Using an app to determine proposed boundry lines

[paulsharvey]

You said your piece is from his parent tract, right? Your original piece should have went back to the origins of the parent tract, and should have all the points of his tract well established (on paper, I don't mean you'll find the lathe or property corners easily).

 

[MattB4]

In my experience a survey is not needed if a good legal description can be made working from the original property Deed description. However if building is going to be done or fences erected a Survey will likely become needed.

 

[ponytug]

In my experience a survey is not needed if a good legal description can be made working from the original property Deed description. However if building is going to be done or fences erected a Survey will likely become needed.

That is not my experience at all.

A description is one thing, a survey by a licensed surveyor is something else again. I have seen things go sideways, and not by readily overlooked amounts.

I think if someone cares about time, money, and the property, it needs to be surveyed.

All the best,

Peter

 

[paulsharvey]

That is not my experience at all.

A description is one thing, a survey by a licensed surveyor is something else again. I have seen things go sideways, and not by readily overlooked amounts.

I think if someone cares about time, money, and the property, it needs to be surveyed.

All the best,

Peter

They both are important; a survey with an unclear legal description is worthless as well. Yes, old legal descriptions can be bad, "proceeding eastward from the large oak, 90 paces, and then meandering north western along the centerline of creek bed"; but you need your new parcel to have defined start and end points. I dont think your going to sneak a "following existing fence line approx north" though your county nowadays

 

[kthompson]

I am not a surveyor but have hired them several times. In my area we about fall over the surveyors. lol. Then a lot of land is being broken up into lots as tons of people are moving here.

I have a really smart brother in law (pun intended) who went to school for surveying. He bought a piece of land (about 1/2 acre) from a tract of over 100 acres. It was mostly a just out from the large acreage and they used the info in the deed and map to write the deed. Deed was accepted and no, a survey was not required. (South Carolina).

Then when he wanted to have a driveway installed turned out he could not. Road frontage was not sufficient. So, he has a lot with no real access to for anything on wheels. Tickles me. He did it to spite a neighbor and it surely backfired on him. Neither current neighbor has any interest in helping him due to the reason he bought it. Only two people who could use it are the neighbor on either side. Boy, talk about a small list of potential buyers. LOL

Get a survey. You want the current landowner to be alive and well in case there is any disagreement with the land lines. It happens.

Congratulations on being wise to buy the additional land.

 

[lman]

In my experience a survey is not needed if a good legal description can be made working from the original property Deed description. However if building is going to be done or fences erected a Survey will likely become needed.

In my county, a Surveyor needs to provide a legal description if the property is part of a parcel. If purchasing the entire parcel that already has a legal description then the survey would not be necessary.
The legal description needs to be recorded with the County to be valid.

 

[MattB4]

That is not my experience at all.

A description is one thing, a survey by a licensed surveyor is something else again. I have seen things go sideways, and not by readily overlooked amounts.

I think if someone cares about time, money, and the property, it needs to be surveyed.

All the best,

Peter

I see you are in California. I must admit I do not keep up on all the stuff that happens there. But your state has 50 billion people in it all fighting and clawing over land (even those folks that think land ownership should be illegal) so likely a survey there is now a legal requirement to break up land (if they even allow it without Public hearings and input from dozens of State Agencies).

 

[dodge man]

Is there a GPS App that you can mark two points on your land and create a line between those points so you know where to place your fence?

I have fence posts set at the pins about 2,000 feet apart from each other. I want to build my fence along the first 800 feet of that property line. There is an area that is kind of cliff like and not worth fencing in, so I'll move my fence in a little bit for that area. I was going to run a wire from post to post for a straight line, but I would have to clear several dozen trees from that cliff area, and I really want to keep those trees there so it doesn't erode any more. I also think it would become very ugly if those trees where not there, so it's not going to happen.

Can I use my Android phone, or my wife's Apple phone, to mark those two posts and know where the property line is?

Thank you

A short answer to that is no, not anywhere good enough. An uncorrected gps signal, which is what a cell phone is, more or less is good to 10 meters, which is over 30 feet. A cell phone is often better than that but to say it’s good to even 10 feet is hard to do. I’ve experimented with them compared to survey grade gps and cell phones just won’t cut it.

 

[dodge man]

There are often state, county, and city requirements for surveys. In Illinois anything less than 5 acres has to be surveyed. Our county requires anything less than 3 acres be a subdivision, which is often a single lot. If there is already a description for the property that can just be reused and no survey required.

In theory if no regulations require a survey two people can go out and agree to a location for a boundary line. A couple of potential problems, can it be described so someone can recreate. If your borrowing money for it will a bank and title company accept a home brewed legal description.

I’ve always told people I’ve never seen a piece of property I can’t survey. It’s just a matter of how much money it will cost. I’ve seen legal descriptions so bad I just assumed some land owner made it. They just didn’t make any sense. Don’t create a future problem by skipping a survey.

 

[ponytug]

I see you are in California. I must admit I do not keep up on all the stuff that happens there. But your state has 50 billion people in it all fighting and clawing over land (even those folks that think land ownership should be illegal) so likely a survey there is now a legal requirement to break up land (if they even allow it without Public hearings and input from dozens of State Agencies).

Actually most of the land disputes that I know were all back east, though admittedly most of them were back in time.

However, all of the properties that we looked at when buying ranches around here had all been surveyed for the sale. That may be a push from the title companies given land values around here. I don't know for sure, but it would seem reasonable that given the value of land, a survey would be cheap insurance on a risk weighted basis, and it would bring the surveyor's insurance in to play if a discrepancy arose.

Locally, many of the counties around us went to high accuracy GPS surveys 20-30 years ago, putting old reference markers onto the GPS grid, and adjusting boundaries therefrom. We are lucky that one of the reference for the county happens to be close, so not much changed. I will say that depending on which group I talked at the county when we bought the place had areas that were quite different, as in 20% different. I went with what the surveyor and the title insurance signed off on.

All the best,

Peter

 

[paulsharvey]

To the guy asking about using a cell phone to place fence;
You can use OnX Basemap, or others to help locate the corners, as a guide, if you are just completely in the dark on where the corners are; but then try to find the actual corners (nail and disk, rebar, concrete monument, spike in tree, iron pipe, ect) and pull strings. Probably set it back 12" just to be safe, but don't just blindly assume any App is right. Some will get you Far off, like 30+ feet, either from GPS signal and accuracy, or inaccurate property lines. If you have access to your old survey, it should tell you "found 5/8" iron rod, or found RR spike in tree or whatever" that will help you locate the actual corner. Note, they often are buried a few inches; and a metal detector can help.

 

[paulsharvey]

Also, the old survey will often show location of a power pole or other semi fixed point. Sure, that may have moved, but it gets you looking in the right direction.

 

[ponytug]

I've seen descriptions referencing trees that were gone a hundred years earlier. E.g. "11 feet SSE of large chestnut..." and stone wall stones. Not the wall mind you, a stone in a wall that disappeared who knows how many winters ago due to freeze thaw.

I like reading old deed descriptions for entertainment as I find many of them amusing. However, putting money them, isn't something I would do, but we are all different.

All the best,

Peter

 

[paulsharvey]

No offense to Dodge Man, but surveyors are often an odd lot. They tend to be Very set in their ways, from how they do a survey to obsessing about odd things, or what they might use as a monument, to the fact that 10:30Am is time to eat an apple, or go to the gas station to get 2 hot dogs, with the same fixings every single day. Stuff like swapping legs for an instrument or how to hang the plumb Bob, ribbon colors, ect

 

[paulsharvey]

I've seen descriptions referencing trees that were gone a hundred years earlier. E.g. "11 feet SSE of large chestnut..." and stone wall stones. Not the wall mind you, a stone in a wall that disappeared who knows how many winters ago due to freeze thaw.

I like reading old deed descriptions for entertainment as I find many of them amusing. However, putting money them, isn't something I would do, but we are all different.

All the best,

Peter

I grant XXX rights to approx 24,000 acres in Florida, from the western bank of the St John's River to the mission at the bay, provided they don't disturb the natives" old Spanish land grants.

 

[2manyrocks]

All I hear is the current surveyors saying how bad the other surveyors are or used to be.

 

[dodge man]

When modern day surveyors look at the quality of the measurements they did in older times, it’s easy to say what a lousy job they did. Since the mid 1980’s when the ability to measure a distance came in to gps which became common in the 1990’s our ability to measure has improved. The corners don’t move because we measure better, we just know the actual distance better.

An example of this is when the sections of ground in Illinois were laid out it was done to an accuracy of about 1 in 100. That means for every 100 feet measured they might have an error of 1 foot. That’s terrible by todays standards but that was the standard of the day.

 

[ponytug]

All I hear is the current surveyors saying how bad the other surveyors are or used to be.

What's the line about walking a mile in someone else's shoes?

I've done a little bit of old school surveying and while I found it fun, it is harder than it looks.

Personally, I'm amazed the other way around. I think that the old school surveying was amazing, given the tools that they had to work with.

All the best,

Peter

 

[dodge man]

Illinois was laid out with a compass and a 2 pole chain (33 feet). When I started working in 1984 we taped everything, a 100 foot long steel tape. Not bad for a lot in town but for a rural survey it wasn’t easy.

 

[paulsharvey]

Also, roads move over time; records get lost, ect. Also, if you work from east to west for prop A and then from west to east for its neighboring parcel B, there can be either a overlap or gap. Creeks move, people destroy monuments, people move monuments, ect.