Frequently Asked Questions

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1. Will the County survey my property?

No, County personnel do not provide this service. In order to locate corners of private property, a professional land surveyor in private practice needs to be hired. To find a professional land surveyor, one can search the internet, Yellow Pages, or obtain a recommendation from a friend or relative. In addition, the Board of Registration for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists publishes a consumer guide to Professional Engineering and Professional Land Surveying (http://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/pubs/consumer_guide.pdf). Sometimes professional land surveyors are referred to as licensed land surveyors, land surveyors, or simply as surveyors.

A surveyor will need some basic information about where your property is located, and will ask you some questions about why you think you need a surveyor. The surveyor will then need to do some preliminary research in order to provide you with an estimate to provide services. All surveys are different and are therefore different in cost. A surveyor needs to research existing surveys in the area, obtain your deed and all adjoiner’s deeds before he can even get started preparing for the field work. There is often office work related to analyzing the deeds and maps before going to the field to determine what monuments to look for and where to look. The field work entails searching for existing monuments that may be relevant to your deed, making measurements to those monuments, and relating those to fences and other land features around your property. The fieldwork is often only a small part of the total work involved in a boundary survey. The information obtained from the field survey is further analyzed in the office, calculations are done and boundary decisions made, sometimes requiring additional fieldwork to locate more monuments. Once this analysis is complete, monuments can be set and a Record of Survey and/or Corner Records be prepared and filed with the County Surveyor.

A surveyor has to treat all boundaries impartially. The surveyor cannot sway results in favor of his client. This could be prosecuted as an ethical and professional violation of surveying practice requirements. The surveyors job is to locate the true boundary on the ground according to legal principles of the profession. This sometimes results in the client being surprised or unhappy with the location as discovered through a field survey. A surveyor does not have the authority to “correct” such a survey, but can offer possible remedies if a boundary disagreement arises with a neighbor or if deed points and lines are found to fall in unfavorable locations, such as through existing structures. To learn more about these possible remedies, read about Lot Line Adjustments and Boundary Corrections on this website.

Revised 09/26/2014

2. Where do I obtain a survey map of my property?

Parcel Maps and Final (Tract) Maps, and Record of Survey maps are filed with the County Recorder. In addition, the County Surveyor also maintains a library of unrecorded survey maps. In addition, title companies and surveyors may also have collections of unrecorded survey maps.

Not all properties have necessarily been surveyed. Modern laws and codes generally require a survey for the creation of new properties, but not in all cases. Older properties could be created via deed without benefit of a survey. Research of county records is required in order to determine if an existing map or survey of your property exists. Sometimes a map can be found with minimal research; sometimes it can be more difficult and time consuming. Humboldt County does not yet have a state of the art computerized research system for land records like some metropolitan or urban counties do. The County Surveyor can offer some minimal assistance in getting started locating a survey in the county records, but ultimately a private surveyor may need to be hired. This is a task that a private surveyor is accomplished at and has resources and experience in doing.

revised 09/26/2014

3. Will the County help settle a boundary disagreement with my neighbor?

No. The County Surveyor does not survey private property boundaries unless directed to do so by a court and cannot take a side in a boundary disagreement or locate a private property line that may be in question. The County Surveyor can help facilitate solutions if the parties are in agreement in pursuing a resolution to an uncertain, indeterminate, or disputed boundary. These still require the involvement of a private surveyor, and typically will involve a “lot line adjustment” or a “boundary correction” for adjusting or correcting lines. Lot line adjustments are applied for through the County Planning & Building Department and involve adjusting lines to a location the parties agree to. Boundary Corrections are applied for through the County Surveyor and are typically used to conform deeds to existing occupation. In both cases, a private surveyor needs to be involved to create new descriptions and help with any deeds as necessary to complete the process. Setting new property corners and filing a Record of Survey are also required in most instances. In addition to the fees the private surveyor may charge, County fees are required for lot line adjustment and boundary correction applications as well as the review of all associated documents and maps that may be required to complete the adjustment or correction.

Revised 09/26/2014