You are doing a survey fo an easement 30 feet wide by 2000 feet long through an unplatted piece of property. The neighbor comes out to talk to you. He lives on a 132'x 320' lot in a small plat that was surveyed by a friend of yours in 1986. You've already found his 2 front corners and the other front corner of the property with the easement. It's a heavily wooded area and the chances are good that you will find the other corners set by your buddy in the 1986 plat.
The guy tells you he has lived there for about 7 years and has been thinking about building a fence. He asks you what it would cost to survey his property.
What do you tell him?
TIA
Radar
What is a standard price for your area to survey (read locate those corners) and knock off 10%. That is what you should quote the man.
I have ZERO problem double dipping the till when I can achieve synergy through multiple projects at once, it just doesn't happen very often.
I would take by ususally price that I would come up with for this piece and discount it say 5%.
Is your friend still in practice? If so, I would recommend the neighbor contact your friend to mark the lines since he/she established the corners. That is, providing you trust your friend does quality work.
If not, then price would be effort plus acceptance of liability, however you normally estimate those for your business.
to me its not really double dipping, after all your are extending your liabilty..
I would show him the corners I had already located, ask him if he wanted me to find the other two and then go about doing the survey I was hired to do.
Sometimes I will advise a landowner that we will offer a significant discount if he gets one or more neighbors to order a survey at the same time. The discount applies to all neighbors equally.
The strategy works sometimes, especially with the penny pinchers.
The guy has good timing. Probably a 25% discount over normal.
Getting paid twice for the same work is double dipping, and doesn't bother me in the least.
I say give him a bit of a discount and do the survey.
There is a value to our knowledge that is not dependent on time involved. Just because it's easy doesn't lessen the value.
BL
I've tried that a few times and I can't remember it ever going smoothly. Somewhere along the line, one of the people wants to back out or they think somebody's getting a better deal. You're right about spreading the discount equally. That was a big mistake I made years ago where I had been hired to do a pretty involved survey and after I had it all figured out, the little old lady next door asked what it would cost to put one of her corners in. It took about an extra hour to do it so I gave her a cheap price. My original clients found out and thought they should be charged the same as the neighbor. It turned out neither one of them ever paid anything after much arguing back and forth.
You will have to discount your original client at least a token amount as well to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
