A mortgage survey is the most widely used survey that would be required on a piece of property which is required for purchase. A physical inspection generally focuses on the condition of the building; a mortgage survey investigates the property itself.
Why is the Mortgage Survey Required?
Most of the financing companies would require a valid mortgage survey for purchase of the property by the buyer. The cost of survey may be covered by most mortgage company.
A survey is generally conducted to determine the extent of the land boundaries and building locations. It will note buildings, sheds, fence, easements and required building setbacks and natural landmarks.
Mortgage Location Survey
Mortgage Location Surveys are used only by the mortgage and title companies to determine which major buildings are on the land or not – such as a garage, house or shed. It also tries to provide if the property is free from encroachment by a neighbor’s property.
Mortgage Inspection Survey
These are the typical survey, what we get when a purchase a house / property. These include a detailed survey with building lines, easements, fence etc. drawn by the drafter. In most cases this survey is accompanied by a plot plan survey and a boundary survey. These are the legal documents which would be required later if any improvements are required for building.
Plot Plan
The plot plans represent the boundary of the building, along with the garage, construction areas, drive ways and the property lines. These are always belonging to a specific subdivision / section and an associated block of that section. The plot plan defines the adjoining lots and Lot numbers, the bearing of the lot sides with reference to the control survey derived from the plat.
Control Survey
Control survey help us identify the plot exact location, provided the lot location is already shared. As control surveys are built for specific sub-divisions and blocks within a subdivision or section of the subdivision. Once the block is identified the associated lot can be identified.
What info is shared by a control survey?
A control survey apart from providing the subdivision, section and block information is also helpful in providing the bearing information of the lot sides along with true North as captured during the survey and found on the ground of the area of interest.
It is the one of the major source of easement information that plays a major role in development to of the plot plans. The easements can be classified in multiple ways, based on the usage. To name a few are the utility easement, drainage easement, utility and drainage easement, aerial easement, TV or cable easement etc.
All the road name information to associated sub-division. ROW information, Prominent benchmarks like the concrete monuments, point on curvature or point on tangent etc.
These are the basic building blocks for drafting and preparation of the plot plans by a drafter after receiving from the licensed surveyor. Once all the features including the property lines, easements, sidewalks, driveways, building, fences etc., these are dimensioned and placed on the paper scale at desired scale for the custom title block.