What is the difference between a Mortgage Report and a Boundary Survey?

• A mortgage report is a tool used by banks and lending institutions to protect their investment in your property.  It is not a survey.  A mortgage report roughly shows the location of improvements on the property (i.e. Houses, garages, sheds, driveways, etc.)  No property markers are set during a mortgage report.

• A boundary survey is an actual property survey. Permanent stakes are set at the corner points of the property, and also at intervals along the property lines, if desired.  Research is done to define the proper intent of the legal description.  A map (certificate of survey) is drawn showing the dimensions of the property (distances, angles, and area) If any encroachments exist, they will be shown on the Certificate of Survey.  A boundary survey performed by a licensed land surveyor will define the location of your legal description on the ground, and identify any problems that may exist with the boundary lines or with the neighboring boundary lines. 

What benefit does a land owner or prospective land owner get from a boundary survey?

• The physical location of the property.
• The size and area of the property.
• A professional opinion regarding the quality of the description, and the neighboring descriptions.
• Whether or not any encroachments exist on the property.
• A legal document which will assist any attorney in defending your property rights, should the need arise.

What a boundary survey will not do.

• A boundary survey will not guarantee that the property owner has clear title.
• A boundary survey will not define any unwritten property rights.  (For example, you may have legal rights to property that is not described in your legal description.  This is something that takes the consideration of a judge to determine)
• A boundary survey is only as good as the documentation used to prepare it.  ( in other words, if you give us an incorrect legal description to survey, you will get an incorrect survey )

Common misconceptions.

• It is a law that any time a property is sold, it must be surveyed.  This is not true in Michigan or most other States.  This has never been a law in the State of Michigan.  MOST real estate sales are not accompanied by a Boundary Survey.

• Title Insurance will protect me from boundary problems.  This is very far from the truth.  Title Insurance is a tool to protect an individual against defects in TITLE.  When a title insurance policy is issued, no inspection of the property is made.  Therefore, if the driveway serving the property is on someone else’s land, or other similar encroachments exist, the title person will not know about it.  A title policy will list several exceptions to it’s coverage, one of which will be anything which would be delineated by an accurate Boundary Survey.

• One Surveyor measured from one direction, and the next measured from the other direction, and they came up with different locations.  This is never the case.  Sometimes Boundary Survey’s do overlap each other, but 99% of the time it is because the legal descriptions used overlap each other, so an accurate representation of each one shows an overlap.  It takes two points to accurately define a line, so a Surveyor, or any other person, cannot define a line without measuring its entire length.

• Surveyors using GPS will come up with different locations than Surveyors using conventional equipment.  This is not true.  Survey grade GPS does not provide a surveyor with a location to place a property corner.  It is merely a tool for measuring between two points without having to see between the points.  The location of physical features such as government land corners, platted subdivision monuments, railroad boundaries, road and highway boundaries, and other features, depending on the legal description, control the boundaries of your property, not the equipment used to measure the location of those features.

• All Surveys are recorded at the courthouse.  This is not the case.  Michigan State Law, (P.A. 132 of 1970) only requires a Survey to be recorded if it is for the purpose of creating a new legal description.  In other words, the only time a Survey needs to be recorded is when it is done to split property into smaller parcels.

 

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why does my legal description not give any distances or the number of acres?

The state of Michigan was arranged into Townships and Sections in the early to mid 1800’s.  The goal of the early Surveyors was to create Sections that were 1 mile square.  Given the fact that these Surveyors were using nothing more than steel chains to measure distances and compasses to measure angles, to lay out a six mile square township, the accuracy of their work is amazing, however it is not uncommon to find that the points they placed in the ground will differ in measurement greatly using today’s technology.  It is not uncommon to find two Government posts that are supposed to be one half mile apart will be 50’ to 100’ shorter or longer than one half mile.  The General land office realized this immediately, and issued patents on the land by aliquot description (i.e. The N.E. ¼ of the S.E. ¼, and so forth.)  The location of the points placed in the ground by those early Surveyors controls the location of the description. The precise distances were not known, but by preparing the descriptions in this manner, the distances were not needed to accurately define the location of a certain property.  This is why it is common for a description of: N.E. ¼ of N.E. ¼ of Section 26, commonly known as a “40 acre parcel” to only contain 39.5 acres or 40.5 acres, when it is actually surveyed.

How accurate are a Surveyor’s measurements? 

This depends somewhat on the quality of instruments used, and the physical conditions present at the time the measurement is made, but on average, a Surveyor, using typical modern equipment, can make a measurement within a few hundredths of a foot in angle and distance.  This equates to roughly ¼ of an inch, or the size of a pencil eraser.  Some situations depend on greater accuracies, and some situations demand less accuracy, but our equipment has advanced greatly in the last 20 – 30 years, and it is relatively easy for us to make quality, reproducible, measurements quickly and inexpensively.

How do I split my property?

The current land division laws for the state of Michigan were adopted in 1997.  These laws give the burden of approving and regulating land divisions to the municipality in which the land is situated.  This means that the first step to dividing property is to contact the municipality (Township, Village, or City) and get approval from them.  The second step is to have legal descriptions prepared which can be used to convey the property on a deed or land contract.  A Surveyor will survey the land into parcels, and prepare legal descriptions.  Once a sale is made on one of the new parcels, a deed will need to be prepared.  (We recommend an Abstracter or Attorney do this for you)

What are the requirements for becoming a Surveyor?

To become a licensed Land Surveyor in the State of Michigan, an individual first needs to obtain a Bachelor’s degree in the field of Surveying.  After completing the degree, that person must then work under the direct supervision of a licensed Land Surveyor for a minimum of 4 years.  Once the 4 years is obtained, an application is submitted to the State of Michigan licensing board which examines the educational and experience requirements, and then clears the person to take the 2 step exam to obtain licensure.  There are two 8 hour exams, one which has a national model, and is heavily math intensive, and another which is State specific, and has more to do with the laws of practice in the State of Michigan.  Once the two exams are passed with a 70% or greater score each, that individual is granted licensure.