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Incorrect Lot Size
My question involves real estate located in the State of New York. I purchased a 100 year old home 2 years ago on a corner lot, without having the lot surveyed. The lot is 160'x60.5' as stated on my title insurance and as well as on the copy of the 100 year old county map that purchased from the county clerks office.
However, I recently measured the lot and found it to be 160'x70.5'!!!. I would have never measured it had it not been my next door neighbor installing a fence a long the property line based on a survey she had done when she moved in last year. What do I do to correct the dimensions of my lot as stated on my title insurance and county records? I still find it hard to believe that a clerical error went unnoticed for 100 years.
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Re: Incorrect Lot Size
How did you determine the width at 70.5' ?
What did you measure from and to?
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Re: Incorrect Lot Size
It may be a mapping error in the original subdivision. Or it may be a mistake in your neighbor's recent survey.
It's not often that someone would want to get to the bottom of an apparent error that works out in one's favor. Kudos to you for wanting to ensure correctness and avoid potential problems down the line.
Find a local surveyor who specializes in boundary work. Explain the issue to him/her as you see it.
Being a corner lot, there are several things that might contribute to this discrepancy.
1. You may not be properly accounting for street width in your measurements.
2. The original surveyor started laying out the lots of this block from the other end, leaving any excess or deficiency in the lots at your end, and by the fortune of random errors and mistakes in the original survey, you ended up with an additional 10'. This isn't all that uncommon, although such errors normally are in the magnitude of a couple feet or less in small lots. But I've seen such mapping errors in excess of 10', so it's possible.
3. Your neighbor's surveyor was less than fully diligent in his/her retracement of that lot.
4. The Assessor's records are wrong in that whoever took the dimensions from the original subdivision map read the dimension wrong. A map that old was drawn by hand and may have a poorly written or otherwise difficult to read dimension on your lot.
There are more possibilities than I can think of off the top of my head. A good surveyor will be able to properly sort it out.
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Re: Incorrect Lot Size
I measured from the old broken up slate curb at the street to the stake left by my neighbor's surveyor.
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Re: Incorrect Lot Size
Most likely, you'll find that the curb is 10' into the street right of way. that is, that your lot line is 10' back from the curb. This is quite common in city lots. Although your yard goes out to the curb, and you are responsible for maintenance of that portion of yard, you don't really own it. The City does.
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Re: Incorrect Lot Size
Thanks for the list of possibilities. I contacted 3 licensed surveyors in my area and all quoted me $700 for a general survey with map and boundaries, and $100 per corner, for a total of $1100. Is this an appropriate fee for the work involved?
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Re: Incorrect Lot Size
If you asked three surveyors, you now know the appropriate and usual rate in your area.
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Re: Incorrect Lot Size
It's hard enough to gauge an appropriate fee with so little info in our own areas. Factoring in possible simplicity or complexities of your job, and accounting for regional differences in costs, I'd say that an appropriate fee range would be somewhere between $350 and $3500.
If you got 3 fee estimates and they are all about the same, I'd say that's a pretty good indication that it's appropriate for the job in your area.