Land Surveys: What You Need and What You Don't

Here is the sentence that surprises people most, and everything else in this article follows from it. Your title insurance policy does not insure where your boundaries are.

It insures that you own the parcel described in your deed. Where that parcel sits on the ground, how big it actually is, and whether the neighbor’s barn is standing on it are different questions, and the standard policy takes an explicit exception for exactly those questions. A survey and a title policy answer different things, and buying one does not get you the other.

So the real question is not whether a survey is required. Mostly it is not. It is whether you need one for what you intend to do, and which of the several products called a survey you actually want.

The Four Things People Call a Survey

They are not interchangeable, they do not cost the same, and a buyer who asks for the wrong one pays for work that does not answer the question they had. The word survey gets used for at least five different products, and only one of them is what a rural land buyer usually wants. Here is what each actually delivers, so you can name the right one when you call for a quote.

One detail on the ALTA product that trips people who ask for it by name because it sounds like the best one. Under the current standard, corner monumentation is an optional table item rather than automatic. You can buy the most expensive survey on the menu and not get stakes in the ground unless you asked for that item. If what you want is to walk your corners, say that in plain words when you request a quote.

Reading Your Own Deed

Most of the country west of the original colonies is described under the Public Land Survey System, the rectangular grid the federal government laid over the public domain. Texas and North Carolina are not PLSS states; Texas uses original grantee surveys with abstract numbers and North Carolina is metes and bounds.

In a PLSS state the cascade is simple once you see it. A township is six miles square. It holds 36 sections. A section is one square mile, 640 acres nominal. A quarter section is 160 acres, and a quarter-quarter is 40 acres, which the federal manual calls the smallest legal subdivision.

Read a description right to left, largest unit to smallest. Take NE1/4 SW1/4 Sec 14, T32S, R11E. Range 11 East puts you eleven six-mile columns east of the governing meridian. Township 32 South puts you thirty-two rows south of the baseline. Section 14 is one of the 36 in that township. The SW1/4 is the southwest 160 acres of it. The NE1/4 of that quarter is 40 acres, sitting in the middle-west of the section.

Now the punctuation, which is the single most valuable thing on this page. The federal training material puts it this way: a comma means and the, and the absence of a comma means of the. So NE1/4 SW1/4 with no comma is the northeast quarter of the southwest quarter, 40 acres. NE1/4, SW1/4 with a comma is the northeast quarter and the southwest quarter, 320 acres. One comma, an eight-fold difference in what you are buying.

Keep reading

Buying Raw Land10 Things to Look for When Buying Your Custom Home SiteThe house is the part you can change your mind about. The county, the soil and the property line are not. Ten things to settle before you buy the ground, in roughly the order they bite.

One more phrase worth understanding. Deeds say "more or less" and they mean it. The federal manual says sections contain 640 acres "as nearly as may be," and sections on the north and west edges of a township absorb the survey’s closure error, so they run short or long routinely. Government lots exist precisely because those tracts are not clean aliquot parts. A deed reading 40 acres more or less has not promised you 40.000 acres, and a modern GPS acreage readout does not entitle you to a refund.

Why the Recorded Plat Is Not a Staked Boundary

Buyers in platted rural subdivisions often assume the plat settles it. It does not, for three reasons.

First, a plat records a survey performed on a date. It is a snapshot of what one surveyor found and set, not a warranty of present condition.

Second, monuments get destroyed. We know this because states legislate about it. Oregon requires notice within two business days when a monument is removed or destroyed, and requires the party who caused it to pay for replacement within 90 days. A rule like that exists because road graders, fence crews and weather remove corners routinely.

Third, and most importantly, the paper is not what controls.

Monuments Beat Measurements

This is the common-law rule and the federal surveying manual states it directly: where an original monument can be found, it controls over the recorded course and distance. The monument is evidence of where the line actually was established. The numbers on the paper are a description of that line, and a description can be wrong.

The general hierarchy that surveyors work down, which is a rule of construction rather than a statute, runs natural monuments, then artificial monuments, then courses, then distances, then stated area. Area comes last. That ordering is why a fence built to a found pin decades ago can matter more than a tape measure, and why a surveyor spends as much time on record research and corner recovery as on measuring.

Practical consequence: if you find what looks like a corner marker, do not pull it, move it, or mow it down. Photograph it, note the location, and tell your surveyor.

Title Insurance and the Exception That Matters

Back to the opening. Standard title policy language excepts "any discrepancies or conflicts in boundary lines or shortage in area or encroachments, which a correct survey or any inspection of the premises would disclose."

Read what that covers. Boundary lines, shortage in area, encroachments. Those are the three things a buyer of raw land worries about, and they are the three things carved out.

The exception can often be removed, and the routes are generally a new survey meeting the insurer’s requirements, or an older survey plus an affidavit that nothing has changed since its date, or in some cases nothing at all at the underwriter’s discretion. Practice varies by state and by underwriter, and we are not going to publish a national price for it because there is not one. Texas regulates the rate for amending the exception; Illinois underwriters reference a discretionary special risk premium with no published figure; elsewhere it varies.

The part buyers misread is what removal buys. Deleting a blanket exception does not produce blanket coverage. It converts "we do not insure boundaries" into "we insure boundaries except these specific items the survey found." The itemized replacements are the ones to actually read.

What It Costs, and Why Nobody Will Tell You Straight

We looked for a survey-industry source for pricing and there is not one. The professional society does not publish a fee survey. Federal wage data covers what surveyors earn, not what projects cost.

What exists is two large consumer aggregators, and they disagree by a factor of three to four. One puts a boundary survey at $300 to $900 and a ten-acre parcel at $1,500 to $4,000. The other puts a boundary survey at $1,200 to $5,500 and ten acres at $3,600 to $6,500. Both derive their numbers from contractor-supplied estimates rather than industry data.

We are not going to pick one and print it. A land seller who publishes a number a buyer then blows past by three times has created a trust problem, not a helpful article. What we can tell you is what actually drives the price, which is more useful anyway.

• Acreage, but not linearly. Field measurement is only a third to a half of the total. The rest is record research and drafting, which is why five acres does not cost an eighth of forty.
• How long since the last survey, and whether corners can be recovered. Finding existing monuments is cheaper than reestablishing lost ones.
• Terrain and vegetation. Brush, timber and broken ground all slow fieldwork.
• Record complexity. A clean aliquot description in a well-surveyed township is quick. A metes and bounds tract with a messy chain is not.
• Access and travel time to a remote parcel.

Get three local quotes. Rural surveying capacity is thin and weather-dependent, so order earlier than you think you need to, especially if a closing or a permit depends on it.

When You Actually Need One

We found no law in the states we sell in requiring a survey as a condition of a private land sale. That is a negative finding from searching rather than a citation, so treat it as our best read rather than a guarantee. The reputation some states have as survey states comes from lender and title custom, not statute.

Here is the honest decision tree.

What Buyers Get Wrong

• Assuming the title policy covers the boundary. It explicitly excepts it.
• Assuming the recorded plat equals the ground. It records one survey on one date, and monuments move or vanish.
• Assuming the fence is the line. Often it is not, and in some states a long-standing fence can start to affect rights, which varies enough by state that it is a question for a local attorney.
• Relying on a phone GPS or a parcel viewer. Consumer GPS accuracy is measured in meters and county GIS layers carry disclaimers saying they are not surveys. Both are fine for orientation and neither establishes a corner.
• Ordering an ALTA survey because it sounds thorough, then discovering corner monumentation was an optional item nobody selected.
• Treating the seller’s old survey as current. It may be usable with an affidavit, and that is a question for the title company rather than an assumption.
• Reading the comma wrong. NE1/4 SW1/4 and NE1/4, SW1/4 differ by 280 acres.

What We Provide, and What We Do Not

We sell parcels with a recorded legal description and we convey by deed at payoff. We do not include a boundary survey, and we will not tell you that you need one when you do not. On a parcel bought to hold or to camp on, plenty of our buyers never order one.

What we will do is tell you what we know about the parcel and point you at the county records. If you are buying with a build in mind, order the survey, and order it before you order anything else that depends on a line.

Timing works in your favor here. On owner financing you have the length of the note to sort out the survey, the perc test and the permits, and use rights start at signing rather than at payoff, so you can be on the land while you do it. Can I use my land while I am still paying for it covers where that line sits, and buying land on a budget lays out the order the other costs arrive in.

Down payment is typically $150 to $175 on most parcels, the monthly is usually around $150 with most in a $150 to $250 range, and terms run 60 to 96 months with some as short as 48. There is a document fee, $250 on most parcels and up toward $500 on higher-priced ground, shown on the listing. No credit check and no prepayment penalty.

If access rather than acreage is the thing you are unsure about, property access is the other article to read, and parcels bought to hold are gathered on the land investment page.

A survey is not a formality and it is not always necessary. Those two things are both true, and the difference is what you intend to do with the ground.

If you are buying a place to camp and hold, walk it, read your deed carefully, and put the money somewhere else. If you are going to build or fence, get the survey first, because a line is the one thing on a parcel that is expensive to move after the fact.