Never thought I’d be asking for comparative prices here, but we just got a surveyor’s bill for staking only, no establishment of corners, approx’ly 500′ of boundary. The “why’s” of this are another story, but the bill came in at $1400.
One lead, one asst for about 8hrs total on the ground. Travel insignificant. Say another 2-3hrs homework back at the office. This surveyor was the one that established the corners less than 10yrs ago.
This just seemed quite a bit to me, but I’ve never dealt with surveyors before as a customer. Any thoughts?
Replies
You don't mention if this was commercial or residential land. In my area (NJ) the going rate for residential seems to be about $200.00 minimum to come out, or about $100 per corner, whichever is more. In other words, a simple square-ish lot is about $400.00 to find the corners and to drive a piece of rebar in that spot. This is not for a new survey, however. It assumes an established neighborhood and a survey done in the past. Maybe that'll help for comparison to your bill.
Now, for reasons I've never understood, commercial land seems to be significantly more for the same service and those prices are all over the map. Dunno why.
J Painter
Thanks. It's residential, and they planted about 12 stakes. The corners were already in place and since they'd done this before, knew right where they were. We knew where one was (granite post - hard to miss). The corners weren't in a sight line due to slope, trees, etc, but that's why I included number of hours on they were on the ground.
survey lead $150 hour, rodman $39 hour, engineer, typist, paperwork.
You got a real good deal. It be about $2000 here for half day.
Thanks. Makes me feel a little bit better. Still about $400 poorer than what I expected, but at least I feel better about it.
survey lead $150 hour, rodman $39 hour
Oh, so that's why there aren't any decent ones around here! <g>
Laborer-$7.5/8; billhook-$8-9, rodman-$10-12; instrumentman-$10-15; crew leader, $10-15 in office, $30/hr billed if on site. Yet, a "standard," pre-sale, lot survey is $750 up to one acer--per platted Lot (paid for two myownself, whooboy).Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
The price is a bit high, but not unreasonable. Make sure you get all the paperwork. The previous owner of my house had a survey done on ten acres for about $1400. He satisfied the real estate requirement and was left with the stakes and flags in the ground, but no paperwork. I wanted to put in a fence and found out I would need to get another survey to be sure I was on the property line. For that amount of money, you should have a drawing.
OK, let's assume that the details of the job are insignificant, but varying slopes, woods and brush, cutting lines, finding the old corners, and setting stakes every 'x' feet, sounds like 8 hours of field work is reasonable (maybe a little high, but I haven't seen the site).
You would be billed 8 x $130/hr for a two man crew, and 3 hrs @ $85 for office time for the surveyor. $1295 total.
Sounds like their rates may be a bit more than mine, but it depends on where you are. BTW, this is what *I* do for a living (land surveying and civil engineering), so that's the bill you'd get from me if I did the job.
I will tell you, though, that cutting 500' of line, tying into both ends of the line, and setting wooden grade stakes every 80-100 feet would NOT have taken my crew 8 hours of time, and maybe an hour in the office to take care of research, minor calculations, and billing. I'd have estimated that job at $850 and held to it, with the knowledge that I'd been there before, knew both ends of the line were still monumented, and was familiar with the terrain. I can stake a line from any two known points, over any distance, even if I've never seen the points before and don't know how far apart they are. The beauty of modern data collector functions.
I appreciate the feedback, very helpful. Surveying is just something I've never contended with before as a customer. There were a couple of workarounds and no clean line of sight from one corner to the other. That, and they did have to muck around a little bit with the granite post. Boundary line used to be the center of it till the neighbor's had their underground service re-laid. Now it's the corner of the granite post, but that's the other part of the story.
And frankly, there could be a little bit of a "risk premium" attached. The neighbor is a state representative.
Last time I had a surveyor out it was $2500 to find the corners of a lot in a densely built area and mark them. They had to start from a point somewhere over on the next block, and shoot across into an area known to surveyors as a slide area (neighborhood gradually sliding down the hill). To be sure he then came from the other side and verified, finding about 1/2" of difference IIRC.
Time before that it was $500 to find one line and he was able to start across the street and down about five houses.
Both jobs came with a map.