California Surveyors Forums

Recently I've been told by several land surveyors that if a client wants to have a survey of a property in Calif. performed by a licensed surveyor that the survey must be filed with the County Recorder and that survey then becomes public record. If that is correct, what happens under the following scenario:

Property Owner A puts a large piece of land on the market for sale; the land has never been surveyed. Company XYZ is interested in buying this land & in the course of their due diligence they get permission from Property Owner A to get the land surveyed. XYZ hires a land surveyor but wants keeps their business plans private and doesn't want to disclose their intentions to the marketplace (ie; XYZ doesn't want other market participants to know about their interest in this land so that the price of this land, or adjoining parcels for sale, get bid up). I realize if a land survey was filed with the County it wouldn't have the name of the client on the survey but given that a certain unique piece of land was being surveyed it could indicate interest by specific buyers.

Can a client hire a land surveyor in California and include a clause in the contract that the land survey can't be disclosed/filed with the County (or not disclosed for a certain period of time) for reasons described above? Are there California Business Codes and/or Land Surveyor Ethics Codes that deal with this specific situation?

Can a client hire a land surveyor in California and include a clause in the contract that the land survey can't be disclosed/filed with the County (or not disclosed for a certain period of time) for reasons described above?

A licensed land surveyor in California can't contract away his legal responsibilities. But as has been noted on the parallel thread at RPLS Today, this is pretty much a non-problem.

that looks like trouble to me. secrets, secrets.

One thing that could be included is a stipulation that the Surveyor not file with the County Surveyor until a later time (bearing in mind the 90 day limit), and there's the further possibility of issuing a letter to the County Surveyor for a time extension if reasonable. In most cases, the initial 90 days should provide plenty of time for things to be well underway after the completion of the field survey.

If the survey was done for the purpose of "subdividing" the land, a ROS is not required to be filed by 90 days. So, pull a parcel map number for the land and take your time preparing a tentative parcel map. Just make sure you include contract language pertaining to the tentative map. Most areas still use a paper tracking system so the public will likely never be the wiser.

For the reasons stated here and on the RPLSToday forum, I think this is a worry over an extremely remote risk. However, even if the buyer is footing the bill, he can work through a 3rd party agent, or better yet, the seller as the party requesting the survey.

If I were the surveyor in this position, I would feel more comfortable having my contract designate the seller or agent to the buyer as the requesting party than I would including some provision to play with the statutory submittal timeframes.