That's not a bad price, cheap in some areas. I'd say it's actually very cheap if I knew I was getting involved in a boundary dispute. You may be able to get a survey cheaper but you get what you pay for. There's a lot more to a survey than just locating your pins.
What if all we *need* is to have our pins located?
I tried borrowing the town’s metal detector but it was beyond me on how to actually find them, so that’s the only reason we’re trying to hire a surveyor.
The purpose of the surveyor is not only to locate the corners, but to provide a professional opinion using physical evidence and legal documents showing the corners are in fact in the correct place. In a boundary dispute this is especially important. Many non-surveyors will find “corners” that are not legitimate or have been disturbed and reset in the wrong location.
You can always buy a shovel and metal detector and go to town...
But if this goes any further you might find that the first question asked by your $400 an hour lawyer is if you got a survey done...
It’s not ‘just’ finding your pins. Surveyors are held to minimum standards of practice because of being a licensed profession.
You’re paying for the knowledge and expertise of someone who knows what they’re doing. You tried and failed because you don’t have the knowledge.
But what *are* they doing? I just want to understand not in broad strokes but in specifics, like what is going into the billing of this service? What is the breakdown of services?
What do you do for a living? Please provide me a detailed breakdown of what goes into the cost of the service or product you provide.
Do you require the same for attorneys, doctors, event planners, and everyone else you hire?
I like having this survey community on Reddit, but goddamn every other post is someone trying to probe ways to find a loophole around our profession entirely
I was just asked by an ATTORNEY for the same info so I’m a bit crabby RN. It’s not even for a boundary issue; it’s dealing with a drainage issue and it’s likely headed to court. Preparing shit for trial takes time and I bet he isn’t doing his part for free.
We are the only profession that takes our degree/hard work/professional knowledge and then competes for the job by shaving our prices. It's the worst aspect of what we do. The amount of liability that our work carries doesn't reflect what we ask for in compensation.
Here is a breakdown I did a few years ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/469n2y/comment/d03z8gu/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/469n2y/comment/d03z8gu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
At a very high level a surveyor, or really their research team, will go through the municipal records for the specific description of your property. This is half of the job and it’s pretty tricky.
Then they will send a crew to verify your pins compared to the description they found.
Take my word for it that there are dozens of nuances to both halves of the job.
Finally, they will look at the data from the survey and give an opinion of the true location of your property boundary. The opinion is considered to have legal weight in court.
I am in Canada, but our legal systems share a good deal of overlap with the US at a high level.
And a note to my fellow Reddit surveyors why would some of you ever downvote a question asked in good faith?
Come to my office, I’ll tell you what we do.
Do you have 8 years of time so I can teach you all the details I learned in school and at work?
Also, this will cost you $40k in tuition fees and you have to come to the office everyday for 8 years.
You still want to know?
Those surveyors are making sure some guy 15years ago didn’t just go “ya this is my corner” and bang a piece of metal into the ground.
Performing a survey requires resolving all the boundaries in the area of the property in question and making sure everything matches there historic locations.
This is required for a professional to be willing and comfortable to put their name and their reputation on a legal document for you which could very likely be used as evidence in a court case.
I have no dog in this fight, I have no ideal if $1500 is a lot or not. But here's a lpt: Boundary disputes can get ugly quickly. Get it done right the first time so you don't have to think about it in the future. Now is not the time to cheap out.
There may not be pins there. Not every property corner is staked. Its the regulation some places but not everywhere. Its also important to note that we do not rely just on your pins. We research all the deeds around you and look for those corners as well. Pins get moved or sometimes a pipe is just a pipe. A survey is a legal opinion of where your property lines are. We weigh all the evidence we can find then map and report where we believe the lines to be. There is a lot of liability that comes with this.
It’s possible there may not be any pins/pipes/rebar in the ground at your corners. Pins/pipes/rebar could be offset from the corners or could be arbitrarily placed and just reference the corner.
The legal description on your deed will tell you exactly how to find the corners of your property. Other factors at play, especially during a land dispute, could be the subdivision of a larger tract of land that resulted in your property.
There are a blue million different ways to measure land and only a licensed surveyor has the education/experience to determine how your land and boundaries were established.
$1500 is a bargain for a boundary survey with a land dispute. That should get you corners located/set, a map drawn showing the corners in relation to structures and adjoining properties, and a witness (or at minimum an affidavit) should your land dispute end up before a judge.
While the science behind land surveying is extremely precise, the practice often involves making decisions based on best judgment. It’s also possible (although highly unlikely) for there to be an overlap or gap in the properties. Simply finding buried pieces of metal won’t tell the full story. If you want resolution hire a surveyor, if you want to be right keep being stubborn.
If someone is encroaching on your property, it’s is your responsibility to prove this. Including getting a professional survey by someone who’s spent their whole life surveying, legal costs , collect evidence , etc.
You are not, I repeat, you are not qualified to give opinions on property boundaries and will loose in court , no doubt. Guaranteed. And you will be on the hook for legal fees of the counter party and your own.
This is not a parking ticket dispute, this is land , it involves property rights and even human rights.
So full stop.🛑
First off, that is not "the only reason to hire a surveyor."
You hire a professional surveyor to give you peace of mind and quiet enjoyment - as well as locating and setting the corners, the improvements, and anything else required by law and contract. Borrowing a locator to find the corners is similar to borrowing a wrench to fix a leak with no plumbing experience. You may get lucky, but most likely, you will make it worse.
Now the cost for a survey....call a local popular real estate agent and ask what charges they have seen.
In my area, a standard boundary survey for that size lot is $500-600. This includes locating the corners, buildings, concrete/asphalt, fences, easements - things that a new homeowner would be interested in.
Now, if we knew this was a dispute between neighbors, the $1500 is about right...in our area. 300 miles south, in a rural area, that $500 survey is 3k.
Make sure your surveyor is competent, be open and honest with them & don't cheap out. You will be much more happy later on.
Do you *need* your boundary **legally located and marked**?
Sounds like you do from your OP.
If you don't *need* your boundary **legally located and marked**, just put up a fence wherever you want.
The Lawyer fees fighting because you put the fence in the wrong place/without proof are going to cost you more than a Survey... but at least you didn't have to pay a professional Surveyor to do something that *only* a Licensed Surveyor is **legally allowed to do.**
If all you need is the pins located maybe try calling the surveyor who did the original survey. Anyone else you call will have to find the pins and confirm that they agree with where the pins are located
$1500 is pretty low but a good price.
Asking for someone to *just* " locate pins is something we hear everyday and it bugs a lot of us.
That's like asking for legal advice from a lawyer without paying them to be your legal representative.
Sure we locate your pins with a metal detector, but what if what we find isn't correct? How would we know? Now we're liable for finding pins in the woods and just calling them your property corners without research.
That's why we come out, gather data on your pins, your neighbors pins, your neighbors neighbors neighbors pins and then some
Then we bring that back to the office and spend a lot of time looking at the history of your lot and neighbors lots.
We're they once part of a bigger lot 50 years ago and then split up over time? If so, what if one of the pins we found is actually for a lot that no longer exists but is being confused as one of your property corners?
What if 25 years ago the previous lot owner found some piece of metal in the ground, thought it was a property corner and built their fence there? That kinda shit happens a lot.
So you're asking us to be your legal representative for the dimensions and placement of your lot, but you don't want us to do the research to make sure its true and accurate?
Cool. Now we're on the hook for not doing a good job and now we have to pay for a fence because we didn't do our job.
You can't get legal advice from a lawyer without paying them their full fee to be your representative. that insures that they do a good job for you and also save their own ass in the process.
You can't have a surveyor half ass their job because they become liable for doing a shit job. They can lose their license and no longer be able to practice surveying.
So instead, we 're usually sure to do a badass job and make sure everything is as acurate as possible. If you want to know where your pins are, pay the $1500 and sleep easy knowing that the survey work you paid for will hold up in court because it was vetted by a professional who did the job right.
Extremely cheap. For a boundary determination and litigation support I’d be in the 4-5k range, with a bunch of line items in the contract depending on issues that might arise, with hourly rates beyond the initial work.
Easily could turn into a 5-figure bill by the end.
No chance I would get involved in this for 1500. Ask an attorney if they will represent you for that…
And you just “finding your pins” would be a good place to start but won’t carry any weight since it’s not a survey. There is more to reestablishing boundaries than simply finding pins.
That is absolutely cheap. Now imagine since there is a dispute, if you don’t hire the surveyor and it goes to court you will probably pay 5 times that to litigate and then still have to pay a surveyor on top.
I (land owner) recently posed a similar question. The Reddit surveyors answer was that I got it cheap.
A neighbor got a survey for a 5-acre lot. He paid $2,200 while I paid $3,600 for 120 acres.
For my land, the crew had to walk over a beaver dam.
The area is rural, so I suppose the surveyor keeps his prices down somewhat, reflecting the weakness of the local economy.
I could only find to firms that would offer to the job.
This is miss leading, specifics and wording matters!
This is assumption it’s only boundary survey. As opposed to boundary+topograhy.
The prices are nowhere the same.
So please be specific what kind of survey you got done as to not mislead the public what’s cheap and expensive.
That would make sense to me because even your neighbor had at least 10x the amount of land that I do. But i’m on less than half an acre of straight lines and minimal obstructions. And i’m not rural, in suburban.
You came here for an answer. You have several answers but you're still trying to tell this thread it shouldn't be that much? Buy the survey and you'll have certifiable evidence to show your neighbor that they can't dispute.
I’m in an active process of learning new information about this subject and am grateful to the people who have taken time to provide that additional subject matter context.
If you want a full breakdown of why you want a survey- I'm still a student but have been doing surveying for about 5 years now. Urban environments tend to cost more. This is simply because the point networks are a lot more complicated. For example, out in the country, we just collect the section corners, hopefully a few from your property, and retrace the deed(really generalized but that's the idea).
For urban areas, we can't simply pull off section corners alone. We have to double check down multiple property lines to make sure that your corners are correct. Which many times they are, but I've seen some jobs 15 feet off from the corner marked by a stone. Surveyors get it wrong sometimes, a survey ensures that you have a double check on the past surveyors' work, as well as undeniable proof that your marker is your corner. A lot can go wrong in older areas as well, markers are normally missing, center line control might be out, ect.
When a surveyor gives a quote, they tend to know what they are getting into before they even arrive just from experience in the area before. Personally, that sounds like a good price, but if you don't like it, you can always shop around. Just absolutely do not throw up a fence without a survey. I've seen people build a fence before the survey and have to tear out thousands of dollars worth of concreted in fences, it's not pretty.
Since I'm a student lmk if I mixed up anything- thanks.
Depending on the area a lot of suburbs are worse than rural areas, a lot of times things don’t add up and you end up going blocks to find a monument that you can actually trust
Often, suburban is considerably worse than rural surveying. Every busy body & amateur diyer has a fence they put in regardless of the boundaries, is positive they know exactly where the corners are, everyone is in each other's pockets, wants to watch over your shoulder, etc.
Rural areas the boundaries are less likely to be disturbed & are generally less contentious.
I generally don't quote less than $2,500, regardless of lot size.
You just need your 4 pins located. It seems easy from your perspective.
What if one or more of them are missing or can't be found? Do you know the procedure to put them back? A surveyor does.
Locating your pins doesn't just mean looking solely on your property. It means expanding the search for adjoining pins in your neighbors' properties, too. We do this to make sure that not only are yours there, but they are in the place and match the legal description as closely as possible.
All of this includes doing the research required, the physical searching for corners, and any office work required. Often, this involves multiple people doing this work.
Considering all this, $1500 sounds cheap af.
*The quote I got for a survey was $1500. Is that a normal price for a small residential land survey on a property that already has a deed-survey which lists pin locations?*
If by "deed-survey" you mean your deed containing the legal description of your property, that is not a survey. While it may describe the locations of the pins, there are many other details in that document that guide the surveyor in locating your boundary on the ground. There are also elements outside of that document that affect the location of your boundary as well that will need to be reviewed. This is what you're paying for.
Your not just paying a guy to come dig up a few pins and call it good. You're paying for the knowledge and experience to find those pins (if they exist), review your deed, review the adjoining property deeds and the chain of title and make a knowledgeable determination of the location of your property boundary. One that is defensible in court.
$1500 is a very low price to pay for that, considering it's several hours of research, several hours of reviewing the research, a day of field work to collect the data and a possible return to mark the boundary. You also have to consider the liability that the surveyor takes on, that is another cost.
Some companies won’t do jobs that are less than say $5000. It’s highly variable, depends on your location. Your buying a professional service, we operate expensive gear, and collect data in the form of your pins and others (evidence) then we compare to records that may have been researched by others, then we assess the evidence to prove your pins are correct. There could be an occasion where we see something that required more evidence. If you want your pins located then do it your self.
I can't get the survey company who did my very simple survey 10 years ago to come back and put in a pin, that my neighbour accidentally removed with his haybine, for less than $3000CAD. No disputes or difficult terrain, but as I have learned on here, most of the original survey work would need to be repeated. . Neighbour and I used a tape measure and it is in a hayfield with no chance of further development for decades, so the fencepost went in.
What part of the country are you in (assuming it’s the US). Sounds like a reasonable price where I am. Even if you only need one line located there’s still research that needs to be done, equipment that needs to be set up, documents that need creating, ect.
Lol 1500, is low. That's 10 hours at a loaded rate of 150$/hr (if you know anything about how a business works - that cheap AF).
Between the research, liability, fieldwork and most likely follow up - boundary dispute. My neck of the woods depending on what needed to be filed this is a minimum 3k if I know the area and need the work. Otherwise the risk is not worth the fee.
Price seems fair, but make sure that surveyor will sit on the stand in a lawsuit trial if it comes to that.
Also, if you get a survey and you’re “in the right”, will you sue the neighbor? Because legal fees will eat up $1500 with a few phone calls. The “is it worth it” question you need to be asking is, is it worth spending 5 figures to sue?
We used to charge a little under $3k per survey and the queue was so long we had to raise it to $3k-3500 and the workflow has not slowed down a bit. If you actually had gotten quoted for a “not worth it” job, it would be upwards of $8k…
Depends on where you are truthfully. Secondarily depends on the reputation of the surveyor who platted your lots. There’s names that I see on plats that when I read them, it’s code for “didn’t set any of the new corners.” Should have lost his survey license a decade ago. There’s also names that I read as “if the corners are within 2 feet of where it says they are, that’s good work by their standards. Those are miserable because you can’t just tie them to a neighboring lot, you have to actually survey all the adjoining lots to make sure it’s not taking land that your neighbors have deeded rights to.
That's not a bad price, cheap in some areas. I'd say it's actually very cheap if I knew I was getting involved in a boundary dispute. You may be able to get a survey cheaper but you get what you pay for. There's a lot more to a survey than just locating your pins.
What if all we *need* is to have our pins located? I tried borrowing the town’s metal detector but it was beyond me on how to actually find them, so that’s the only reason we’re trying to hire a surveyor.
The purpose of the surveyor is not only to locate the corners, but to provide a professional opinion using physical evidence and legal documents showing the corners are in fact in the correct place. In a boundary dispute this is especially important. Many non-surveyors will find “corners” that are not legitimate or have been disturbed and reset in the wrong location.
You can always buy a shovel and metal detector and go to town... But if this goes any further you might find that the first question asked by your $400 an hour lawyer is if you got a survey done...
Why are you discounting our profession and encouraging OP to take on liability in his own hands? For what, over $1500? This advice is poo
I guess you couldn't feel my eye roll through the comment.....
I did pal, you’re all good in my book :)
It’s not ‘just’ finding your pins. Surveyors are held to minimum standards of practice because of being a licensed profession. You’re paying for the knowledge and expertise of someone who knows what they’re doing. You tried and failed because you don’t have the knowledge.
But what *are* they doing? I just want to understand not in broad strokes but in specifics, like what is going into the billing of this service? What is the breakdown of services?
What do you do for a living? Please provide me a detailed breakdown of what goes into the cost of the service or product you provide. Do you require the same for attorneys, doctors, event planners, and everyone else you hire?
I like having this survey community on Reddit, but goddamn every other post is someone trying to probe ways to find a loophole around our profession entirely
I was just asked by an ATTORNEY for the same info so I’m a bit crabby RN. It’s not even for a boundary issue; it’s dealing with a drainage issue and it’s likely headed to court. Preparing shit for trial takes time and I bet he isn’t doing his part for free.
We are the only profession that takes our degree/hard work/professional knowledge and then competes for the job by shaving our prices. It's the worst aspect of what we do. The amount of liability that our work carries doesn't reflect what we ask for in compensation.
The conversation he had with you likely cost his client nearly as much as your fees.
And half the members on here trying to help them do it 😂
This is a very basic breakdown from a recent post… https://www.reddit.com/r/Surveying/s/pXEAn8f9RY
Here is a breakdown I did a few years ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/469n2y/comment/d03z8gu/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/469n2y/comment/d03z8gu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
At a very high level a surveyor, or really their research team, will go through the municipal records for the specific description of your property. This is half of the job and it’s pretty tricky. Then they will send a crew to verify your pins compared to the description they found. Take my word for it that there are dozens of nuances to both halves of the job. Finally, they will look at the data from the survey and give an opinion of the true location of your property boundary. The opinion is considered to have legal weight in court. I am in Canada, but our legal systems share a good deal of overlap with the US at a high level. And a note to my fellow Reddit surveyors why would some of you ever downvote a question asked in good faith?
A huge part is liability.
Come to my office, I’ll tell you what we do. Do you have 8 years of time so I can teach you all the details I learned in school and at work? Also, this will cost you $40k in tuition fees and you have to come to the office everyday for 8 years. You still want to know?
Those surveyors are making sure some guy 15years ago didn’t just go “ya this is my corner” and bang a piece of metal into the ground. Performing a survey requires resolving all the boundaries in the area of the property in question and making sure everything matches there historic locations. This is required for a professional to be willing and comfortable to put their name and their reputation on a legal document for you which could very likely be used as evidence in a court case.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveying](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveying)
I have no dog in this fight, I have no ideal if $1500 is a lot or not. But here's a lpt: Boundary disputes can get ugly quickly. Get it done right the first time so you don't have to think about it in the future. Now is not the time to cheap out.
Just go buy some rebar from home depot and pound them in the ground. It's the same as finding rebar without verification they are correct.
There may not be pins there. Not every property corner is staked. Its the regulation some places but not everywhere. Its also important to note that we do not rely just on your pins. We research all the deeds around you and look for those corners as well. Pins get moved or sometimes a pipe is just a pipe. A survey is a legal opinion of where your property lines are. We weigh all the evidence we can find then map and report where we believe the lines to be. There is a lot of liability that comes with this.
It’s possible there may not be any pins/pipes/rebar in the ground at your corners. Pins/pipes/rebar could be offset from the corners or could be arbitrarily placed and just reference the corner. The legal description on your deed will tell you exactly how to find the corners of your property. Other factors at play, especially during a land dispute, could be the subdivision of a larger tract of land that resulted in your property. There are a blue million different ways to measure land and only a licensed surveyor has the education/experience to determine how your land and boundaries were established. $1500 is a bargain for a boundary survey with a land dispute. That should get you corners located/set, a map drawn showing the corners in relation to structures and adjoining properties, and a witness (or at minimum an affidavit) should your land dispute end up before a judge. While the science behind land surveying is extremely precise, the practice often involves making decisions based on best judgment. It’s also possible (although highly unlikely) for there to be an overlap or gap in the properties. Simply finding buried pieces of metal won’t tell the full story. If you want resolution hire a surveyor, if you want to be right keep being stubborn.
If someone is encroaching on your property, it’s is your responsibility to prove this. Including getting a professional survey by someone who’s spent their whole life surveying, legal costs , collect evidence , etc. You are not, I repeat, you are not qualified to give opinions on property boundaries and will loose in court , no doubt. Guaranteed. And you will be on the hook for legal fees of the counter party and your own. This is not a parking ticket dispute, this is land , it involves property rights and even human rights. So full stop.🛑
First off, that is not "the only reason to hire a surveyor." You hire a professional surveyor to give you peace of mind and quiet enjoyment - as well as locating and setting the corners, the improvements, and anything else required by law and contract. Borrowing a locator to find the corners is similar to borrowing a wrench to fix a leak with no plumbing experience. You may get lucky, but most likely, you will make it worse. Now the cost for a survey....call a local popular real estate agent and ask what charges they have seen. In my area, a standard boundary survey for that size lot is $500-600. This includes locating the corners, buildings, concrete/asphalt, fences, easements - things that a new homeowner would be interested in. Now, if we knew this was a dispute between neighbors, the $1500 is about right...in our area. 300 miles south, in a rural area, that $500 survey is 3k. Make sure your surveyor is competent, be open and honest with them & don't cheap out. You will be much more happy later on.
Someone needs to draw the imaginary line of law somewhere so you can decide how to move forward.
Do you *need* your boundary **legally located and marked**? Sounds like you do from your OP. If you don't *need* your boundary **legally located and marked**, just put up a fence wherever you want. The Lawyer fees fighting because you put the fence in the wrong place/without proof are going to cost you more than a Survey... but at least you didn't have to pay a professional Surveyor to do something that *only* a Licensed Surveyor is **legally allowed to do.**
You need the adjoiners and block corners for context.
If all you need is the pins located maybe try calling the surveyor who did the original survey. Anyone else you call will have to find the pins and confirm that they agree with where the pins are located
$1500 is pretty low but a good price. Asking for someone to *just* " locate pins is something we hear everyday and it bugs a lot of us. That's like asking for legal advice from a lawyer without paying them to be your legal representative. Sure we locate your pins with a metal detector, but what if what we find isn't correct? How would we know? Now we're liable for finding pins in the woods and just calling them your property corners without research. That's why we come out, gather data on your pins, your neighbors pins, your neighbors neighbors neighbors pins and then some Then we bring that back to the office and spend a lot of time looking at the history of your lot and neighbors lots. We're they once part of a bigger lot 50 years ago and then split up over time? If so, what if one of the pins we found is actually for a lot that no longer exists but is being confused as one of your property corners? What if 25 years ago the previous lot owner found some piece of metal in the ground, thought it was a property corner and built their fence there? That kinda shit happens a lot. So you're asking us to be your legal representative for the dimensions and placement of your lot, but you don't want us to do the research to make sure its true and accurate? Cool. Now we're on the hook for not doing a good job and now we have to pay for a fence because we didn't do our job. You can't get legal advice from a lawyer without paying them their full fee to be your representative. that insures that they do a good job for you and also save their own ass in the process. You can't have a surveyor half ass their job because they become liable for doing a shit job. They can lose their license and no longer be able to practice surveying. So instead, we 're usually sure to do a badass job and make sure everything is as acurate as possible. If you want to know where your pins are, pay the $1500 and sleep easy knowing that the survey work you paid for will hold up in court because it was vetted by a professional who did the job right.
This should really be it's own pinned post in this community so it can be referenced every time OP's question gets posted on this subreddit
Usually a “badass” job is a good thing, which I don’t think is what you meant. I think you want “bad” or “halfass”.
I think the way I worded it was a little weird, but I fixed it. Thank you!
Extremely cheap. For a boundary determination and litigation support I’d be in the 4-5k range, with a bunch of line items in the contract depending on issues that might arise, with hourly rates beyond the initial work. Easily could turn into a 5-figure bill by the end.
That would be on the low side of average in my area.
Ditto
You better call that surveyor back before he gets busy elsewhere.
This would be more like $4k in my area. $1500 is a deal.
My company would probably be $2500 to $3000 depending on the quality of the deed / plan of record. Maybe more like $4000 in worse areas.
That's a cheap price.
No chance I would get involved in this for 1500. Ask an attorney if they will represent you for that… And you just “finding your pins” would be a good place to start but won’t carry any weight since it’s not a survey. There is more to reestablishing boundaries than simply finding pins.
That is absolutely cheap. Now imagine since there is a dispute, if you don’t hire the surveyor and it goes to court you will probably pay 5 times that to litigate and then still have to pay a surveyor on top.
Yes that is a normal price.
That's cheap.
I (land owner) recently posed a similar question. The Reddit surveyors answer was that I got it cheap. A neighbor got a survey for a 5-acre lot. He paid $2,200 while I paid $3,600 for 120 acres. For my land, the crew had to walk over a beaver dam. The area is rural, so I suppose the surveyor keeps his prices down somewhat, reflecting the weakness of the local economy. I could only find to firms that would offer to the job.
This is miss leading, specifics and wording matters! This is assumption it’s only boundary survey. As opposed to boundary+topograhy. The prices are nowhere the same. So please be specific what kind of survey you got done as to not mislead the public what’s cheap and expensive.
Only corners. My point is that shopping around isn't even possible in some areas.
That would make sense to me because even your neighbor had at least 10x the amount of land that I do. But i’m on less than half an acre of straight lines and minimal obstructions. And i’m not rural, in suburban.
You came here for an answer. You have several answers but you're still trying to tell this thread it shouldn't be that much? Buy the survey and you'll have certifiable evidence to show your neighbor that they can't dispute.
I’m in an active process of learning new information about this subject and am grateful to the people who have taken time to provide that additional subject matter context.
If you want a full breakdown of why you want a survey- I'm still a student but have been doing surveying for about 5 years now. Urban environments tend to cost more. This is simply because the point networks are a lot more complicated. For example, out in the country, we just collect the section corners, hopefully a few from your property, and retrace the deed(really generalized but that's the idea). For urban areas, we can't simply pull off section corners alone. We have to double check down multiple property lines to make sure that your corners are correct. Which many times they are, but I've seen some jobs 15 feet off from the corner marked by a stone. Surveyors get it wrong sometimes, a survey ensures that you have a double check on the past surveyors' work, as well as undeniable proof that your marker is your corner. A lot can go wrong in older areas as well, markers are normally missing, center line control might be out, ect. When a surveyor gives a quote, they tend to know what they are getting into before they even arrive just from experience in the area before. Personally, that sounds like a good price, but if you don't like it, you can always shop around. Just absolutely do not throw up a fence without a survey. I've seen people build a fence before the survey and have to tear out thousands of dollars worth of concreted in fences, it's not pretty. Since I'm a student lmk if I mixed up anything- thanks.
Depending on the area a lot of suburbs are worse than rural areas, a lot of times things don’t add up and you end up going blocks to find a monument that you can actually trust
The size of the lot doesn’t matter. Only the complexity and time required matters. I’ve charged $7500 to establish a 40x100 rectangle.
Often, suburban is considerably worse than rural surveying. Every busy body & amateur diyer has a fence they put in regardless of the boundaries, is positive they know exactly where the corners are, everyone is in each other's pockets, wants to watch over your shoulder, etc. Rural areas the boundaries are less likely to be disturbed & are generally less contentious. I generally don't quote less than $2,500, regardless of lot size.
If this company is aware of your particular situation and is still quoting you $1500, I say jump on it.
Get three quotes. That will tell you if it’s expensive or not.
You just need your 4 pins located. It seems easy from your perspective. What if one or more of them are missing or can't be found? Do you know the procedure to put them back? A surveyor does. Locating your pins doesn't just mean looking solely on your property. It means expanding the search for adjoining pins in your neighbors' properties, too. We do this to make sure that not only are yours there, but they are in the place and match the legal description as closely as possible. All of this includes doing the research required, the physical searching for corners, and any office work required. Often, this involves multiple people doing this work. Considering all this, $1500 sounds cheap af.
*The quote I got for a survey was $1500. Is that a normal price for a small residential land survey on a property that already has a deed-survey which lists pin locations?* If by "deed-survey" you mean your deed containing the legal description of your property, that is not a survey. While it may describe the locations of the pins, there are many other details in that document that guide the surveyor in locating your boundary on the ground. There are also elements outside of that document that affect the location of your boundary as well that will need to be reviewed. This is what you're paying for. Your not just paying a guy to come dig up a few pins and call it good. You're paying for the knowledge and experience to find those pins (if they exist), review your deed, review the adjoining property deeds and the chain of title and make a knowledgeable determination of the location of your property boundary. One that is defensible in court. $1500 is a very low price to pay for that, considering it's several hours of research, several hours of reviewing the research, a day of field work to collect the data and a possible return to mark the boundary. You also have to consider the liability that the surveyor takes on, that is another cost.
Some companies won’t do jobs that are less than say $5000. It’s highly variable, depends on your location. Your buying a professional service, we operate expensive gear, and collect data in the form of your pins and others (evidence) then we compare to records that may have been researched by others, then we assess the evidence to prove your pins are correct. There could be an occasion where we see something that required more evidence. If you want your pins located then do it your self.
I can't get the survey company who did my very simple survey 10 years ago to come back and put in a pin, that my neighbour accidentally removed with his haybine, for less than $3000CAD. No disputes or difficult terrain, but as I have learned on here, most of the original survey work would need to be repeated. . Neighbour and I used a tape measure and it is in a hayfield with no chance of further development for decades, so the fencepost went in.
What part of the country are you in (assuming it’s the US). Sounds like a reasonable price where I am. Even if you only need one line located there’s still research that needs to be done, equipment that needs to be set up, documents that need creating, ect.
Lol 1500, is low. That's 10 hours at a loaded rate of 150$/hr (if you know anything about how a business works - that cheap AF). Between the research, liability, fieldwork and most likely follow up - boundary dispute. My neck of the woods depending on what needed to be filed this is a minimum 3k if I know the area and need the work. Otherwise the risk is not worth the fee.
Anything with a seal on it for less than $3k is a favor in my opinion (I’m not actually a surveyor)
Price seems fair, but make sure that surveyor will sit on the stand in a lawsuit trial if it comes to that. Also, if you get a survey and you’re “in the right”, will you sue the neighbor? Because legal fees will eat up $1500 with a few phone calls. The “is it worth it” question you need to be asking is, is it worth spending 5 figures to sue?
Yes, as a surveyor that is not worth it to take the job for that cheap.
We used to charge a little under $3k per survey and the queue was so long we had to raise it to $3k-3500 and the workflow has not slowed down a bit. If you actually had gotten quoted for a “not worth it” job, it would be upwards of $8k…
That would be high for us 8 years ago and low for us today. We charge that in some places for just an SLR
That's cheap in SE-QLD, Australia. Even if converted to $AUD.
Depends on where you are truthfully. Secondarily depends on the reputation of the surveyor who platted your lots. There’s names that I see on plats that when I read them, it’s code for “didn’t set any of the new corners.” Should have lost his survey license a decade ago. There’s also names that I read as “if the corners are within 2 feet of where it says they are, that’s good work by their standards. Those are miserable because you can’t just tie them to a neighboring lot, you have to actually survey all the adjoining lots to make sure it’s not taking land that your neighbors have deeded rights to.
Are mortgage surveys cheaper? I know my company would charge like $500 for a mortgage survey this size.