This is getting old fast.
Client had broken up his ranch into three parcels at the time they were coming out with new rules increasing the minimum size of a tract that can be sold before it activates subdivision regulations. He now decides to sell one tract and asks me to find the corners because he couldn't remember where they were. Not my survey. So I went out and there aren't any monuments-that's why he couldn't find them. So I had to tell him I had to recreate the survey and the cost was going to go up. Great, we got it done fairly easily, but it doesn't look very good.
Then go out to survey a lot next to a new subdivision-no monuments.
Then we go to add on to an existing condo plat that is expanding with two more buildings. No monuments on the whole condo plat boundary except for two I had set years before for adjoining parcels. Now I have to tell them the scope is drastically changing.
It is always perilous to state fees prior to first site search for mons. You cannot know for sure if a day in the field will do, or the whole section must be traversed and it will take a week.
When the client asks, How Much?, the only honest answer is, it depends upon how many and which mons can be recovered the first few hours on site. Only then can you say with any certainty what further efforts are required to actually do the work. If the client understands this as an honest answer you could be golden. If he thinks you are asking for a blank check, no sale.
I recall one where record showed recovery quite recent of a particular mon. When I went to recover it, saw the prior days road grading and the pipe laying on the shoulder. $1800 survey became $3300 just like that.
Havent "bid" work except for one construction job last year in years. I never state a firm cost, but they will want some idea. Always ending up with the worst case is getting old when it shouldn't have happened with any of these surveys. But off we go and will fix them all. The worst one is the condo since the buildings were tied to monuments which aren't there. Might really make it hard to put it all back together.
how bout charging hourly
I take it from your post that these are instances of not only no monuments, but also no valid reason that the monuments should not be there?
I can fully empathize with the frustration!
No monuments found on an entire site that have been reported from a record source citing monuments found or set should be a very, extremely, unusually rare circumstance.
TP has it exactly correct: "When the client asks, How Much?, the only honest answer is, it depends upon how many and which mons can be recovered the first few hours on site."
I put this in some of my contracts:
"Our minimum fee for this work will be $____.00. During the course of the work it is possible that we will encounter unexpected/unusual conditions. In this event our fee will be determined from a variety of factors, including the time and labor required, the novelty and difficulty of the problems involved, the skill and knowledge required to perform the service properly, research of private records, and the likelihood that other employment will be precluded. We reserve the right to adjust our charges to bring the final fee into line with our perception of value as determined by the forgoing factors.)
We will require a retainer in the amount of $______ to begin work."
Your clause is fine, but beware that on it's face, in many states, you are limited in most cases to not more than 10% extra. The only way to proceed is to stop the work and communicate with the client and obtain their agreement for more efforts, more money. And know that if you do not complete the contract, the retainer becomes an issue with some. Plenty of lawyers will be happy to bill them to go after you in either case.
First one was done in 2008 in an empty pasture. No monuments, but the legal didn't call for any. LOL.
The condo plat shows monuments but there aren't any out there except the ones they used that I set.
The third one was a subdivision that went bankrupt and the idea was to set monuments after the streets and utilities were put in. It's still an empty field and no doubt won't be constructed anytime soon. The city signed off on that plan so not a lot I can say.
One and two there's no excuse.
"The third one was a subdivision that went bankrupt and the idea was to set monuments after the streets and utilities were put in. It's still an empty field and no doubt won't be constructed anytime soon. The city signed off on that plan so not a lot I can say."
Arizona is full of these, in spite of statutes that required monumentation prior to plat recordation, and hundreds of years of law supporting that process. State Board says that the solution is for each subsequent surveyor to file a Record of Survey map. So, we can now have a 150 lot subdivision with 150 separate individual Record of Survey maps. I can tell you with certainty that the first 100 surveyors are not going to survey the entire subdivision boundary just to prorate in a single lot. No one is able to comprehend or explain what this does with regards to either original monuments or the concept of simultaneous creation. This is going to ripen into a huge nightmare someday.
This is probably a problem in other parts of the country also.
Had a call today that will likely conform to your experiences. It sounds simple enough. A subdivision was created about 10-15 years ago for commercial development. The tract they need addressed had survey monuments set at the time of platting. It should be a simple chore to take the plat, stick it in the computer, go out and find a couple of monuments and BOOM off to the races finding the other monuments. Experience a couple of years ago on a very similar tract in that same subdivision was that only about one in three of the original monuments were found. Sloppy landscaping plus on-site utility construction and construction of nice concrete driveways and parking lots did a great job of making our task far more difficult than what most would have ever guessed it to be.