Think you know everything there is to know about your property and its boundaries? Unfortunately, most people don’t. While you might have a good idea of where your property begins and ends, thanks to features like boundary fences or tree lines, in truth there are many people who don’t know the official boundary lines of their property.
With this in mind, here are a few of the biggest reasons it can help to retain the services of a boundary surveyor in Texas:
- Find your boundary lines: One of the most common reasons property owners seek the assistance of a surveyor is to clearly mark off their boundary lines and other lines of possession. This will be important information to have when you build a fence, build an addition to a home or decide to pave your driveway. There are many circumstances in which neighbors simply operate under incorrect assumptions as to who owns which pieces of property.
- Gaps and overlaps: Part of the boundary line certification process is a statement that there are not any discrepancies between your property’s boundary lines and those of the adjoining property, unless the survey says otherwise. This is important for properties that are contiguous with highways, roads, streets or alleys.
- Water: Boundary surveys usually include reports about surface waters—underground waters are analyzed in other types of surveys. These boundary surveys will help you determine which parts of the waterways (lakes, ponds, rivers, creeks, etc.) are located on your property and whether any of them mark property boundaries.
- Existing improvements: Boundary surveyors also help certify that any buildings or other existing improvements, repairs or alterations to your property that exist at the time of the survey do not violate laws, ordinances or other restrictions, such as rules regarding size, height, frontage, set-backs, parking and more. Surveyors can also tell you if your planned improvements abide by local ordinances, and will let you know if they violate any of them so you can get a change order put in on the project.
- Easements and right of ways: Boundary surveys highlight all conditions imposed by property law that affect your title report and other property-related agreements. If your property obstructs your neighbor’s road access, you may need to develop an agreement (known as an easement) that gives your neighbor the right to walk or drive across your property (as appropriate) to get to the road. These types of agreements can have reasonable limitations applied to them.
- Ingress and egress: Your survey will provide information such as whether there is vehicular ingress and egress to public streets. It could also address the adequacy of access for purposes such as delivery trucks or emergency vehicles.
These are just a few of the reasons why you might choose to retain the services of a boundary surveyor in Texas. The information they provide can be highly beneficial to you as a property owner, especially if you are preparing to begin any new projects on your land.