Acreage and Title Insurance
Title insurance once was a worthy policy that would defend your purchase and give you upfront money when a claim was made against your purchase.
They would hire legal representation that would fight for your cause and pay for the surveyors testimony and/or affidavit and any extra surveying to further the cause.
If in fault, they would pay you for your loss.
Today most policies are as useful as a mortgage sketch by some 1/2hr surveyor that charges $250 and does not uncover any monuments for show.
The financial world requires them and their extend of coverage makes sure the loan value is secure against any other claims and in case of any unknown persons claiming ownership the bank will keep its's investment.
The sad survey is that of someone that was deeded property based on acreage, west 25ac of xyz property, and the latest surveyor shows only 9.87ac because 10ac would cross into the neighbors smoke house.
:woot:
Acreage and Title Insurance
Most title policies I've read in the last 10 years or so explicitly state that they do not insure exact acreage. However, that will not prevent the surveyor from being sued directly by the aggrieved party if there is a problem with the area. A number of years (before my time) a draftsperson at our firm accidentally misrepresented the area of a parcel by approximately 4 acres due to a simple typo. Unfortunately, it was not discovered until after the land was sold on a per acre basis. When the buyer discovered the mistake, they successfully came back after our firm.
In this particular case, it sounds like the there was never a survey showing the area sold in the first place - that is was a number procured from the nether reaches of some posterior, which means that the buyer purchased the property at their own risk. It's interesting how clients never seem to complain when the survey finds more area than they paid for.
An interesting aside re: title insurance. I attended a CE seminar by Gary Kent (the NSPS representative in drafting revision to the ALTA standards) a couple years ago and he mentioned that something like less than 5% of title insurance issues involve the survey of the property - most issues arise from claims under the chain of title or other issues which have nothing to do with the surveyor.