New Survey Needed?

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I am under contract to buy a couple of parks as a package. The seller has surveys from 2008 and the lender is willing to use those and not require new ones. I have gotten the title commitment and verified that it matches the description of the properties on the surveys. I’ve also spent some time in both parks and see nothing that doesn’t match the items on the survey.

Given all that, does anyone see the need for another survey in this situation? What would I be missing, risk wise, if the title commitment matches and I have personally verified the details?

Thanks for your thoughts.

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  1. If the title company is ok, you are ok.
  2. A 2008 survey is pretty recent unless a lot of activity requiring new surveys occurred in the interim.
  3. Surveys are just evidence of ownership, they are not the ultimate determinant of property lines, so don’t worry too much.
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If it were me and you didn’t have any clear reason to delineate the property line, I would just ask your title company for the recorded easements (they should be able to easily pull them up) and look over them to make sure there’s no red flags.

Just my thoughts off the top of my head since I dealt with something similar just a few months ago.

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And check for physical encroachments, too (any neighbor who built anything, including a fence, across your property line). Those can cause you headaches with regard to neighbors alleging “adverse possession” and you having to clean up title with a civil lawsuit which would be expensive and a pain in the neck. Easements should show up on a title report. In most cases, you can’t build anything over a filed easement.

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Thanks all for your replies and the sanity check. I should have mentioned that I also pulled the easements which are just your typical gas and electric easements that had been recorded decades ago.

Kurt, you mentioned encroachments. Well the existing survey shows an encroachment of a corner of a neighbor’s garage onto the property. It is only 18 square feet and has existed for many years it looks like. I will talk with my attorney about that when I review the title commitment and see what I need to do, but is this something you see as a major issue?

Encroachment
Encroachment640×594 76.7 KB

I’ve attached the encroachment here.

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I would get a survey update from the same survey company from 2008. You need to verify that there have been no changes to that 2008 survey. Updates are not that expensive and the downside is dire.

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