How does this endanger the public?
It looks like the Board reviewed the needs of the lenders and came up with a set of standards that isn't adverse to their/our ethics or protecting the public.
The prize to Mr. Macolini! This happens in my state as well. Some people are willing to work for next to nothing providing what, in the eyes of the lender, is a fungible product. Imagine: Joe Surveyor, in 1992, spent about 5 grand on a total station and some cheap software. Every 8 years he upgrades his PC. He has no helper. His wife is a nurse or schoolteacher or astronaut and has great health insurance and a retirement. He does 5 surveys a week for $200 each, so $1000/wk and writes off his 15 year old pickup and home office space. Not only is this possible, he may even love this work and do it well. Not my cup of tea, but hey, liberty and all that...
:good: And last I checked, lenders are part of the public.
Its not speculation on my part, it is first hand knowledge. I know how these things are done. I worked at companies doing them for over 15 years. I know what they are supposed to do and the rush to get enough done in a day to make a profit never leaves enough time to do the job right. These companies, led by the same people or their offspring are still operating today. Drive-by updates and fictitious corners being added to plans that were never even looked for. I am so glad to be out of upstate NY. I am happy that NC never has allowed these fake surveys. Of course there may be companies that do them right, but I have never seen one.
Extrapolation, then.
fungible... I had to look that one up.
I don't think this is a "cut-and-dried" topic. Many good, competent surveyors look at their State's requirements for Mortgage Inspections or whatever name they're under, and say that they couldn't do one even at a low wage and no overhead. There might be a bit of interpretation of the laws, and the ability to do them at the low prices may vary from state to state requirements, but it is not a given. "Improvement Location Certificates" in Colorado seem to not be subject to much peer review than other forms of plats, etc. They are done strictly for use by the client, and not recorded in public records. Neither the mortgage companies nor the title companies are complaining, because they get some kind of certification as to whether there are encroachments or other problems with the title even if the 'inspection' doesn't really go far enough to make that determination.
On the one hand, there is a claim that an "ILC" is not a survey, yet it is required by law that it be signed and stamped by a licensed land surveyor. STate law also identifies that only documents done as a result of a land survey are to be signed and stamped by the land surveyor in responsible charge. I think it is hard to "disclaim" it as an official survey and yet "certify" to it being done as a result of a land survey by a licensed land surveyor.
All I'm saying is that mortgage inspection certificates are not without problems and are quite the document for a land surveyor to certify for a meer pittance.
correctomundo, Mr. Solo...
What is the Public's perception of a "Mortgage Survey"? What is their perception of our Profession when they discover that they have no value?
Bob, its the same all over.
Our client pool consists of people that don't want to pay for any more than they have to and generally only want to know the limits of the property they have title to.
They do not understand that in today's world, anything the surveyor does counts as a full survey and we are liable for that.
The bank, individual or company does not always get a full title policy, they get an opinion from an attorney or title company and go with that without paying for a full policy.
We don't have that privilege. In the distant past I have gone out to show people their monuments and leave them with the phrase "this appears to be you monuments from what your deed says".
What some are doing for banks and others at the rate of 4 - 10 a day cannot be a complete survey in my part of the world and in many cities.
A good draftsman can fluff anything into a work of art that shows much more than was actually done in the field.
When a client wants to save money, I give them the option of gathering the legal documents required for me to complete the job. Many are happy to provide that and when they say that they will have to take a day off work to do that they begin to understand the cost for me to do that.
It all boils down to, what liability are you willing to live with and how much you trust what you put out the door.
I have heard many a surveyor say, "who is going to say I am wrong".
The odds are that if anyone finds a problem, it will be long after your liability has run out.
😐
correctomundo, Mr. Solo...
> What is the Public's perception of a "Mortgage Survey"? What is their perception of our Profession when they discover that they have no value?
again, what are we talking about here?
that term isn't part of our local lexicon. the closest thing i could equate would being an update of a previous title upon the owner getting a refinance. other than simply verifying your own previous work and checking for any updates to improvements, they're treated like any other title transaction.
they're definitely not without value, whatever that is supposed to mean.
correctomundo, Mr. Solo...
> ....when they discover that they have no value?
Oh but they do have value. Maybe not the value that the homeowner thinks they have, but they certainly have value to the lender and the title company.
The certificate in Colorado says that all the improvements are on the property except as shown, that there are no encorachments except as shown, no apparent evidence of easement crossings (except as shown)...etc.
It is worded in a way that the land surveyor certifies to it (Not in some vague way, it says "...I certify that..." with a signature and seal at the end of the statement).
This takes a burden and liability off of both the insurer and the lender. It is their insurance in a sense and a very small cost. It virtually makes the surveyor part of being the guarantor, with some of the liability and little of the profit. I can understand having an expert view the land and certify to the boundary issues, but it should be at a cost that is commiserate with the liability to me.
> yeah, but are we all taking apples and apples here?
For the first few years of my survey career I did mortgage surveys in British Columbia. We were expected to do 5 a day, and they went for $250-$300 each. We had an old Nissan Pickup as a work truck. We had a 20 year old theodolite and steel tape for measurements. No batteries. The sort of equipment you could pick up for $500 on Ebay. I was making $15/hr and my rodman a couple bucks less. Software amounted to Acad LT in the office and HP calculators. You don't even need a plotter if all your product is on legal sized sheets. Our 5 a day kept a draftsman busy in the office. Probably $12/hr for him. He was a beginner,too.
So the revenue was about $1500 per day and the costs were under $400 in salary. Benefits? Fugedaboudit! Very minimal office and equipment investment, maybe $5000, total.
These were not detailed surveys, to be sure. But we did dig up at least 3 good pins and we did make measurements on every site. I got pretty good at it, but I wasn't ever going to rise above $15/hr doing that. So I moved on.
I won't defend people doing 20 a day at $75 a pop. That's something else.
Well, it's a good enough product to allow the title company to insure against damages that might arise later due to a full survey.
Personally, I don't like the whole process that includes the inspection. But within that process, I don't see anything wrong with the inspection. In fact, the process is moving to eliminate even that inspection in favor of owners affidavits or nothing at all in the way of a traditional evaluation of where the title is.
Insurance and technology, working together to make us all wards of the state, or to make your life easier. Depends on how you look at.
The Mortgage Loan Inspection is analogous to a quick gym physical that your kid might need to get into soccer camp -- to see if there's anything wrong that would scream out at someone who knows what he or she is looking at -- the doc does just enough to see whether it's OK to let the kid play soccer. Sure doesn't mean the kid won't get hurt, nor that s/he doesn't have some medical issue that a long hospital stay and battery of pricey tests might reveal. Most kids, and most residential properties, are "good to go." The insurers are betting serious money that nothing major is going to go wrong, like the house being built on the wrong lot. Which a properly done MLI would catch. I've done hundreds of MLIs over the years, and could show you a handful where we found serious problems that had to be resolved.
It's true that, the odds being against such problems, as I said above, the insurers are ordering fewer MLIs all the time and it is indeed getting hard to make money on them.
:good: Great analogy. Love it.
Actually the insurers are betting less and making more than in the older system of full survey and attorney opinion on title. And when the ocassional problem does arise it is the landowner who suffers because they don't understand what is going on. But again, I have no problem with someone providing hundreds of these, and I know what they are. Everyone has to work within the system they are handed and do the best they can with it. Surveyors have no influence on the insurance, real estate, or lending industries and those folks will decide who gets money to purchase and what they have to do to get it.
but Surveyors can decide not to deceive the public with these pseudo-surveys. I could not tell you the number of times a client, attorney, neighbor etc handed me a copy of one of these and said "Here is my survey" It must have numbered in the hundreds though. Many times, the neighbor was questioning the line we had surveyed based upon these clearly erroneous reports. My opinion is that these Mortgage Inspections are a black-eye for all surveyors. They don't make money, they don't provide a quality product that the public can trust and they are misleading at best.
From Pat May-
There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey............. John Ruskin
I agree. But the thing is that federal government regulations prompted the multi billion dollar mortgage industry to change the way they do things (lower closing costs so more people could afford to own a home)and the inspection is one of the things they came up with (in addition to the oh so successful approval criteria). Therefore, it seems ridiculous to me to cast doubt on a mere surveyor for providing the service. All I'm saying is speak out against the policy (not that it will get you anywhere), not the working people that are only doing as the policy requires. Of course if there is one person forging a signature on all these things somewhere in Virginia, then I'm all for going after that person.
Profitable around here if you can wait 30-60 days to get paid.
Since the low-ballers left 2 years ago, we are getting more and more of these at our price and not having to compete with a starving idiot from 2 or 3 hours away.
Do not really like the hurry up to get it done and wait for payment, but they all seem to close eventually.
We would rather not do them, but since we are 1 of only 2 surveyors in the county, we do around 10 or so a month.
I would say its 15% of our business, so its something to pay attention to.
Randy
Sorry Derek
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Ruskin#Disputed
Sorry bout being so pedantic, but I'm a hardcore Ruskin fanboy. Tolstoy was understating when he said Ruskin was "one of the most remarkable men not only of England and of our generation, but of all countries and times”
