What Is a Plat Survey?

You wouldn’t buy a car without taking it for a test drive, and you wouldn’t purchase a home without first having it inspected by a professional. Why, then, would you buy a piece of land without having a professional come take a look and perform a boundary survey in Guadalupe County, TX? Before you purchase that property, you’d have a crew draw a map of the land by conducting a plat survey.

A plat is a map that defines property boundaries to scale. Since you can’t just create a map by hand and expect it to be accurate, professionals conduct plat surveys. A plat survey uses geography, distances between points and directions to mark the boundaries of your potential new piece of land. A plat survey is most useful when someone is purchasing a large parcel of land, like farmland or a property for a city subdivision. In these instances, getting completely accurate estimates and boundaries would be too difficult.

Why are they important?

Plat surveys give landowners a lot of information about their property and set the boundary lines. So, as you can imagine, they’re a very important step before construction begins on any type of structure:

• Property access: A plat survey will help determine access points to the property. You wouldn’t want someone driving across your yard each time they need to get to their new home or office building. Similarly, you wouldn’t want to drive across someone else’s property to get out onto main roadways.
• Utilities: Everyone would agree that we should all have access to public utilities, like electricity, water and sewer. Without a plat survey, there’s no guarantee that would be the case. A plat survey ensures everyone can access those utilities that we’ve come to rely on.
• Compliance: The last thing you want is for your land to go against local zoning rules and restrictions. You can be sure to avoid this by getting a boundary survey in Guadalupe County, TX. A plat survey will ensure that your property meets the size and geometry restrictions in your area.

Different types of play surveys

Plat surveys aren’t one-size-fits-all projects. There are several different types of plat surveys that each serve different purposes. Here are a few of the different types:

• Plats of consolidation: Landowners interested in buying and combining several parcels of land can’t do so without first conducting a survey. A plat survey will help the local government decide whether or not the landowner is allowed to make the purchase.
• Plats of subdivision: On the opposite end of the spectrum, you must conduct a survey if you plan on dividing your property up and selling it off in smaller parcels.
• Correction plats: Errors happen quite a bit in land surveying. Luckily, they can easily be fixed by conducting another survey!

Before you buy your next parcel of land, be sure to give Bettersworth & Associates, Inc. a call to conduct a boundary survey in Guadalupe County, TX. Our team has over 65 years of experience, so you can trust that all of our maps will be as accurate as possible and your survey will be conducted in a timely manner.

Categorised in: Boundary Survey