I get calls frequently for an Elevation Cert and I am often told by the caller that "oh I can't afford that". Now the price I charge for those if they are local is generally $650 minimum. If I have to travel more than 20 miles I charge more.
But anywhoo I digress. So these folks turn down a service that can save them a lot of money because they can't afford a 1 time charge of $650 and instead opt to pay a smaller monthly charge of $100 to $200 to even $300 a month because it is easier to make a series of smaller payments than a 1 time larger cost.
Do you guys experience that as well?
I am befuddled by the logic.
Logic? No. How about you price them at $75 a month for a year.?ÿ?ÿ
Most of the ones I do are in a similar price range to you but on a lake of very expensive homes.?ÿ Those folks can afford my fee and can easily justify the cost.
Licensed Land Surveyor
Finger Lakes Region, Upstate New York
Do you guys experience that as well?
yes, they simply don't have it in their budget
Do you take credit cards??ÿ I'm not serving that market anymore, but I would definitely add credit cards if I was doing those again.?ÿ Another option might be to bill to closing costs if it is associated with a real estate transaction.?ÿ Some people seem to have less resistance to paying "closing costs" than to direct survey costs.?ÿ (I am not advocating the illegal practice of only billing if a sale goes through.?ÿ I just mean billing to closing costs as a courtesy arrangement.)
But I hear you.?ÿ Most people are bad at deferred gratification?ÿand math, which makes our services a hard sell sometimes.
That??s pretty cheap. I start at $960 and go up from there. These people are kidding themselves if they think I??m worth anything less than that. $80,000 education, $50,000 in equipment, the cost of maintaing my license and of course running a small business.?ÿ
The only way surveyors can gain back any sort of recognition and respect is to properly charge.?ÿ
You sir have a problem? One that only a licensed individual can fix. You can either chose to keep paying on flood insurance or pay me to provide you with a document to reduce the rate of the premium or remove it all together.?ÿ
Come on surveyors! We are worth what we charge. You don??t see $200/hr lawyer plead with people about price. Why should we? Rant complete.?ÿ
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There is not a chance in Hades that a surveyor here can get $960 unless it is a urgent rush job and then the highest I have ever been able to get has been $900. There are just too many surveyors here competing for the same money.
Stay focused on the question though.
That??s a crying shame.
I get calls frequently for an Elevation Cert and I am often told by the caller that "oh I can't afford that". Now the price I charge for those if they are local is generally $650 minimum. If I have to travel more than 20 miles I charge more.
But anywhoo I digress. So these folks turn down a service that can save them a lot of money because they can't afford a 1 time charge of $650 and instead opt to pay a smaller monthly charge of $100 to $200 to even $300 a month because it is easier to make a series of smaller payments than a 1 time larger cost.
Do you guys experience that as well?
I am befuddled by the logic.
When I was in the privates we got a lot of calls from folks looking for Elevation Certs for obvious floodable land.?ÿ Clearly not worth it to them to hire a surveyor who'll determine they are in the flood zone.?ÿ We did a few Flood Zone surveys where FEMA obviously screwed up and the client was a few to dozens of feet higher than the FEMA maps, and our fee saved them thousands in future insurance costs.?ÿ But in a few cases we ran precise levels to their building(s) and it was less than 0.1' vertically within the flood zone and the client was pissed, demanded our fee back and was generally unhappy.?ÿ Get your money up front, don't pursue surveying obvious floodable property and if it's a close call maybe refuse doing the survey.?ÿ?ÿ
@David H:
It looks like you may be a bit new here so it might interest you to know that Just A Surveyor has probably logged more words on this forum about surveyors not charging enough than the next closest 5 people combined.
Unfortunately there are different markets out there that have their own realities.
Licensed Land Surveyor
Finger Lakes Region, Upstate New York
It always amazed me that people would have a service or item added to the cost of the house instead of paying for it out-of-pocket now, thereby getting to pay interest on it for thirty years.?ÿ My son threw in his stereo to clinch a sale and added $2500 to the sale price!
Even worse is when the seller's agent insists on giving you credit for something instead of lowering the total price by that amount, thereby increasing his/her commission.
People are stupid.?ÿ Keep that in mind at all times.
Per the George Carlin quote:?ÿ Just think how stupid the average person is, then remember that half of them are stupider than that.
I have made a ton of money off of stupid people wanting to do stupid things.
One case was an existing house that was selling for $305,000 about ten years ago.?ÿ That's $2.4 million in West Coast dollars.?ÿ The entire footprint was well into the flood plain.?ÿ It had a full basement that stuck up about three feet above grade with huge windows overlooking the backyard with the bottom of the windows being only a couple inches higher than ground level..?ÿ Flood level was about 3.5 feet higher than the backyard adjacent to those big windows.?ÿ ?ÿMaybe 50 feet distant was the bank of the creek.?ÿ One piece of log striking one of those windows would fill the basement completely to ceiling level in under a minute.?ÿ That would be half the living space in the house.?ÿ The buyers really didn't care.?ÿ They simply had to have the right information so the flood insurance folks could bill them appropriately as part of their lender's requirements.?ÿ That's the house they had picked out and, by golly, they were buying it come Hell or high water.?ÿ My bet was on high water coming first.
A slightly lower-priced house in a different city had a similar story.?ÿ The outside door that took you immediately down to the basement was at ground level.?ÿ Again, flood level was about three to four feet above ground level at that spot.?ÿ The seller had learned the hard way what could happen.?ÿ About two years earlier the big flood came and filled that basement in no time at all up to the basement ceiling.?ÿ I guess it was fortunate that the in-ground swimming pool was full to start with or hydraulic pressure would have shoved it out of the ground ahead of the inundation.
One dumb bass had us do an EC on a single lot about 50 by 150 because a tornado had taken the old house and those of quite a few others in that part of town.?ÿ I told him ahead of time he would be wasting his money by having us do the EC because there was no way he was rebuilding there.?ÿ He said the fools with the city had told him the same thing but he was sure they were wrong.?ÿ We did the pre-construction EC, which included me standing on a stack of concrete blocks, on tiptoe, to drive a 60d nail in what was left of a power pole at the maximum point I could reach up to so he could SEE where the BFE was located.?ÿ It is still an empty lot today, 20 years later.
Grab the money, then prove to them just how stupid they really are.
i could've sold my house to a lowballer for 40,000 less and come out ahead because of lower brokerage commission but the co-owner has a perception that higher sales price is better therefore I knew it wouldn't sell at that price given the condition of the roof so I have to protect the investment ?ÿby reroofing which made it sell at the higher price plus a few other things.
Any improvements may net you about 60% (75% kitchen or bathroom) if you are lucky plus a bigger bite in costs YAY. This is why flippers do everything cheap cheap cheap and shoddy.
I comfort myself with the thought that I sold a 1955 house built out of a forest of the most beautiful straight tight grained knot free old growth Douglas fir lumber you have ever seen. The roof plane is as perfectly flat (4-12 pitch) as the day it was built. The mudsills are deep dark old growth redwood, again no knots. I sold it to young couple with a first class roof instead of a lowballer who would've just trashed it.
thats not stupidity, it's emotion, you might try a little empathy, you could benefit from it.
i know I know every decision you have ever made in your life has been completely cold, calculating, and rational.
You thought you made a mistake once but it turns out you were mistaken about that.
