Record of Survey

Sorry Wayne you can't do it.

Where I practice in a rural area many people can not or will not pay for a land survey.

I try to be reasonable but many just walk away from what I think is a fair price.

Now, why should prices be made higher on purpose? And, Who is to say that I am a better surveyor if I record a survey than if I don't. Is the survey that has been recorded necessarily better than the one that hasn't been recorded. Not so. There are some pretty bad recorded surveys.

By the way, I am in favor of mandatory recording in certain circumstance, it is just not a panacea.

When I have found disagreements between surveyors, the cause has been a fundamental difference regarding boundary laws and/or their application.

Sincerely, Stephen Zitkovich

There was one guy who was a checker and no plat could seem to get through (and I mean after many revisions) there was always another thing "wrong" with it, when you are moving annotations microscopic distances, and changing line weights endlessly, then it's time to stop.

Finally his supervisor took over and things went much smoother. When a checker is just pushing his preferences, he's the wrong guy for the job.

> Sorry Wayne you can't do it.

Ok, then don't. I'm sticking to my principles which dictate that I want all future surveyors and/or professionals that rely on my work have something they can hang their respective hats on. In the process the paper trail does in fact protect the public, which I believe is in every creed and code of ethics for every state. Protect The Public.

So don't record or cap your surveys/monuments. Fine by me, but don't try it here. I made more money doing mortgage reports, which are just as fraudulent as a surveyor not capping his corner he accepted.

I just do not understand the mindset of other professionals who do not want their work to be perpetuated and followed. Then we die. How many dead surveyor retracements have any of us done? Dozens, hundreds, thousands..... I know I'm in to high 4 figures.

Free for all Beerleggers. Beat up on me.... 😉

Oh yea, Go Red Wings!!

"There are some pretty bad recorded surveys."

Agreed - but if they are recorded I can at least see them! I don't care what the quality of the work was - I am supposed to follow in the footsteps. That's quite hard to do when I find a monument with no pedigree...

"Where I practice in a rural area many people can not or will not pay for a land survey."

So what do you do for a living?

How to make a living?

Jim,

Well, let me see, mostly I take money from rich city folks who buy a second place in the country. I go to the city and do a few jobs in the city. The more of these two that I get, the more that I can try to help someone who needs it. Although, many of the locals absolutely do not want want surveyors in their neighborhood.

Stephen

> In California we have a Record of Survey requirement that gets triggered by a fair number of surveys. I assume that many other states have similar laws and/or professional requirements. Does anyone know the rational/justification for this sort of requirement?

I know that many will disagree, but I like the recording requirements. In practice, any monument with no recorded plat, legal description, or corner card is just a piece of iron or concrete in the ground, no matter what it says on the cap. The reason is, that you just don't know how or why it got there.

It might be evidence, but in the end, without a record of the monument, we are back at the "goat stake" argument.

> I look at them, then file. If I see a blatant omission, I write a letter to the surveyor. I do NOT want to discourage surveyors from sending in plats.
>

:good: :good: :good:

Washington is a Recording State

> By the way, I am in favor of mandatory recording in certain circumstance, it is just not a panacea.
>

Do you feel the current rules in Washington State are reasonable?

My opinion:
I sometimes wonder, simply because you can go to any block you wish in (Seattle or Bellevue especially), and find unrecorded corners. (Typically from a fairly short list of repeat offender firms.)

I do not believe that the argument that a land owner isn't willing to pay for it is valid. It isn't their RIGHT to get their land surveyed the way they think is good enough. For example, if I go to the surgeon, I don't tell him how to operate on me.

But, I cringe every time they raise the fees here and there, or they make a Boundary Line Agreement basically impossible to record. I know that there are good reasons, and things to pay for, but there is a public good that occurs with settled and stable land tenure. It seems to be that this would be best served by making things easy to resolve, and cheap to record.

I had to think on this a bit because I've asked the same question and more than once I've griped about recovering something with no clue as to it's origins but just so happens to fall reasonably close to the position I came up with. Not that my position is superior and I'm obligated to add my piece of steel to growing pile of junk collecting around this 'corner'.

Alaska Statute 34.65.030

WHEN A RECORD OF SURVEY IS REQUIRED

1) Material evidence of physical change that in whole or in part does not appear on a plat of record previously filed in the office of the District Recorder or in the records of the BLM.

2) A material discrepancy with a plat of record previously filed in the office of the District Recorder or in the records of the BLM.

3) Evidence that by reasonable analysis might result in alternate positions of boundaries from those of record.

I generally give more weight to a recovered non-original monument if it's accompanied by a record of survey. Most guys around here don't file them and don't want to. Hopefully their LS number is on the cap and I can call them if I have questions, but caps disappear and surveyor retire and eventually expire. I have a hunch some of them just don't want the scrutiny.

I feel professionally obligated to file a record of survey if I'm perpetuating evidence that doesn't fit the record. Am I going to file a ROS for setting a cap in a subdivision where I had to prorate a tenth? No. If I set some corners to perpetuate a position where I recovered a rotted out hub or a scribed wooden post and the position doesn't fit the record within reasonable tolerances. Yes. I owe it to the guy down the road who is trying to make sense of my corner. Kind of a 'play it forward' thing I guess.

Carry on.

Catching outright errors should be the primary function of the qualified reviewer. Attempts at adjusting line widths and such is pure foolishness.

I recently had a survey reviewed and found that I had a typo in the description. No matter how carefully you try to catch everything possible one more set of eyes can be a good thing. And, really, what's a little thing like 10 feet!?!

Connecticut

Does nothing like you described.

How to make a living?

>Although, many of the locals absolutely do not want surveyors in their neighborhood.
>

And for good reason no doubt! 😉

> > > I've always wondered why California County Surveyors were given review authority of private surveyors work. It makes no sense to me whatsoever...
> >
> > somebody needs to review them (for specific minimum standards: see those standards for clarification)... look at the quality of maps filed with no review: many are pure crap
>
> While that may be true, who is to say that the County Surveyor is any more qualified than you to determine the quality of the map? I don't believe they go through any higher level of qualifying testing to become a C.S. If the County Surveyor were telling me to change anything the disagreed with my professional judgement, I would argue that maybe they should stamp the plat. I have been aware of some really poor County Surveyors in the past, and they are often hard to get to leave their office. The voting public doesn't have a clue who is a good surveyor or not for the most part.
>
> Beyond looking for some basic checkpoints, and notifying the surveyor if they think they see something that might be a glaring error, I think they should be more record-keepers in regards to filing of plats. It sounds like many California County Surveyors go way overboard and way beyond their (possibly) expertise.

Lots of people just file maps without a second look, or even a second set of eyes... small shops lack peer review, and the big ones fail for their own dysfunctions.

as someone who has done a lot of checking in the past, I was always amazed at the simple errors that get made that can cause great ambiguity. some places just take a map over the counter and file it, some are totally illegible.

to be fair, out of the 50 something counties, by far most are very reasonable... the jerks get a lot of press.

The responses to my original post were general favorable to filing requirements, such as the Record of Survey in California. The general opinion seems to be that this will benefit the general public through an improved cadastre, and secondarily that it will make surveyors more professional. These points may be valid, but are, I think, more arguable than the responses indicate. I was surprised to see that no one felt that conforming to these sorts of requirements is to the benefit of the people who pay for this, i.e., the person whose property triggers one of these requirements. In other words, I notice that the issue of fairness, or equity, is not addressed. Imagine that you live in Palos Verdes, California (for you out-of-staters this is a very nice part of Los Angeles County, but was subdivided largely by deed) and want to build a fence around your property. You happen to have a lot that is described by a ‘deed cut’ in a neighborhood that is generally ‘messy’ from a legal description standpoint. You get a bid from the fence contractor of, say, $2,000. Things seem to be going well, and then the City informs you that a survey of your land will be required. You call around to a few surveyors and find out that, due to Record of Survey requirements your survey fee will be about $6,000.
You are in shock. Your budget has just been blown out. One surveyor explains it to you. “My fee to survey your land is only $1,000, but since you have a ‘deed cut’ and no one has filed a Record of Survey or other suitable recorded map for your property I am required by law to file a Record of Survey myself. This will cost about $5,000 more. It will involve me in months of haggling with the County Survey Office. And not only that, but all of the effort that I am putting into solving your boundary will be handed over to any other survey who is interested at no charge and no effort on his part. But you can take solace in the fact that this $5,000 for the Record of Survey is not wasted. It will improve the general cadastral system and will be a great benefit in the future to your neighbors, for most of whom you have eliminated their need for a Record of Survey when they need to build their fences. Just thank your ‘lucky stars’ that Los Angeles County does not have a Coordinate requirement like many other places in California.”
This is my difficulty with laws like those that require Records of Survey in California. I tend to see these filing requirements as a hidden, and probably unfair, tax. It is a tax, and a potentially enormous one, on the individual who triggers this requirement for the benefit of other people in the future. If a public benefit is produced, why not use general taxpayer money, or pass the measure explicitly as a tax, both of which are, I think, generally accepted principals. (or maybe make the filing super-easy to reduce the cost). If a lawyer prepares my will, he does not have to prepare the wills of everyone else on my block, or maybe with my last name.

(Seb, your example of the coordinate requirement that started in 2005 tends to make my point. The person who had a survey done in 2005 got no benefit from this program, but is basically subsidizing other people in the future, who now benefit from his survey. Sort of like taking money out of one person’s pocket and handing it to someone else. We are in a period of a general ‘ramping-up’ of recording requirements. During a period like this the, lets call it ‘confiscation effect’, will be predominant. Later we will hopefully have a ‘distribution effect’. However, this will generally be to other people.)

(Peter, I am interested in your answer to Jim question regarding why County Surveyors in California should have the authority to review the work of private surveyors. Other than the fact that you have seen some unrecorded surveys that were ‘crap’ do you have a reason, in principal, that the work of licensed land surveyor’s work needs to be reviewed, and that this is best done by a government employee? Should this review extend to survey ‘logic’ or just closure calcs, line weight, etc.)

(Wayne, You seem amazed that anyone would not want their survey recorded. Here are two reasons: (1) Your work will be available to any other surveyor. So your business advantage in the area of the survey will diminish to about zero. (2) Surveying is unique in that after performing a survey we might need to ‘defend’ it, generally at our own cost, to any other surveyor who challenges it, or even just has a question or two. The more surveyors who know about our survey the more likely that we will have to spend time, generally not paid for by our original client, dealing with these issues. I personally am not influenced by these considerations, but, based on the general way that human beings operate these disincentives to recordation can’t be all that mysterious. In regard to your more recent post regarding the imperative to ‘protect the public’, I have a question. Aren’t current clients, who might trigger a filing requirement, also the ‘public’? Are we protecting them when we use them as ‘cash cows’ to fund our grand dream of the ultimate cadastre? Of course jurisdictions with truly simplified filing procedures would not be so subject to this criticism. However, I don’t believe that there are many of them, and the glacial tide in our current epoch is toward more regulation, and more complex regulation.)

> In California we have a Record of Survey requirement that gets triggered by a fair number of surveys. I assume that many other states have similar laws and/or professional requirements. Does anyone know the rational/justification for this sort of requirement?

The problem with California is the trigger mechanism and the cost. In Oregon and Washington you file a record of survey ANYTIME you set a pin. And in Oregon you must include a well written narrative. I just don't think the corner record cuts it. I always recommend filing a survey (most of my clientele are large corps) so I can show a little more than just what was set. The one thing that always gets me is the cost. I can swallow the $400 fee around Portland but when you start asking 4 figures for a simple survey, not a plat, that seems a little out of hand.

That being said, every state should require recording.

One reason I chose to live in the northwest was the recording laws. I would put this region in the 'balanced' column when it comes to fees and review.
As for the insanely expensive places, you can have them. There is no possible way to justify thousands of dollars to review and archive the product of a Professional. While I would welcome a second pair of eyes on my map before it is eternally mine, I've already paid someone in house to do that. I sure didn't pay them 5 grand. If our laws head that direction I will move or go to work for the County...

5 times the effort to do a Record of Survey map? I'll call that what it is, ludicrous.

I've done a lot of Record of Survey maps and not one has been 5 times the effort that otherwise would've been required.

The most thorough check print I got was from Dave Ryan, Humboldt County Surveyor, it took a day or so to address all the comments, no way was it five times the effort of the Survey itself.

If you are haggling with the CS for a year then something is wrong there. I've had a second check on maybe one out of dozens of maps. I make them as clean as I can but they usually find a thing or two.

The Record of Survey requirement is an obvious benefit overall and if there had been more compliance in decades past then it wouldn't take 6 grand to do a simple Deed survey.

.....
> You are in shock. Your budget has just been blown out. One surveyor explains it to you. “My fee to survey your land is only $1,000, but since you have a ‘deed cut’ and no one has filed a Record of Survey or other suitable recorded map for your property I am required by law to file a Record of Survey myself. This will cost about $5,000 more. .......

Lewis,

Your portrayal of the matter is disproportionate to actual fee structures for the 58 Ca counties. While I totally agree that filing costs should be next to nil, I must object to your statement of the cost being on the order of magnitude you claim.

If you really want to make a difference, draft up a proposal to change the recording law fee structure and submit it to the CLSA legislative committee. While transferring the fee burden to general fund taxation will be tough to garner support for in the assembly and senate, a proposal which comes up with either an alternative fund source, or the elimination of county survey reviews, will be given a hard look. I caution that it will be a hard to get support from the State legislature to further burden the general fund, and alternative sources such as documentary transfer taxes will get strong opposition from other groups, particularly the Association of Realtors. The idea of eliminating the county review has been batted around by many, but has never been formally proposed. It will have support but it will also have strong opposition. Its worth a try. What it takes is someone to draft the proposed statute changes and submit a request to the CLSA legislative committee to begin the vetting and debate on a formal level. Be a leader and craft the proposal. And good luck.

> Your work will be available to any other surveyor. So your business advantage in the area of the survey will diminish to about zero.

The state didn't grant you a license to survey in order to enrich you; it granted the license so that you can help the public maintain a high-quality system of real property title location and associated records. You have to figure out the making-a-living part.