Hello to all and thanks for any help and advice you can provide.
I'm in the process of looking at several small 5 to 10 acre parcels of land in my home state of Connecticut to use for recreation now and perhaps a retirement location down the road.
In almost all of these cases the agent has no good maps of the land/lot. I do find
that I can go to Google Maps many times and see the outline for a parcel. I can also
place the mouse pointer at the corners and be shown the Long/Lat for that point.
Question #1: How accurate is this Google Maps feature in terms of locating the rough
property corners. Are these created from existing surveyor maps or just how are they
being generated?
Question #2: Garmin sells several models of a small hand held GPS unit that will generate Long/Lat for the location you are standing at. It pulls in from as many sats as it finds much like the one for my car. I find I can also do that with my iPhone but the location seems to wander around. If I place it on the ground it will settle after about a minute.
Again, how accurate is this for going back and placing locations of things... roads, ponds, boulders, etc on Google Maps. There are web sites that allow you do do this.
Last question: Is there any way to convert a corner from an existing surveyor's map into a Long/Lat coordinate that I can then take into the field to try and locate a marker?
Thanks!
In my experience the lat/long on google maps varies. Some places it is very close and some places not at all.
My experience with hand held GPS is that the free apps for your phone are about as good. That is unless you are prepared to spent big bucks.
Ordinarily I would recommend hiring a local surveyor, but that may not be ideal for your situation. It sounds like you are speculating and may be just browsing parcels that you may not purchase.
I guess the big question is, how much are you willing to invest in browsing?
I agree with Chris.
Your google maps may be close or may be hundreds of feet off. On top of that, your handheld may not be accurate to much more than 20 or 30 feet. It's possible that the google maps has a fairly accurate location on buildings or other things you can see, but depending on how they were able to put those property lines in (or who gave them that information), you could have more slop in the property lines than in the actual physical features. There is some dependency on whether you can get a signal from the satellites in a lot of trees or tall buildings. You might be able to find some corners by searching with a handheld getting you close, but it depends on the accuracy of google maps in your particular area.
Thanks for the replies. Right now, paying for a survey makes no sense to me unless I'm ready to buy or have already done so.
So if I have (and this gets back to a question I asked above) the original (or copy of) the property boundary map the surveyor made this is what I should try to make work, is that your suggestion?
If I cannot locate the pins or I can only locate one corner pin, say at the street, what is a rough cost for having a licensed surveyor come down and, using this map,
go out and remark the remaining corners for a roughly four acre parcel?
The land is not flat. There are some large 10' boulders and some 15' dips here and there. Just to be fair to the surveyor... you cannot stand in one location and "sight" the corners.
Is that a fair question to ask or not?
"what is a rough cost for having a licensed surveyor come down and, using this map,
go out and remark the remaining corners for a roughly four acre parcel?
Call the surveyor who made the map, and ask him that question. Others would just be guessing.
I have had some experience with corners shown on google earth and other GIS type maps. (For what it's worth, GIS around here stands for Get It Surveyed). In one particular instance, the actual location of the corner on the ground was 700 feet away from the GIS map coordinate. I have seen several at 200-300 feet. Not very good if you're purchasing a 50 foot wide lot. You wouldn't want to build a house on someone else's property. GIS Map coordinates are not the first thing I use to find a corner.
Do you have any free advice for us while we are at it? I could probably use some investment advice or financial planning if that is your background. I usually charge around $125 an hour, so if we can barter for more advice, let me know. I'm only registered in Texas, North Dakota and Maine, though.:-P
I agree with Ken. If the surveyor that did the survey is around, he might be the best one to help you find your corners. Retracing old surveys may be incredible quick and easy, or it might be extremely hard. If you called me to find someone else's corners, I would probably advise you to call that other surveyor. For me to certify to you that the corner monuments we found were your corners, I would want to do a full boundary retracement. If one of the found corners was misplaced by the original surveyor, or has been moved or there are multiple monuments for one corner, I can't promise you which one is right without doing a complete survey.
> Do you have any free advice for us while we are at it? I could probably use some investment advice or financial planning if that is your background. I usually charge around $125 an hour, so if we can barter for more advice, let me know. I'm only registered in Texas, North Dakota and Maine, though.:-P
Sorry if my question for help offended you.
I found his phone # and have left a message.
Thanks!
Typically the boundaries you see on maps such as these come from the tax parcel database. This database is usually created from many different sources (deeds, maps, guesswork by gis technicians, etc). The accuracy of this will depend on these sources but only someone in your area who is familiar with these resources could give you a solid error estimate. A Garmin handheld is usually accurate to about 10 meters, though some higher end models will get you closer to the one meter range. I would suggest that you use the gis for your recon and then when you decide to purchase, hire a surveyor and get the lot surveyed with markers set at the beginning of your due diligence period, this way if the survey reveals a problem then you can resolve it before you purchase.
Landbaron,
Please notice the smiley face, he was pulling your leg.
You questions were good ones. With the advent of google maps and other GIS applications the public is using them more and more. The lines you see on any of these maps can vary widely as you have read in previous posts. I would only use these maps to get an idea of the terrain of the land you are looking at. If you think you want to proceed, that would be the time to have it surveyed, before (not after) you buy it, then you will know exactly what you are getting.
Go ahead and use your handheld GPS, you might get close, but never use it to try and set or reset anything it is not meant for that kind of application.
Good luck on your hunt for the perfect properties, I am sure your will find something that fits your needs.
joe
No offense taken.
Handheld GPS units are GREAT if you are an Army Artillery dude!! You have a 100m kill zone so accuracy is not that big of a deal, unless you are a "friendly" 50m away from the target. "Danger Close" is not a desired term. +o(
GPS equipment is like all other electronic gadgets, you get what you pay for. A copy of the plat of the land and a good metal detector will do you more good, but that is assuming that the pin you just found is REALLY the lot corner. BUT that's close enough for speculation deals on real estate to let you get a general idea of what you are getting.B-)
When it comes time to buy, don't even think about paying for anything until a survey is completed. You'd be surprised how many real estate deals have stopped once the buyer gets a look at the plat and what he is really buying. Caveat Emptor.:-O
And be sure to get the seller's real estate agent to pay for the survey.
Let me know if I can be of help. 203-799-1400 ext 4.
I'm not sure if you're in SW Connecticut. But I might be able to help you some existing information to assist in making some decisions.
Joe
you can email me s well email address is in my profile.
