Comprehensive Commercial & Residential Land Surveys
Alexander Land Surveying, centrally located in the Shoals area, provides a broad scope of surveying and development services. We maintain an in-house staff of professional land survey crews with both GPS and Robotic Total Station technology.
Types Of Surveying Services We Offer
What Determines The Cost Of My Survey?
When giving our clients an estimated proposal, we estimate the
cost for our clients based on many factors.
Time to perform the fieldwork varies with the distance to and the difficulty in reaching the property corners necessary to complete the fieldwork.
Record research can be affected by the number of parcels involved, including the number of past transactions. (Oftentimes, land transactions have been handled poorly in the past, resulting in vague, incomplete, and often contradictory legal descriptions and deeds). The Land Surveyor's familiarity with the area may include the availability of records that the Land Surveyor has possession of.
Iron, wood, or stone monuments, old fences or occupation lines, witness trees, and parole evidence (oral evidence - word of mouth) aid the Land Surveyor. Someone pointing out accepted occupation lines and documentation can be an effective aid to the Land Surveyor, especially prior to the fieldwork. The absence of them may increase the difficulty in retracing the original survey.
Complexity, Sectionalized Land, (PLS-Rectangular Survey System): Property described in this manner may require a survey of the entire Section (± one square mile) in which the land being surveyed lies, regardless of the area of the parcel. In some cases, a survey of more than one section is required, depending on the location of the parcel and available government (PLS) documentation.
If improvement locations are required to be located, additional measurements are taken in the fieldwork. It is usually advisable that improvements are located and put on the Certificate of Survey for future reference. A recommendation might be to have your house or garage “tied into” your property line, which will show the distances from the building corners to your property line. This will allow you to always find your property line near your buildings or other improvements. Privacy fencing often restricts visibility, requiring the Land Surveyor to work around them by “traversing” the measurements.
If any specialized equipment is needed, this could increase the cost of the project.
An irregularly shaped parcel has more corners to monument than a rectangular parcel containing the same area. Be careful not to determine or place any special relationship factor between the size of the parcel and the cost of the Land Survey. This is not true in many cases, but many people often incorrectly equate a "small lot" with a "small price" of the Land Survey and a "large parcel" with a "larger, or more expensive" price.
Foliage can make fieldwork difficult in the summer. At times in the winter months, weather hinders accessibility to the site, as well as making it more difficult to work on the site.
A level parcel of land is easier to survey than a mountain parcel. The Land Surveyor will usually ask if you would allow them to “clear a line” in wooded areas or “brush” branches and small trees. This makes possible a line of sight for the fieldwork. Shrubs, flowers, and trees on home sites are normally not disturbed but might need additional fieldwork to work around them.
Costs may increase should the required precision and extent of the Land Survey increases. ALTA Land Surveys and Title Company requirements may require considerably more documentation and fieldwork than is normally required by the average property owner.
