You’re not alone. Here are some reasons to get a boundary survey for your property.

• You’re buying land, but not sure if it’s one acre or five.
• The tax map says you have 1.8 acres, but the seller says it’s 2.3 acres.
• Are you going to build?
  • Don’t build over the line, or your neighbor will end up asking some tough questions. It happens more often than you’d think.
  • Where, exactly, is the town-required boundary line setback? We’ve seen houses demolished and reconstructed because of this.
  • Will you have the space to build what you want?
  • Are you expanding a structure in shoreland zone?
• Maybe the kid isn’t moving as far away as you’d thought. Now you’re dividing off a piece of your land.
• Maybe the neighbor thought they owned some of your land. Or worse, they went out and moved the pins on their own.  
• Your land is one of your biggest investments.
• You love your land. You should. Protect it by knowing where it starts and stops.

Who can tell you where your boundary lines are?

• Not your neighbor, parents, grandparents, or seller. Not Uncle Bob, though he’s great and all.
• In America, only a Professional Licensed Surveyor (PLS) is authorized by the State of Maine to offer an opinion on where your boundary line is.

Wonderful. What goes into a boundary survey?

• A PLS starts by talking to you and getting your understanding of the boundaries and your particular situation.
• The PLS will collect deeds and plans from nearby and abutting surveys. We find those in your county’s Registry of Deeds.
• A field survey is performed. Field surveyors will search for boundary corner monumentations and other signs of boundaries. They’ll locate them using precise instrumentation.
• The PLS will calculate the boundaries using some pretty advanced mathematics.
• The PLS will determine their professional opinion of your lines.
• Depending on what you want, the surveyor will then do some or all of the following:
  • Pin the corners.
  • Flag and/or blaze the lines.
  • Create a boundary description an attorney can use to write a deed.
  • Provide you with a stamped and sealed map showing your property.

So, a survey is a survey, right? Are all survey’s the same?

• There are different classes of surveys.
  • Mortgage Loan Inspection. MLI. This is a quick survey required by a mortgage lender. An MLI is not a boundary survey.
  • Boundary Survey. Mapping the record boundaries of your property. Performed by a PLS.
  • Construction Survey. Laying out a construction site so the building, drives, and other site features are built in the right place.
  • Topographic Survey. This isn’t about the boundaries but will instead map terrain, developments, and other site features.
  • ALTA Survey. This is a more advanced survey that searches out many issues on the property and supplements title insurance properties. More common in large, developed parcels or commercial properties where lending is involved.
  • High Definition Survey. A survey using advanced technology to build 3D models of existing structures or sites.
• While Main-Land performs all of these surveys, this narrative is about Boundary Surveys.

How expensive is a boundary survey by a PLS?

• Be careful of Google. Their averages cover large regions and all classes of surveys.
• The cost depends on things like:
  • Acreage of your parcel.
  • The existing description of your parcel, if any.
  • Whether or not your parcel is in an approved subdivision.
  • Land topography, like grades, plant cover, swamps, that sort of thing.
  • Location. The farther you are from a PLS’s home base, the longer it will take to get out there.
  • Typically, it can cost from $3,000 to $10,000 as of this writing, depending on the above and other considerations. Large parcels will often be more.
• Main-Land will provide you with the specific cost for your property prior to performing the work.

But I only need one line surveyed.

• Okay, but that line’s location depends on all of your other lines, the legal description of your parcel, and the geometry of the total parcel.
• To locate a single line, we need to survey all of your property and sometimes need to survey abutting properties as well.
• At your request, we might only pin or flag a single line.

So then I have a boundary survey, right? And that’s it?

• Hopefully, but not certainly.
• Our product is our professional opinion. That’s important.
• What happens if your neighbor hires a surveyor and they don’t agree with our survey?
• On rare occasion, surveyors don’t agree on a line.
• When that happens, it might go to a local court where a judge will decide. If that happens, the court’s ruling is final. Again, this is rare, but it sometimes happens.
• While a pain, it sure beats the way it was done in the past. Ever watched Yellowstone?

Okay. How do I get started?

• Call Main-Land at 207-897-6752. We have PLS surveyors in Newport, Livermore Falls, and Falmouth, covering most of the State of Maine.
• Introverted? We got you. You can request a quote online at www.main-landdci.com.