I bought a piece of land with a proper survey and title insurance in 2016, and began developing it late last year. A neighboring property owner I have been friendly with asked that one of the property boundaries be flagged so that a fence can be erected and we have a clear demarcation.
The prior surveyor claimed to be too busy to come back, and so I found a new surveyor, and off I went. Got a phone call a few days later - “We did the fieldwork on the ground and your land is somewhere else.” There was probably close to 75K invested in infrastructure at this point, not including the cost of the land.
There is a happy ending to this story. I bought the adjacent property at a tax auction earlier this year, and - unbeknownst to me - that land’s boundaries on the deed was much larger and encapsulated the “poorly surveyed” tract that was incorrectly located. So ultimately own the land where I did build the RV Park.
After a ton of research by the surveyor we found out that the CAD map was wrong and I owned a another parcel of land adjacent to my RV Park. He surveyed these two lots and also the neighbor’s full property (as I would have to have a hard conversation with him potentially).
So now I am going back to the original surveyor for re-imbursement of costs (of old and new surveys) and have to deal with the Title Company seeing how the policy can be updated. Neighbor was not happy, but he is reviewing the documents.
I think the best lesson learned out of this is as follows: “The cheapest surveyor gets you the cheapest results, even though the process is supposed to be fairly standardized and straightforward.” This surveyor essentially rigged the survey to match the CAD map since it was the easiest thing to do.
Appreciate any other stories or thoughts the group may have - I have learned a ton about surveying over the last month…