An ALTA Survey, a Missing Easement, and a Thursday Deadline
An ALTA/NSPS Land Title Survey is ordered for a 6.32-acre commercial parcel in Elizabeth, New Jersey, with Table A items requested for monuments, flood zone, zoning, and utilities. The title commitment lists a 20-ft utility easement along the rear, but the recorded instrument has not been furnished. Field work finds a 0.6-ft overlap of the neighbor's masonry wall onto the subject parcel along the east line; a 12-inch steel gas main crossing the parking lot with no visible easement document; a measured area of 6.41 acres against 6.32 acres by deed; and a municipal sidewalk extending 1.1 ft inside the front line. The client's attorney emails: 'Just show the deed area, leave the wall and the gas line off, and get it to us by Thursday - we'll deal with it after closing.'
1. What must be shown, what may properly be omitted, and how do you answer the attorney?
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Start with the standards, not the deadline. An ALTA/NSPS survey is prepared to a published standard and certified to the client and the title company. Optional Table A items are negotiable before the work begins; they are not a menu to be trimmed afterward to remove inconvenient facts. Boundary evidence - monuments found, evidence of possession, and observed evidence of encroachments or overlaps - is the core of the survey and cannot be dropped.
Item by item.
- Masonry wall overlap (0.6 ft). Must be shown and dimensioned. It is observed physical evidence affecting the boundary.
- Gas main. If utilities were requested, observed evidence of the line must be shown with a note that no recorded easement was furnished. It is not the surveyor's place to omit it because the paperwork is missing.
- Sidewalk 1.1 ft inside the front line. Show it. It may indicate a right-of-way taking, a dedication, or an occupation that is not reflected in the deed; that is exactly the kind of fact a title company needs before closing.
- Area. Report the area of the parcel and, where the measured area differs materially from the deed, note both. 6.41 versus 6.32 acres is 0.09 acre, about 1.4 percent - not a rounding issue.
Answer to the attorney. Put it in writing, calmly: the survey will show what was found, with notes; the area discrepancy will be noted; and the certificate cannot state something the field evidence contradicts. Offer a path - deliver on Thursday with complete notes, or narrow the scope before the work by removing optional items, in writing. Do not accept a scope reduction retroactively to conceal observed conditions, and do not let a closing date convert a finding into a favor.
2. How do you handle the utility easement that appears in the title commitment but whose instrument was never provided?
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Separate title from observation. A recorded easement is a title matter documented by an instrument; a gas main is physical evidence. The survey must not assume one proves the other.
Requests first. Ask the title company, in writing, for the recorded easement instrument and any unrecorded documents in its possession; the standards contemplate that the surveyor is furnished the title commitment and the documents it references. Review the recorded instrument for width, centerline, and bearings so the easement can be plotted accurately rather than sketched from memory of the commitment language.
If the document never arrives. Show the observed gas main and add a clear note: 'Observed 12-inch steel gas main; no easement instrument furnished at the time of survey; location shown from field evidence only.' Do not draw a 20-ft easement strip from the title commitment alone as though its geometry were known - the commitment typically does not give the bearing and distance.
Report and revise. Tell the client and the title company what is shown and why. If the instrument arrives later, the survey can be revised and re-certified; that is far cheaper than a claim that a surveyor suppressed a known utility.
Do not certify around it. A certification that the parcel is free of encumbrances other than those shown, when a known unplotted easement exists, is not something the surveyor can support. The note protects the client, the title company, and the surveyor.
3. What are plausible explanations for the 0.09-acre difference, and what would you do before publishing a measured area?
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Candidate causes.
- Deed error or an old computation made from a different basis (chains and links, a closure correction, or an area carried forward from an earlier deed).
- A right-of-way or sidewalk taking that removed area from the parcel without a corresponding deed amendment; the 1.1-ft sidewalk intrusion is a direct hint.
- Vacated paper street or a lot-line change recorded after the deed description was written.
- Occupation that has drifted from the record lines over decades, especially where fences or walls were maintained by owners rather than by survey.
- A boundary that follows a natural or physical feature (a wall, a ditch, a former railroad) whose position has changed since the deed.
Verification steps. Close the boundary mathematically and check the closure; compare the deed calls against the found monuments and the occupation; pull the prior deeds in the chain for each line; look for recorded takings, easements, and vacations affecting the frontage; and compute the area both from the record calls and from the monumented boundary, keeping the two figures distinct.
Publishing. Report the measured area with a note identifying the basis - for example, 'area shown is computed from the boundary determined by the survey; deed area is 6.32 acres.' If the difference traces to a specific document, cite it. Never present the deed area as though it were measured, and never present a measured area without telling the reader what boundary it came from.