Questions About Surveying in North Carolina – Surveying FAQ

All surveyors should be completing the work to the minimum standards required by law and most surveyors I know meet that standard and more. Buying a retail product at the cheapest price is much different than picking the cheapest service contractor, whether it be a mechanic, a carpenter, a roofer, a plumber, a surveyor or any number of other service providers or professionals.

If you’ve called about a survey you already have a good idea that you need one. If you simply need one boundary marked that you are concerned about because you’re planning some improvement near that boundary, you might not need all of your property lines surveyed. Similarly, if your architect or engineer has asked you to provide a topographic survey of the lot they are designing for, a contour map of the immediate improvement area may be all they need, not a map of all your property. Before quoting a price for a survey, I will spend a few minutes asking and answering questions so that I can recommend the service you need. When you call asking about a survey, I ask for the Parcel Number or 911 address so that I can look at the aerial photograph of your property while we discuss your project.

If you’re buying a home and are financing that purchase, you may need more than a boundary survey. Most lending institutions not only want a perimeter survey, but a location survey as well. They want to know if the house, driveway, well or other improvements they are financing are actually on the property you are buying. In many subdivisions, the parcels are subject to building setback restrictions and if they are, the bank will want to know if the placement of the house violates one of those. As a potential owner, you want to know that as well. Even if you have other means of borrowing money, the next buyer of the property, the one you hope to sell it to one day, may have to use a bank. If the location of the improvements violate a recorded restriction, a bank may be reluctant to loan money for the purchase. I have known several people over the years who have put off getting a survey until life returns to normal sometime after the closing. When the survey is finally ordered it reveals something that made the property less desirable or less valuable: a property line closer to their house than what the seller represented, an unused easement across their lot to other properties, a well situated on someone else’s property or in a road right of way, the house or outbuildings situated on the road right of way or encroaching across a building setback line, their nice fence located on the neighbor’s property, and the list goes on. Clearly some of these conditions might not have caused the buyer to reconsider the purchase but they might have made the property less valuable which could have resulted in a reduced cost of the property. I never try to sell someone a survey. Instead I try to explain what their options are and let the client make the decisions. But if you know you are going to get a survey after the purchase, I strongly recommend having that work done prior to the purchase instead.

So how much does a survey cost? One of my former employers once told me…..”Economics plays a role in everything”. Most everyone understands the statement made by Benjamin Franklin that “Time is Money”. When we price a survey, what we are really trying to do is estimate the amount of time we will spend preparing your survey. This amount includes: 1) The time it takes to gather all the pertinent recorded documents, not only of your property but those of your neighbor’s properties, 2) The time it takes to trim a line around the perimeter of your property and accurately measure those boundaries, 3) The time it takes to go back to the site after the initial survey and replace missing property corners and paint your property lines, and 4) The time it takes to prepare a recordable survey plat of our findings. And not only do we have a lot of time invested in your project, there are obviously other fixed costs that all businesses have to contend with.

Will our price be more or less than the next surveyor you call? That answer depends on several other factors, factors that influence our time at the site and the cost of the work. 1) The date of the last survey could impact the cost. Since we are using recorded measurements to locate your property corners, a more accurate last survey will make the work go quicker. 2) Dense underbrush, steep or rocky terrain or other adverse site conditions will increase our time at the site while open wooded areas or cleared fields will decrease our time. 3) The larger the parcel means more perimeter to survey and more time at the site. 4) Other factors might include missing property corners, longstanding disputes with the neighbors or the type of survey requested. We’re not always going to have the lowest estimate but we’ll not always be the highest either. If we’re lower than the other surveyors you called it might be that we’re more familiar with the area your property is located in or we have past surveys of one or more of the neighboring parcels or we know that our experience, equipment or personnel is better suited for this particular job, and the list goes on. At any rate, we welcome the opportunity to provide a quote for the service you need.