a "jack leg" responds

I never understood the mentality by many surveyors regarding mortgage surveys. In my experience, the majority of boundary problems are found during recon; usually within the first hour of visiting the site.

My point is, you don't have to retrace the whole 100 acres to find out that the house is over the line.

Just a well done title search would resolve....or find...a lot of issues. Most of the folks, not all, but most, don't really plot out and look at boundary issues or even understand all the calls, dimensions, etc. Keep in mind that title companies and banks and real estate agents really don't want you to find problems.

Sam:

Largely true -- but the seller's title insurer would have liked it if someone had discovered this mess before they issued a policy on the new house, I can assure you. Unlike the buyer's insurer, they did not order an MLI.

Even though I rarely do them any more, I gotta agree with you.

When I was a party chief I worked at a firm that did a fair amount of "mortgage surveys". I had total authority at any time I was at the property to stop work, call the office and tell the boss that a "mortgage survey" wasn't going to cut it, and it was a full blown boundary survey or nothing. It probably happened 10% - 15% of the time and the person ordering the survey never once blinked at the additional cost.

This is the other side of the coin.

I do a lot of work in a municipality that has (for the last 25 years or so) required: 1.) a licensed surveyor to stake out a house prior to issuing a building permit and 2.) a licensed surveyor to submit a letter stating that the property corners have all been set (the inspector checks in the field) before issuing the final use and occupancy permit.

In addition all the local banks require a signed and sealed survey showing the location of the foundation in relation to the property lines and zoning set-backs prior to releasing the first draw on a construction loan.

Given this; if a house was constructed in the last 20 years by a reputable builder (I've been around long enough to know) in a subdivision created by a reputable surveying firm (ditto), how am I "protecting the public" by charging them over a thousand dollars to provide their title insurance company with a product that I know they don't need. In certain circumstance the "boundary survey or nothing" attitude to fulfill a checklist requirement on a $750 title insurance policy is the equivalent of a doctor performing unnecessary surgery.

I thought the whole idea by "mortage inspection" was just to be sure nothing had been built since the last survey and that nothing had been moved. Thus, the boundary, and any issues, should have been resolved previously.
Maybe I'm being too simplistic.

Sam:

> Largely true -- but the seller's title insurer would have liked it if someone had discovered this mess before they issued a policy on the new house

I would be very surprised if the title insurer issued a policy on the house. Maybe things are different in Maine, but here in California the practice is to issue coverage only on the property described in the deed. Matters that might be disclosed by a field survey are typically cited as exceptions to coverage. In other words, the title company would probably deny any claim of damages in this case.

I could see where they could have a place, but we don't have such a thing here.

I think the comment "most problems are found during recon" is a valid one, and if I could, I would let someone pay me to walk around in their yard.

Case in point, 2 acre tract, split by deed into West half and East half.

Owner mortgages West half and builds his house on the East half.

Owner pays mortgage for a few years, then stops.

Bank forecloses on the vacant lot.

I can still hear the Attorney's tone change from, we are going to get these SOBs, to those SOBs got us.

"Precise measurements and physical monuments were hardly the pressing issue here."

I can see the purpose of what you are doing here. My only question is how did you determine the location of the lot corners on the ground and the relationship of the improvements to the lot lines? You imply that no measurements were made in the field and no corner pins were found and that the lot corners at the roadway were not tied down.
If you are actually locating pins and doing some field measurements to come up with at least the proper proportion for your sketch, then what you are doing has some merit, but if you are drawing the lots up "by deed" and then eye-balling the lot lines by "Possession line"s and relating the buildings to this, you may not be correct. "Possession lines" are often not the lot lines.
I think the objections some have raised here may be due to the fact that they do not see the methodology that you use to perform these reports.

> Mortgage Loan Inspections were explicitly OK'd by Maine's licensing board years ago. Nearly every surveyor I know in central Maine does them.

But that does not happen nationwide. I think in most instances it is unlicensed people out there who do no research and just drive up to the site measure over from a fence, if in fact they do any measuring at all, and then are off to the next one so they can get as many done as possible and collect their $150/each. They are not interested in protecting the public, just filling their wallets. Later, the homeowner finds out that their "survey" is worthless if they have any dispute over a boundary line. These are the jack-legs who gave mortgage surveys a bad name. The general public do not understand the difference between a mortgage survey and a boundary survey.

A licensed surveyor would (hopefully) understand that he has a duty to be a little more diligent in his work and actually verify a few things.

Here is a blog entry I wrote a couple years ago about a mortgage survey that became a headache for poor Sally:
http://iowasurveyor.blogspot.com/2009/01/mortgage-survey-lesson-learned.html

That's what I was wondering. If you just walk around the yard and determine the house location in relation to the boundary, what did you see that tells you where the boundary is? I'm working on a boundary line adjustment right now where half a dozen parcels were fenced off incorrectly and my client's house was built on her neighbor's parcel because of a domino effect of somebody measuring their deed distance from the center of the road instead of the south side of the road R/W. If you measured fence to fence on these parcels, they would seem to be correct but actually they're all shifted 30' North of their described location.

Before somebody calls me a deed-staking pile of garbage, 7 years ago there was a quiet title action where the judge pounded the gavel and ruled that since the described parcels lines could be determined without ambiguity, the fences and houses built by mistake did not create boundary lines. This lady won (after spending thousands of dollars in attorney fees) because her deed line was confirmed to be 30' South of the fence but she agreed with her northerly neighbor to move her north line to the fence so her house would be on her own parcel.

Sam:

> Matters that might be disclosed by a field survey are typically cited as exceptions to coverage. In other words, the title company would probably deny any claim of damages in this case.

Yep, along with many other exceptions. A title policy doesn't cover much anymore.

It comes down to the integrity of the signing surveyor.

Precise measurements and physical monuments were hardly the pressing issue here. If they were I would have promptly recommended a boundary survey.

I have no problem with what you did.

IF you had generated a plak, with your surveyor seal, and it either looked like a survey, or was passed off as one, well, Then I call you a criminal.

I did something similar recently. I called it a "Deed Plot". To help them resolve things.

Nate

This is essentially due diligence work. As long as the client understands the nature of the work product I don't think there is a problem with it.

I don't see why a buyer couldn't retain a land surveyor to review a draft Deed to be sure it includes what the expected transfer is. We did this a lot in my previous job. One case that comes to mind is we were supposed to receive a bunch of Sections of land which were included in the descriptions but then exceptions systematically removed much of the land which was intended to be included in the acquisition.

Dent and Steve:

Measurements are made for an MLI but they are approximate -- appraiser's tape, measuring wheel, etc. -- just not precise, survey-grade measurements (and this fact is stated clearly on the drawings). The descriptions in this case were of the "homemade" variety ("thence 300 feet more or less to a pipe by an oak" type of thing) but sufficient monumentation was found to be able to make the determination outlined in the fact set.

If your gun never got out of the box, and if you never made measurements to the structure, how can you be certain it was straddling the line between a and b/c?

Nevermind, I see where someone already asked. So I will follow up with this one for you. If the deed said 300' more or less, how do you know that there were not monumentations situated that put the house firmly on one lot. You did state you did not find all the monuments, just enough to place the boundary approximately. What if the one side had 280 instead of 300 and the other had 320 instead of 300. Total would still be 600 but 20' might make a real difference in the house being over and the house being near the division line.

I am not saying you need to survey the world, but I think that an MLI does not protect the public, it is just half arsed surveying IMHO. At least locate the monumentation and shoot enough of the house to correctly place it in location to the property, not the occupied property but that deeded property.

Jim:

You are right on the money. A policy had been issued to the current seller referencing her deed -- in other words, on parcels B & C but not on A. And the insurer made precisely the argument you expected: no one questions her ownership of B & C and they had no policy on A so they aren't liable.

Which became a serious issue because of an interesting sideshow: one of the original sellers had, after selling to the current owner (the current seller), gotten into financial straits, and a sort of generic lien had been placed on everything she owns. So suddenly the lienholder has a claim on parcel A. Which had to be settled for the current buyers' attorney to certify title to parcel A even though the original seller was willing to sign off. The current seller (hardly a happy camper at this point) demanded that her title insurer not only clean up the conveyances but pay off this lien. Last fall I heard they were considering doing so, on the theory that they have to cover the encroachment by the house (at least part of which they had covered) onto what on paper is someone else's land. I know it all got resolved and the closing occurred but I don't know the details -- I'll see if I can get them this week.

Matt:

I'm not sure where I said that I "never made measurements to the structure" or that I "did not find all the monuments, just enough to place the boundary approximately." I made oodles of measurements -- just not with survey-grade precision. This case essentially involved a title problem, not a boundary problem (albeit a title problem that could only be discovered by knowing what's on the ground) -- that's why I simplified the sketch, as noted in the initial post. There were monuments aplenty, and no serious question as to where the line running through the house lay. Rough measurements were more than sufficient to demonstrate the existence of the huge problem. Had they not been I would have recommended a full boundary survey.

I think the reason so many (especially in areas where they are not done) think that MLI's are "just half arsed surveying" is that it's assumed that they are some sort of cheap survey or substitute for a survey. They are not. They are an entirely different product, aimed at ferreting out problems just like this one. They are intended to satisfy the insurer's needs, not the owner's. They are provided almost exclusively to title attorneys and title companies who know what they are (and aren't) getting. The only place that the word "survey" appears on my MLI drawings (or invoices) is in the phrase "THIS IS NOT A BOUNDARY SURVEY."

Matt:

For Texas, there is no way to place a limit on our certification. It is either a survey or a preliminary survey with the statement "Preliminary, this document shall not be recorded for any purpose". There is no other option.

Any document we put out there is expected to be at the defined accuracy for any or all we produce. The drawing can be a hand drawn pencil on napkin and if we give to a client to represent their land, I believe the same expectation will be held.

Just because the insurer wants to save face or get an opinion, it is still considered a survey and the same rules follow for that document as for any other we produce.