The Plot: Client from five years ago is now selling the tract we surveyed around her house for mortgage purposes and keeping the remainder of the farm land. Two real estate companies, one bank and one title company are involved in addition to the buyer and seller.
Enter The Surveyor: The former client calls. Says the real estate lady said the title company or the bank or somebody needs some document from me. Not sure who. Please call the real estate lady.
Act One: Call the nice real estate lady's office. She is out and won't be back in until next week. No one else there has a clue about the former client's problem.
Act Two: I've done quite a few surveys for the nice real estate lady and just happen to have her cell phone number. Call her. She spends 15 minutes explaining that the buyer expects the seller to provide a new survey, not the one from five years ago. Says that is what the contract says. Tells me to call back the former/potential future client.
Act Three: Call the former client again. Spend 15 minutes explaining to former client what it is the nice real estate lady has explained about the signed contract. She says she did not understand that and promptly makes it clear she WILL NOT pay for a second survey as the previous one is all they need. I AGREE WITH HER.
She says either the buyers will pay for it or she will pull out of the deal. She then says she will call the real estate lady and get this straightened out then call me back.
Act Four: (still waiting)
Bit of History: I happened to drive past her house about two weeks prior to her call on the way back from a recent project. Noticed that nothing had changed since we were last there including the nice steel fence posts that were placed next to the monuments we set. As she owned all the property, not just the mortgaged tract, we thought this was a bit of overkill five years ago. The buyer's bank is not asking for a survey. The title company is not issuing survey coverage. The buyers simply think they need a survey identical to the one she has already provided them with a current date on it. No improvements are shown. No easements are shown. It is a barebones rectangle with monuments at the corners. Fifteen minutes or less with a tape measure operated by the buyers would confirm no major changes from the five year old survey.
Flame on, if you so desire.
Not a flame, but... From a Texas standpoint - the buyer is the one in the know. Of course nothing has changed over the last 5 years, but the new buyer wants his name on the plat (often required to refinance with a different bank or mortgage company for better rates). Also, a new survey or plat will extend your liability directly to the new buyer and it isn't going to cost them anything. Even if you sign a copy of the old plat and give it to the old client to give to the new buyer, it could be restart the statute of limitations and extend your liability to the new buyer. At least in Texas, somewhere around Act 5 or 6, you would get a phone call to "just come and re-flag the corners" - of course the new buyer will have to be there so they can play 20 questions with you. This tactic will save them the cost of a new survey and in effect makes the new buyer your new client. Then about Act 8 or 9, you will get a call from your "new" client (the new buyer) wanting to know when you are going to send him the new plat from your last visit. This will be followed up by Act 10 or so from either the old client, the nice realtor lady, the new realtor lady or heaven forbid a new actor, the new attorney for one of the above (who needs to make a boat payment this month) who begins calling to badger you with questions on why you haven't produced that plat yet. Is there no end to this play?
Just a thought, You don't know the buyers frame of reference. Perhaps they got burned previously. As an example in my 37 years as a registered surveyor (Pennsylvania) I have only done ONE ALTA survey for a single family home in a relativity recent development. Why would someone want an ALTA for a 1/4 acre residential lot? According to the real estate person the buyer got burned on a previous purchase in another state and was offended by the survey exclusion proffered by the title company.
The second and most important reason they required the survey.....They could.
Stuck in the middle again
Makes me think of good 'ole Gerry Rafferty.B-)
We often complain about people who buy without surveys. Seems this buyer is just doing what us surveyors wish more people would do.
Seller made a deal and signed a contract. Pulling out now may put her in breach of contract. That could cost her more than the cost of a survey.
Perhaps buyer could order and pay for survey and deduct price of survey from purchase price of real estate, no? But seller, having once had property surveyed, maybe can acquire updated survey at lower price, hence the terms of this deal?
If a Boundary Survey can be retraced using monuments from that survey. it should be as good a hundred years later as it was the day it was completed. Plot plans are different and should never be mixed.
jud
Brian - I don't disagree with you at all - I don't know this buyer's frame of reference and I would bet that they are wisely requiring this out of caution. I have done many surveys for honest buyers who demanded a new survey because they had been burned in the past. However, everyone of them were going to pay for the new survey themselves and not put it in the contract for the seller to pay for it.
HOW IRONIC - In the middle of writing this reply, I took a phone call from someone wanting a copy of an 18 year old mortgage loan survey we did for them "because the realtor wanted it for the new buyer." Not singling out anyone, but if others do not have this problem, then they can't understand what we go through everyday.
> If a Boundary Survey can be retraced using monuments from that survey. it should be as good a hundred years later as it was the day it was completed....
Hmmm...not quite. What about possession lines and encroachments? There may also have been activity by other surveyors in the area that could change your early opinion.
As I said.
It should be as good a hundred years later as it was the day it was completed....
Recording states will cause your work to be used for a very long time. If the survey was no good the day it was completed, time may improve its worth, if only as an explanation explaining the reasons for the actions of owners guided by their reliance on the bad survey.
jud
Jud - This week, we are subdividing a tract for a lady which we surveyed in 1997. She has refinanced the property a couple of times since then without having it resurveyed and has now decided to subdivide the property. We would not be resurveying the tract at this point, except that she is going to subdivide it. We went out, surveyed it and found the boundary as good as it was originally found in 1997 and you are right, it will probably be good for another 100 years. But that mobile home that she had placed and anchored down straddling her property line ain't right. Even given the fact that money was loaned on it and refinanced still doesn't make it right. Now she or the bank is going to have to pay to have it moved because someone just knew that the survey was still good and they were right - the survey is good, but the improvements that they placed upon the property aren't.
Not talking about anything but the boundary survey, improvement change and their location should not be referenced on a Boundary Survey, A Plot Plan based on found monuments is the tool for that and they need updating and checking, that plot plan may reveal a problem that only a Boundary Line Adjustment, Replat or other method can correct that requires a new Boundary Survey to be done so documentation can be brought into agreement with occupation.
jud
I understand where you are coming from now - you are talking about a boundary survey. I take it that what you are calling a plot plan maybe what is referred to as a mortgage loan survey here. Since the first sentence of this thread said that the survey was for "mortgage purposes", I thought that is what you were talking about - my bad- carry on.
