Land surveying that grounds every decision.

An ALTA survey, properly an ALTA/NSPS Land Title Survey, is a boundary survey built to a national standard set jointly by the American Land Title Association and the National Society of Professional Surveyors. It shows the boundaries, the easements, the improvements on the site, the means of access, and the zoning and flood zone classifications, all on one drawing. Title companies and lenders usually require one before a commercial transaction closes or a property is refinanced, and buyers often want one on vacant land they intend to develop. It is the survey that surfaces the problems, so it is worth ordering before you are committed rather than after.

A boundary survey establishes where the property lines are. An ALTA survey does that and then adds everything a lender or a title company needs in order to insure the property: easements, rights of way, encroachments, existing improvements, and access. It also lets the client select optional items, known as Table A items, so the survey can be scoped to what the transaction actually requires. If the survey is for a purchase or a loan, it is almost always an ALTA.

You can measure your own property for your own information. You cannot produce a survey that carries legal weight. California’s Professional Land Surveyors’ Act says no person may practice land surveying unless licensed, and it defines that practice to include locating or reestablishing any property line and setting any monument that marks one. The exemptions in the Act cover certain government and utility employees. Property owners are not among them. So a boundary that a city, a title company or a lender will accept has to come from a licensed surveyor who signs and stamps it.

Often, yes. Under the same Act, a Record of Survey must be filed when a survey turns up material evidence or discrepancies that do not appear on existing maps, and a Corner Record is required for corners that get established or reestablished. Those filings go to the county surveyor within ninety days. It is part of why a survey is not simply a drawing you receive, it becomes part of the public record for the property.

Construction staking is the process of marking approved plans out on the actual ground so the crew builds what was designed. Grades, utilities, curbs, building corners. It happens throughout construction rather than once at the start, and it is usually where a conflict between the plans and the site gets caught, while it is still cheap to fix.