At a recent closing, of a townhouse, we (the buyers and I) had a question about which parking space belonged to us, and exactly where it was located.
When we arrived at the closing we were anxiously going over the survey, and it answered our question about the parking right away. It was not only what we thought, but also included an extra space that we didn't realize we had, that was deeded to our unit (unit 2).
Needless to say, my clients were very happy about that. As we were sitting around the closing table, the survey was passing from hand to hand, while we were waiting for funding, and my client, who has a degree in architecture noted... "the survey isn't of our unit". You could have heard a pin drop.
Instantly, the attorney was re-inspecting the survey... (yes, he'd already looked at it... but in fairness... he'd never been to the site, so had no idea if it was the right unit or not) I pulled out my copy, and sure enough... the survey was of the wrong unit. It was unit 1, which was an end unit... our unit was unit 2. Uh oh. So, does that mean that unit 1 owns the two spaces INCLUDING ours? That would not be a good result.
So, we start reading legal description...
The worst things I'd ever encountered, regarding a survey, at a closing, had been an unknown easement... sometimes an abandoned easement... and, of course, the occasional fence or sidewalk encroachment. But I'd never come across a survey of the wrong property. Surveyors are usually such persnickety people, and they take such careful measurements. But whoops, this one had surveyed the wrong building.
In this case, it turned out the legal description was correct. The parking was correct (Phew!)... the only thing wrong was the drawing of the property. We jumped through some hoops... got our hands on the old survey which showed the correct drawing... the sellers "certified" that there had been no change since, and the title company underwrote (or overwrote) the old survey, contingent on a new drawing arriving withing 10 days.
I've gotten a little complacent, and have been just "glancing" at surveys... but you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be paying a little more attention to the next survey!! You betcha.
Dodged a drawing there!
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