charging by the foot
Maybe some places the size of the property is the main factor in pricing a survey, but I find that's rarely the case. A 1/4-acre lot generally takes just as much work, if not more than a 40-acre lot.
The first one is 28.73 Acres. 8,265 feet around that bad boy. I made money on this one because I had done so much work around the parcel previously. I knew what I was getting in to. About half of the boundary followed the center of a road. Heck I only had to set one corner. I had already set the rest of them years ago for others. 🙂
Second one with 2.19 miles around it is about 90 Acres with 18 corners. Still working on it. I dun lost my butt on this one. NEVER take the clients word EVEN IF they are your friend. Better yet NEVER WORK FOR A FRIEND! As a rule if a friend asks me to survey I DON'T. But for some reason I got talked into it by this 'friend'.He got me on this one. He got me goooood! Started with a sob story, offered the moon, and said there was a road all the way around it. 'I can drive all the way around it GILLIS!' HA!
As you can see the standard math doesn't work. Usually though it's only different by a thousand or so feet. And when deeds miss closing by a bunch its difficult to know up front the actuall distance around it. The first one had no calls, it was bounded only. The second one had backwards calls and missing distances. I've spent a few days in the courthouse wrangling that beast. I got it tied down now.
Right now I charge by the acre with a minimum fee. I add to the price as the number of corners go up and the farther it is from the office, also I take into account for which county and base it off my previous knowledge of the area the job is in. I can generally make money this way, however in WV and I'm sure the other colonial states, small acres can equal a long boundary.
8,265 feet perimeter = 98.01 ac or less. Could be much less 200'x 3,932.5 = 18.06 ac.
We have 10 and 15 acre tracts that are an 'acre wide' with the front 100' being open and dry and the back 2000' - 3000' being swampy.
If it is not in a flood hazard I find that the square root of the acreage times your minimum fee for a lot survey works fairly well for an estimate.
