Get a survey when you buy a home in Charlotte, NC. It could literally save you thousands of dollars and weeks of headaches in the future. Unfortunately, I've seen a lot of people buy a house without getting a survey. Many lenders do not require a new home buyer in North Carolina to get a survey; however I highly recommend it, especially in cases where it's known that there is something unique about the property. It could be that a fence is on the property, power lines, or a city easement of some kind. Unfortunately, you just don't always know where exactly your property boundaries are and whether or not there is some encroachment of some kind unless you have a survey done. You may be okay with the encroachment at this point in time, but it sure is better to know about it now rather than at the time you are trying to sell your house.
Recently, unfortunately, I had a deal fall through for one of my seller clients. About 15 years ago, my client's parents purchased a house and had a survey done as part of the transaction to purchase the home. When the survey was done at that time, the survey showed a drainage pipe running through the back of the property. With the drainage pipe came an easement of 7.5 feet on either side of the pipe for a total of a 15 foot easement. Interestingly, and I have never seen this done this way before, but the surveyor actually adjusted where the easement was located based on where the house was built. In other words, even though the pipe went straight, within about 1.5 feet from the back corner of the house, the surveyor drew the easement to be an irregular shape that went around the side of the house rather than through it. Fast forward to today, and the buyer of this listed property now has the choice whether to get a survey or not. Had this buyer chosen not to get a survey, they would be the ones dealing with this problem at some point in the future. Though, of course, I'm not happy that it's my client that is having to deal with it, it was smart that the buyer chose to have a survey that showed the easement being a straight easement that followed the line of the pipe causing the back corner of the house to be located within the easement by about 5 feet.
Though we're working on getting this resolved, it is truly a headache and something my client surely did not want to have to deal with. In this case, my client really did nothing wrong, as the original surveyor made the mistake. This is one good example of where title insurance comes in to play, but that's not going to do anything about the amount of hours spent by my client and myself trying to clear this up.
If you're looking to buy a home in the Charlotte region, take the time and spend a little money to make sure you do it right and know what you're getting into. Get a survey done and have the appropriate corrections made now before the property is yours and the problems are as well.
(photo courtesy of State Records NSW on flickr.com)
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