Benefits of Getting a Survey with Your Home Purchase
We often get asked by home buyers in the Orlando, FL area if they need to pay for a survey and why it is necessary. The short answer is, Yes. It’s our opinion that you should pay to have a survey done before purchasing your home. Here are several good reasons for getting one.
1. Required by Lenders
If you are financing your home purchase, your lender will require a survey as a condition of the mortgage. The mortgage lender wants legal documentation of the real estate it will be holding an interest in, including what structures are on the property and their relation to the property lines.
2. Establishing Property Boundaries
A professional surveyor will establish the boundaries of the property and ensure that the boundary markers, typically a steel bar in the ground, are in the correct location. They do this by making exact measurements from control points in the neighborhood, which could be a stone monument or steel stake in the roadway.
3. Identifying Structures and Easements
Once the boundary markers are identified and certified as being in the correct location, the surveyor will identify the location of other structures on the property in relation to the property lines. The survey will document the location of all structures and utility easements in relation to the property lines.
4. Certification for Legal Purposes
Surveys are certified only to the person(s) who hired the surveyor. In the case of a home purchase, that’s usually the home buyer, title company, and mortgage holder. The surveyor who did the most recent appraisal can usually re-certify it to the new homeowner for a reduced fee. To successfully dispute a property line disagreement or get a permit to install a new structure, such as a pool, fence, or shed, a survey certified to the current property owner must be included.
5. Avoiding Issues with Seller-Provided Surveys
We have had cases where the home seller offers an original or copy of a survey to the home buyer. These are not valid for any legal purpose, though they may be helpful for preliminary, informational purposes such as when making an offer on a home. Seller-provided copies of surveys do not document anything done to or near the property since that survey was done. If there are one or more errors on the survey that create a costly problem for a new homeowner, the new homeowner would have no recourse with the surveyor as it was certified only to the previous homeowner.
6. Preventing Costly Mistakes
A properly done survey, certified to the new homeowner, can help avoid issues such as a fence mistakenly put a few inches on the wrong side of the property line. A buyer or buyer’s lender could require a seller to take care of that before closing, which would only be known with a properly done and recent survey. An in-ground pool or detached garage built several feet over a property line or into a utility easement, not discovered until months or years later, would be costly to remedy.
Conclusion
When buying real estate, we recommend buyers always have a survey done and certified to them. It’s legal documentation certified to the new homeowner of the exact location of the property lines and the location of structures on and near the property. or additional information, feel free to ask!
Contributor
Thank you to Rodney Jackson, licensed Surveyor at Boundary and Mapping Associates, Oviedo, FL for contributing to this article.
