"A.G. Zoutewelle Surveyors exhibits a very high standard of professionalism – they are highly responsive, do what they say they are going to do when they say they will do it and their work is always accurate."

– Charles Jarnigan    
Lincoln Harris

 

 

 

           

Case Study #3: Hidden Treasures

Is your property correctly described in your title deed or old survey?  Is your parcel correctly shown on county GIS records?  At A.G. Zoutewelle Surveyors we find errors in past survey information with surprising frequency.

Surveyors have the responsibility to investigate past survey records to eliminate such errors.  Stories about significant gaps or overlaps between old adjoining rural land parcels have been exchanged between surveyors for decades.  However, at A.G. Zoutewelle Surveyors, because of our detailed due diligence process, we regularly discover significant discrepancies in both rural and urban settings.  Some of these discrepancies have existed unnoticed for many years.  Others have occurred very recently.

We were engaged to provide a survey in the center of Charlotte’s urban district a couple of years ago.  During the course of our survey investigations, we identified a wedge of land between our subject parcel and the next-door neighbor.  Neither owner’s deed included this unclaimed wedge of land.  After researching the history of both parcels, we discovered that this unclaimed piece of land was inadvertently omitted from a land survey of our parcel some 80 years ago.  Our client’s property was surveyed a half-dozen times since that survey error occurred, but each of these newer surveys followed the erroneous survey line.

Because of our due diligence and detailed research standards we were able to bring this discrepancy to our client’s attention.  We provided them with the knowledge and proof that this unclaimed land used to be part of our subject property.  Happily, our client was able to take a few easy legal steps to reclaim this land.  Although the land area was very small (only about 2,000 square feet), at today’s land prices the value of this reclaimed land exceeded a quarter of a million US dollars!  In fact, this particular piece had real impact for our client, because it provided our client with direct access to the new Charlotte Lynx Rail Transit Line.

This story is not an isolated event.  Every couple of weeks we identify this sort of discrepancy.  Sometimes the value of the land is high and sometimes it’s low, but we feel it’s always important for our clients to know what they are getting when they purchase land based on our surveys.