Land survey cost.

Does anybody have a ballpark cost range for a boundary survey of 80 acres?

As some of you might have seen, I purchased 80 acres recently. Only 1 boundary has a clear fenceline, the other 3 lines haven’t been cleared or cut in decades and there are no monuments that we can find. The previous owner had the property since 1928, so if there was an old survey done back then, there is no record of it and obviously the markers would be very difficult to find.

Because the property has not been hunted or otherwise used in decades, the neighbors have encroached on the property from 2 sides. Using GPS, I’m pretty sure that some of their stands and trails are on my land, but obviously this is not exact.

I want to cut boundary lines on all sides of the property, but I think the only way forward is to get a survey to mark the corners and put in some posts along each line.

Anyone have any idea what this would cost? Just ballpark range?

Grouse

I haven’t done any large parcels now for about 6 years. Everything has been residential lots. The largest variables are how well the documentation has been done. When I bought my farm, we found a 100+ year old corner post was off by 9′. That affect 3 land owners

Randy, I’m even thinking that even the existing fenceline might be off by a considerable distance. Using Google Earth to measure center to center of the mile line roads, this fence should be equidistant between the roads. It isn’t. It’s off by 30+ feet.

Rather than risking cutting a mile of fenceline and then finding out I just cut in the wrong place, I think it’s probably going to be worth it to hire a surveyor and get the boundaries right from the beginning.

Grouse

We just had 36 acres surveyed on a very messed-up parcel and it was around $3000. We knew some of the markers and drove him around on our 4wheeler. Not sure if that’s a normal price, but it’s my only reference.

Grouse, I pulled up the invoice from the last 40 I sold. PLAT, Legal Description, corner pins, and 4 flagged boundary lines = $3675.00

I don’t remember the cost when the land in Harmony was surveyed. I do remember that our surveyor and the neighbors surveyor had different points marked out, some as much as 12 feet different???? It caused a feud for 2-3 years. Eventually we were able to work it out and now that particular neighbor is an awesome asset and ally. Hope yours goes better. Nothing worse than bad neighbors.

I want to say we were quoted about $5000 to do our 4 corners, on the 120 acres we picked up. It is 3 fortys deep & I know to find all 8 points was gonna be over $8000. Luckily they were widening the road on the front and just set new blaze markers in the tress and we could find the most important questioned corner (was in our favor too)

Stupid question here..

Why such the high cost?

Hey guys. I am a registered land surveyor in Wisconsin. The cost for a land survey can vary greatly from parcel to parcel. When surveying even a 40 acre parcel, the whole 1 mile square section will need to be surveyed. Some times the parcel will be in two or three different sections, therefore all involved sections need to be surveyed. Terrain can be a large factor in the cost also. Hope this helped. If anyone has any more questions let me know.
Chris

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Stupid question here..

Why such the high cost?

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My guess is because they can. Coworker just went through this the other day and asked to have an extra stake midway between corner posts. A mere $500.00 for 10min of extra work and 3 taps of his hammer

TFG-
I just got this email from a buddy that does land surveys.

Ricco,
A surveyor would need the legal description of the property. Then they would research to get the section information to compute where the property is. Then they would survey in the field enough to determine the section breakdown and from there they could survey the property. It’s like fitting a puzzle piece into a large puzzle. A surveyor needs to have all the information before they can find or set the property corners. A wide range of prices would depend on if the county has the information available and the amount of tree cover. If they just want one line marked in the field it would be much cheaper then getting a full survey with all the lines marked and a certificate of survey, which would require additional office time to draft. A rough guess would be $1500 to get one line marked and $3000 to get a complete survey. The smaller firms up north that already have some of the information needed could do it for those prices. In the winter when work is really slow, my company could do it for maybe around $2000 for one line and $3500 for a complete survey. It all comes down to how much time. We charge $105 per hour for a one person crew. If you add in travel time and office time things add up quickly.

To survey a house lot like yours we would charge about $500 to mark the corners and $1200 for a full survey. Hopefully this helps. You need a new cell provider. Good luck hunting. I’m ditching work at noon to go for the weekend.

*For what it’s worth