my quotes especially if there’s much in the Schedule B section 2 of the Title Report.
I deal with attorneys on a regular basis and have only done a couple of ALTA surveys ever.
Don’t let an attorney pass you off to a para legal unless it is an issue you would pass of to an unlicensed employee.
Do you normally do all of the Table A items?
This. I’ve yet to do an ALTA where the client requested a surface so to me that would be 1 easy difference. But yeah it comes down to the Table A items, and of course the increased liability.
@dougie
See other replies regarding liability and dealing with attorneys.
And, is it? EXACTLY?
Making sure the survey conforms the ALTA standards takes time just by itself. Heck even changing the title block in the dwg file takes time.
Plus, my annoyance at the client for changing the expected deliverable. I got to be paid for that.
@aliquot I only do ALTA’s for existing clients, usually dealing with local attorneys which largely eliminates the issue. However, once upon a time I had a partner who loved to sell our souls to several of the national ALTA clearing houses. We often received comments through the middlemen “from the attorney” that were obviously reviewed by someone who had a check list and no experience with what they were looking at. Trying to get to the actual attorney was akin to asking for a supervisor when talking to a scammer in India about your car warranty. The prices were too low and life is too short to go after those jobs.
So we’re kinda beating around the bush; let’s just assume that it’s the same scope of work. After all this is hypothetical… What corners are you going to cut, to justify charging anything less, besides providing an ALTA certification on the face of your survey?
Don’t I provide that when I stamp, sign, and record with my State?
Dougie
I hope everyone has a great day; I know I will!@dougie
The standard of care for a boundary and topo in Idaho does not include a review of the title report. Leaving that out is not ‘cutting corners’. If I believe the client needs that service I will advise them (and get paid) accordingly.
We avoid bidding in nearly every situation. So, if the scope was identical fieldwork plus whatever it takes in the realm of research, correspondence, drafting, etc. etc. it would come up to being the same invoice based on the complexity of the task. The liability is relatively unimportant compared to projects we do every day. If someone wants to beef about something we did last week or thirty years ago, they are going to be a headache for awhile. We like to think we aren’t liable to most people in the universe on any given job, but that is a fallacy. Attorneys will encourage suing anyone they can identify may have had any kind of connection to something they are working on, including survey work from forty years ago if that surveyor can be served.
As others have said, an ALTA requires things that a “normal” boundary survey around here doesn’t. Adding those requires considerable additional field and office time, which have to be accounted for in the fee. No way I’m going to offer an upgrade like that without charging for it.
@dougie
Ie the scope of work truly the same though?
Did the original project include a current title report?
Did you intend to locate every little thing that is required on an ALTA survey?
This is just a hypothetical, so let’s turn it around. What if your client says he wants an ALTA then changes his mind. He says he wants the same survey, except he doesn’t need the certification.
Do you charge him less? ????
I hope everyone has a great day; I know I will!I had a company request a bid for an ALTA. They were looking at buying a business and we met onsite to look it over. My ALTA work has always been involved; utilities, underground and overhead, topo, easements, ect.
This guy couldn’t understand why I would bid his so high. I explained that we could reduce the cost by eliminating items from my usual work load for an ALTA. I showed him an example of one of my surveys and his eyes kinda bugged out. Then he showed me one of his recent ones. It was a property line survey and building location, more of a mortgage inspection survey.
I told him that the property had been recently surveyed and showed him the ROS from the county. Didn’t hear back from him.
There wasn’t much need for the ALTA with a newish ROS (if you were going to do it like his examples), so I think they simply used the ROS. Or my price was too high and they got someone else. His ALTA survey examples were something I’d never seen before. No topo, no utilities, rough building locations, boundary, not much more.
Some recent ALTA surveys that I’ve seen locally are very sparse. Including the one I saw for a mobile home park, which if you think about it a mobile home park could be a massive job locating all the utilities, buildings, roads, ect. None of that showed up on the ALTA I saw.
So yes, an ALTA can be a “regular” survey,,,,,,,,I guess.
Let me ask y??all that perform ALTA surveys a real question. Do you actually make a decent profit doing them?
I performed about three prior to swearing them off for good. The amount of profit vs time consumption didn??t cut it. There are more enjoyable ways to make good money in surveying, at least that I have found. ????
@dougie
If I did all the work required for the ALTA and then the client wanted the certification removed? And then wanted the fee reduced? NFW.
- Posted by: @flga-2-2
Let me ask y??all that perform ALTA surveys a real question. Do you actually make a decent profit doing them?
We do, but we also don’t go after the lowballing clients. Most of our ALTAs are for government and quasi-government agencies like cities, ports, medical centers, utility districts, etc., and we are contacted directly by them.
On the rare occasion that we get a RFQ/RFP from what looks to be a shop-around client, we spend the bare minimum on prep and kick out a proposal with plenty of profit for us if they hire us.
Sometimes they are desperate enough and/or have enough of a time crunch that they hire us, but if not we don’t particularly care. Every now and then it happens.
Like I have seen often on this board, we can’t lose money on a job we didn’t get.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman
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