LAND SURVEYING

The short answer: if a lender, title company, or buyer's attorney is involved in a commercial transaction, you almost certainly need an ALTA survey rather than a boundary survey. Most title insurers won't issue extended coverage on a commercial deal without one, since it's the only survey type that documents the full set of conditions their policy needs to account for. A few situations point clearly toward ALTA. You're buying, selling, or refinancing commercial property. Your

A boundary survey does one job: it establishes where your property lines and corners actually sit, based on the legal description, recorded plats, and physical evidence found on site. It's the survey most people picture when they think of "getting a property surveyed," and it's usually enough for residential situations like settling a fence-line question, adding a deck, or confirming a lot before a small addition. An ALTA/NSPS survey is a different, more comprehensive standar

An existing survey can sometimes be reused, but more often it can't, and it's worth understanding why before assuming it will save you time or money. Surveys reflect conditions at the time they were completed. If a fence line has shifted, an addition was built, or an easement was added since the survey was done, the document no longer reflects reality, even though nothing about the survey itself was wrong when it was created. Lenders and title companies also typically set