How to Get an Accurate Property Survey
- 1). Hire a professionally certified surveyor and let the research begin. The first thing you'll be asked is if you happen to have a plat, or drawing of the property lines. The second thing you'll be asked, if you own the property, is if you have a title that may contain a legal description of the land. If you own the property outright, you'll have the deed, but it may not include a legal description of what you own. Even if it has a description, if the property has been in the family for a long time it may include a description something like: "10 paces west from Aunt Jenny's barn, to the old oak tree (which may or not be there anymore), north to the fence (which was knocked over in the great snowstorm of 1898), east to the big rock, and south to the road." This is where the most important part of surveying begins: research.
- 2). Check with adjoining property owners to see if they have deeds with legal descriptions. If you're fortunate enough that they hold deeds with legal descriptions or the deeds with legal descriptions have been filed with the county recorder of deeds, the surveyor will start to compare points of similarity and possibly, exactitude. A surveyor needs to set his transom somewhere to begin the survey. It's like putting together pieces of a puzzle. "This is one piece of the puzzle," Sumner said.
- 3). Obtain a copy of the municipality's property maps from the county or local tax assessor and locate any pins, monuments or other markers at the corners and along the property line based upon research to this point. Prior surveys may have been conducted, particularly if the land had been subdivided from an adjacent parcel and prior surveyors likely left some territorial identification. It would provide a definitive starting point on which to base the rest of your measurements. The goal should be precision, rather than accuracy, as the former is more realistic. Oddly, as late as 2011, few state require that legal metes and bounds descriptions be recorded with the recorder of deeds unless the property is part of a land development or subdivision, according to Sumner.
- 4). Assist the surveyor to create a composite plat or map based upon the data that has been unearthed. The information will be used to create a mathematically closed configuration that ties together relationships between and among all the points that were conclusively determined in the research. This is accomplished before the surveyor begins the actual field survey. It is determined by the "pertinent points of interest"-- that is, those points that can be distinguished from all the maps, deeds and other information that coincide with one another.
- 5). Utilize a transom and measuring instruments---in the 21st century, that usually means lasers and global positioning satellites---the field survey will record directions and distances starting with geodesic (magnetic) north, moving east and broken into 90-degree quadrants measured in hours, minutes and seconds. It will read something like this: "Beginning at a stone found on the edge of the road, corner of property herein described and that of neighbor John Doe, along the line north 24 degrees 32 minutes 24 seconds east 500 feet to a fencepost." From that point, the survey addresses the next neighboring line of John Smith, for example, and would be recorded "South 20 degrees X minutes, X seconds east 300 feet to an iron rod". "That would describe the direction and distance between John Doe's and John Smith's properties and would continue all around back to the road and back to the original starting point," according to Sumner. Your land lies in the middle.
- 6). Determine discrepancies between property boundaries between property owners, which can often be worked out amicably either through granting an easement to a neighbor or you receiving one from him, particularly if the property lines are unencumbered by any structures or driveway. If no amicable resolution can be reached either through easement or sale of a strip of land, the courts become the final arbiter.