Commercial Land Surveying for Complex Properties and Serious Projects
ALTA surveys, boundary retracement, topographic and as-built surveys, delivered by the firm with the deepest land-records archive in Georgia.
Request a Commercial ProposalStraight answers about commercial surveying
From Josh Lewis IV, President of Georgia Land Surveying Co.
Q: What kind of commercial jobs does Georgia Land Surveying stand out on?
Complicated ones. With today's equipment most surveyors are very good at measuring. It is the research part that eludes most other firms, and when you have a 100-year-old property with conflicting legal descriptions, measurements alone will not solve those problems.
Georgia Land Surveying Company has the largest collection of surveys and land records in Georgia. That, combined with our legal knowledge of land surveying, allows us to solve problems and prevent costly litigation. It is one of my pet peeves when a surveyor tells a client they need a boundary line agreement. They have not solved the issue they were hired for; they are just pushing the ambiguous boundary problem back onto the customer.
Q: What usually goes wrong when surveying is brought in too late?
Cost, and the client loses their opportunity to negotiate. If a problem is revealed by a survey before the closing, everyone works to fix it, because no one gets paid if the closing doesn't go through. Say the current owner built a garage over the property line onto the neighbor's parcel: the seller negotiates an encroachment agreement with the neighbor, and the closing attorney helps draft a legal description for it. Everyone is on your team in that scenario.
It is a very different situation if you wait to get a survey until after you have bought the property. You have essentially bought a problem, and you are all alone trying to fix it.
Q: What does a commercial client actually receive?
Essentially, a map of the property, but there is a lot going on in that survey. It is a legal document guaranteeing the land you are buying, with only a few exceptions. If you order an ALTA survey, we are certifying to the title along with the title company as well. You can't buy a cell phone with that kind of guarantee.
GLS also carries a $2 million professional liability policy covering every survey we perform. If you have ordered a survey from us in the past, we will always stand behind our work.
Q: What separates a difficult survey from a routine one?
Unforeseen problems and a lack of information. We are good at handling problems in whatever form they take; it's only when they come unexpectedly that they hurt. Information is the cure for that.
Projects like Atlanta City Hall
When the City of Atlanta needed its historic City Hall property surveyed, GLS combined archival research with modern measurement to deliver a survey of record.
Buying, developing, or resolving a commercial property?
Request a commercial proposal and get information working for you before it costs you.