I retired on July1, 2025, which would be 25 years to the day from when my wife and I started our survey business. Having just read the 2026 ALTA standards I am grateful I was able to get out. Geez, what were they thinking. This is a horror, going against so many of the things I preached against for decades, like a table of possible encroachments. Well, younger surveyors, have at it.
What is your objection to table-izing the possible encroachments?
I've had a quick look at the new standards. It seems to me that there are a lot of alterations without there being much in the way of changes.
@norman-oklahoma I can't think of his name now, but the surveyor on the ALTA board always warned about a surveyor labeling an encroachment, and gave his personal experience on what was so obviously an encroachment (a house across the property line) that he felt comfortable so stating. Some time later, in court, he was embarrassed to discover to his horror that it was not in fact not an encroachment (I forget why). He vowed never again would he label an encroachment.
I've always said it was my job to clearly show what is there, so the title company and/or attorneys could decide if there are encroachments. That's their area of expertise - not mine.
Gary Kent, no doubt. I've heard those stories as well. I usually label things like that "Area of Interest", or similar, and avoid using the word "encroach" or any of its derivatives. But I've always made a point of table-izing those references without being required to.
For my part, I'd like there to be more in the standards about the title company's responsibility regarding it's report and responsiveness to comments from the surveyor.
If a man-made object crosses a property line, it's an encroachment. Who is encroaching on whom? That's a question for someone else to answer.
I don't believe you can all it an encroachment if it was permitted. So what may be a potential encroachment because it does cross a property line, very well may be permitted and not an encroachment at all. For example a fence of convenience, that both owners agreed to the location of, that does not follow the property line.
I have always lettered 'Possible Encroachments' on the face of the map and then listed them together along with all of my other notes and references. I make it clear that these are possible encroachments and leave it up to the attorneys to make the call.
@john-putnam But what happens when you don't label or list something because to your eye it is not an encroachment and it later turns out to be a significant encroachment. The attorneys and title companies will insist they were relying on you since you were the boots on the ground.
I don't believe you can all it an encroachment if it was permitted.
I would call those "permitted encroachments." But since I generally don't have access to every permit associated with a parcel, I just label them "encroachment."
Slander of title is no small thing in a country where you get as much justice as you can afford. It's difficult to predict what is of concern to buyers and lenders in a commercial sale and I don't want to deal with the fallout of folks with lots of money playing the blame game for a real estate deal gone south. We do where not what. If an attorney pushes strongly that I label an encroachment or similar, I'll put a note on it and reference his/her name (e.g. As described by U.B. Lyon of Sue, Grabbit, and Runn).
Just as with not taking a second or third GNSS location on a boundary monument or not closing a survey, you can do it and not have a problem for many years or maybe your entire career but it doesn't make it right. PLSs who perform ALTAs without a risk/reward analysis are incurring risk and frankly advertising their ignorance to lenders and attorneys when billing on an hourly basis with no contingency fee. I used to get upset when attorneys would use me to bump up their hours, casually ask that I include extra parties to my certification, or ask me to include blanket statement such as, "No waste or garbage dumps are present on site." Now I itemize the time I'll spend addressing requests from attorneys; I state in the initial proposal that requests for my ALTA certification to more than one lender, one buyer, and one title company can be had for the reasonable price of 15% of the total cost of the ALTA; and view every piece of text on the ALTA as potential liability. While I recognize that it's usually the buyer footing the cost, lenders and insurers are the ones getting the discount when PLSs assume risk with no reward. Go tell your insurer to add another name to your car insurance policy and when they say it will increase your rate ask them, "Why? It'll only take you ten minutes to write another name on the policy, my other insurer did it for free."
(e.g. As described by U.B. Lyon of Sue, Grabbit, and Runn)
Aren't they across the street from Doowe, Cheatham & Howe?
Knowing that you know more than what the title company chose to give you as fact opens the door for problems, in both directions. In my experience, relying totally on the title company is foolish. More surveyors need to spend significant more time on the research end of our work.
BTW, my granddad had a sister who married Mr. Cheatham. Great guy, according to my Dad who viewed him with respect in all matters. About 15 years ago, my second cousin and granddaughter of Mr. Cheatham purchased the old family home in Missouri. She and her family moved in then immediately began to turn it into a more modern home. While digging through the various miscellaneous that tends to collect in unfinished attic nooks and crannies, my cousin became rather distraught and didn't know quite what to think. She and her husband discovered robes, hoods, general memorabilia and records and books of the local Ku Klux Klan from the period around 1927 when there was wisespread revival of that organization.
History is history. It happened.
Through different branches of my ancestors I know of two who took the uniform of the Union and one who, along with his brother, donned the uniform of the Confederacy. The Confederate brother died of dysentery or typhous in a Union prison of war stockade around the same time as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. A few generations earlier several ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War, with some having not lived in North America very long.
The key word that seems to be getting glossed over is "possible". The last set of standards required calling out "possible encroachments". Stating something is possible, is stating that you observed something that bears further inquiry or that the title insurance company might wish to exclude from coverage. It is not slander of title, or a factual statement that an encroachment exists. If you object to labeling a "possible encroachment" on your plan, then don't contract to provide any ALTA/NSPS Land Title Surveys.
Based on this discussion, I think I will stick with historic boundaries and stay away from any requests for ALTA surveying.
I do have one question though. Do you think the cost of an ALTA survey would be about twice the cost of any other?
Historic boundaries and conservation efforts.
Do you think the cost of an ALTA survey would be about twice the cost of any other?
A lot depends on how you write your contract and how savvy your client is. If you make it clear that you'll deliver 1 ALTA survey based on a specific title report/commitment, certified to specific parties, including specific Table A items, and with a specified delivery schedule, then the premium over a non-ALTA survey that includes those same items needn't be very large. But more often than not delivery is followed by unrealistic scheduling demands, requests for additional certifications, inclusion of additional Table A items, and/or insistence that various things be added or removed, sometimes in violation of the ALTA specs. These typically come not from the client but from a third-party reviewer who's not a party to the contract and isn't concerned about the cost of the changes, and that reviewer often has the ability to hold up your client's funding until the changes are made. So then you get into the realm of additional contract negotiations, gotta-have-it-now demands, and if-I'd-known-it-was-going-to-cost-this-much-I-never-would-have-signed-the-contract complaints. And if, God forbid, the survey is for a HUD project, brace yourself for all of the above times 10.
I don't do many ALTAs these days -- maybe 1 every couple of years -- and I don't try to compete on fees. It's a segment of the profession in which the proportion of players willing to do grossly negligent work for absurdly little money is pretty high, at least in my neck of the woods.
@norman-oklahoma I can't think of his name now, but the surveyor on the ALTA board always warned about a surveyor labeling an encroachment, and gave his personal experience on what was so obviously an encroachment (a house across the property line) that he felt comfortable so stating. Some time later, in court, he was embarrassed to discover to his horror that it was not in fact not an encroachment (I forget why). He vowed never again would he label an encroachment.
I've always said it was my job to clearly show what is there, so the title company and/or attorneys could decide if there are encroachments. That's their area of expertise - not mine.
ALTA surveys were never my cup of tea. I think every client bitched about the cost and how I didn't deliver the final product three days prior to when they first called me. If you are doing the job correctly, you will almost always find SOMETHING that will raise some hackles. Let those who have found a way to enjoy doing those surveys, do those surveys. I could earn more money in the same time from my standard boundary surveys and not be pushed, pushed, pushed the whole time. I am glad others enjoy them and I'll lnot stand in their way.
I don't recall getting nagged on the ALTAs I've worked on so I guess maybe I've just been lucky.
One of mine from 20 or more years ago was for an elderly care facility in a location in the city that had been platted in, say, 1880. About ten years later, the city agreed to a request to vacate perhaps half of the bocks and their adjoinng streets and alleys. There are a ton of descriptions used on deeds, easements etc. that describe tracts as: A tract formerly described as being Lots 6 and 7 of Block 19 on the plat of Homeboy's Addition to the City (Since vacated(. The sstreets look identical to the non-vacated streets and the alleys follow suit. This lead to multple phone calls from a Philadelphia attorney over what I was showing and what the record documents showed. I did my best to tell him that was his problem, not mine. Figure it out yourself. I made a point to never mention the word encroachment or possibly, anywhere.
I think every client bitched about the cost and how I didn't deliver the final product three days prior to when they first called me.
I was once chewed out by an attorney who told me that I was going to cost her client hundreds of thousands of dollars if I didn't deliver the map before start of business the following Monday. This was on Friday afternoon and the property contained a large shopping mall. If I worked all weekend, I might have been able to complete it.
I responded that the attorney had already cost her client hundreds of thousands of dollars by providing the title documents a month late and after several requests for them, and that in spite of my best efforts to mitigate her negligence in this regard, I was unable to fully make up the delay she caused. These docs filled two 5" binders.
It was also the weekend that my wife and I were going away to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. If that decision were to cost me my job, I figured that finding another job would be a heck of a lot easier than finding another wife or spending the next 50 or so years hearing again and again how I ruined our first anniverary.
After that experience, I decided that if I'm preparing the contract for such projects, they it would include language that a delay in any information required from the client would result in a commensurate delay in final delivery.