Land Survey Cost

[JDGREEN4ME]

We have a 5 acre lot that we need to get re-surveyed. Seems we have a neighbor who built an ATV trail about 200' over our property line. Need to get some estimates but was just wondering what it might cost us. Thanks.

 

[btolle]

Any price I would tell you would probably be wrong since I live in Texas.

I suggest you call a couple of Licensed Surveyors in your area and they can give you a price.

If all you want surveyed is property lines it will be cheaper than if you wanted a full survey showing building locations, elevations, and so forth.

Sounds like all you need is property lines and fences on the survey so you can see if the fences are inside, outside, or on your property lines.

They should drive iron pins at all corners and drive a wooden stake with a flag or other marker on it next to the pins. The iron pins will often be at or below grade so the wooden stakes will allow you to find them easily.

You mentioned "re-surveyed". If you have a survey that was done before you should be able to use it and a metal detector to find the iron pins that were placed during the original survey.

A single strand wire fence (barbed or smooth wire) might be a good idea for future reference if you don't want to go to the expense of a "real" fence.

Do NOT allow them to keep the trail on your property unless they are willing to sign a lease and pay you at least $10 per year. Failing to do so could end up with a mess later on when they claim title to that portion under "adverse possession".

I would recommend you have the survey done (or find the pins) and then go to them as nicely as you can and explain that you understand how such a mistake could happen, no real harm done, etc., but that your understanding of real estate law says that you cannot allow the trail to remain on your land.

A person who is on your land at your invitation, whether that invitation is explicit ("It's OK, come on in") or tacit (tacit being they come onto your land and you say or do nothing to indicate that they should leave) is called in "invitee" and you could possibly be held liable if they were injured while on your property.

HOWEVER! Do NOT just go out and plow up the trail or drop trees across it. That puts you in an adversarial situation immediately that can get out of hand. Remember, you have to live next to these folks and you don't need a feud going on with them for the next 20 years.

Be tactful but firm. And don't wait around until next Spring to get it taken care of. The longer they are trespassing the more they will think they have a right to be there.

Bill Tolle
Licensed Texas Real Estate Salesperson but not a Licensed Surveyor!

 

[slowrev]

The cost seems to vary greatly in different areas. Had a 2 acre lot surveyed north of Tampa, FL and it was 175.00 but it seems higher here in KY. But not really an issue for me in KY as I have friends in the business, will do it for a good cookout and beer /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Surveyors might charge your neighbor 250.00 and you 350.00 because of differences in how the land lies and how well the line of sight is, ie trees, brush, hills, etc in the way of their lines. Call around to surveyors in your area and get estimates, your choices might be limited anyway. Also specifying how many markers you want placed will effect the price as well.

Are you planning on fencing ? If so make sure that the surveyors place enough markers so that you can sight along them to put up a fence. If you are not going to fence it, there might be a surveyors platt on file at the county courthouse that will give you coordinates that you could check with a GPS and be within a foot or so of the line.

Good luck with the pesky 4 wheelers, Is there a season for bagging them and do you need a tag for it ?

Ben

 

[Varmintmist]

It depends on the land, hills trees swamp that make the job harder. It depends on if there are any good points to go off of, old pins, roads, stone markers. It depends on what you want. A corner only survey, pins in the corners, skeleton survey, is the cheapest. You can have them pin the lines every 200 feet or you can have it blazed and painted.

I'm pinned, blazed and painted. I know where the lines are and so does everyone else.

With 5 ac you are going to get into a 300 dollar bill I would guess.

 

[Bob_Skurka]

I just had a similar situation occur this summer. I purchased the couple acre lot next door to me 2 years ago and I knew where the property line ran, but the guy living next to my vacant land did not! He was going to put up a swimming pool on my property because he felt it was in his back yard. I was planning on putting up a decorative fence behind some trees I planted and that started a minor skirmish. He suggested I get a survey. So I called a couple surveyors, each told me to shoot the 1 property line would cost me about $600.

I knew the corners of this lot are staked so I knew the perimeter but because of a hill and woods, it is not possible to see down the property line in question. I asked him if he could walk the line with me. He took off leading me down the property line (due west) and then detoured right (north) and ended up at the diagonally opposite corner of the property so insteady of walking the south border from east to west, we started at the SE corner and ended up at the NW corner! I then commented that we were at the WRONG corner and I walked him to the correct corner. I then showed him where his other corner was while I was at it. I also got an areal photo from the USGS website and drew the boundaries on it. They proved (becuase the details are good enough to show shadows of individual trees) that his proposed pool would have been on my property . . . and by the way, about 1/2 of what he thought was his yard is actually my property. He ended up being unhappy, but was very reasonable about it. Luckily we are not enemies because of this.

 

[ByronBob]

How the heck does someone not know where their property line is? I understand the contour thing but were not talking about 3000 acres of land which might stretch from here to the next county.
So how could the guy be upset at all. Very weird.....

 

[Bob_Skurka]

Well he was making the wrong assumption that his driveway runs parallel to the property line, but since his driveway is NOT straight, it makes for a confusing visual picture (especially at ground level). From the air, things look very simple.

In the attached photo, the thick yellow line is the actual property line. It actually cuts across the edge of his driveway about 12 inches!

The oval shows where he wanted a pool.

The thin blue line shows where he thought his property line was.

I think he didn't think very hard, but now he knows. Downloaded a few of these pictures saved me from having to pay a surveyor $600 to prove what I already knew and now my neighbor is very nice to me as he doesn't want to lose 12" of the corner of his driveway.

 

[slowrev]

Bob, sounds like you have a pretty good neighbor.

Ben

 

[Bob_Skurka]

Ben, I don't know if I have a good neighbor or not. We are always friendly but we are not friends. While this was going on it was "touch and go" for a while there because he thought he was right and I knew I was right.

Fortunately the pictures swayed him as they are pretty convincing. I also shot a laser line based on some triangulation calculations that were run, I told him that I could not prove them to be 100% accurate, but I knew the line was very very close. The line was marked with pink surveyors flags and pink paint. It really got his attention when there was a pink flag poked into his gravel driveway! The arial photo and the pink flags both showed the propertly line at the same place so that was sort of a double whammy against his logic.

I think it all boiled down to the fact that we were both reasonable during the dispute.

Now all that said, I am not done with this issue. I do plan on using a GPS unit to start at the back corner of the property and work my way up the hill and through the woods until I get to the tree line where we lose line of sight. I also plan to start at the front and do the same thing working to the back. The GPS unit is accurate to within 3 meters so I won't have the exact spot, but I will know that I am close. And if I can run a few points that are close to accurate then I can run some lines of sight to and from those mid-points. I don't want to do anything like run a full fence, but I do want him to know that I know where the property line is.

<font color="blue"> By the way, the USGS images are available for free and can be easily downloaded from their site </font>

 

[johndeere2210]

We recently had the farmstead surveyed off our farm and the cost here in Nebraska was $200.00 per corner for a total of $800.00.