Real estate professionals order ALTA Surveys for different purposes and to satisfy different requirements. The survey may be required to secure title insurance at the closing of a deal, or it may be utilized as a design document for engineering purposes. Several factors determine the cost, lead-time, and complexity of an ALTA Survey.
Essentially, the scope of surveying work gets more complicated and takes more time when more improvements exist or are planned for the project. For example, a building with undulated façade and lots of hardscaping and landscaping represents a lot of detailed work for the Surveyor compared to a rectangular-shaped warehouse with striped parking. Informing the Surveyor of your complete scope of work required is step one in ordering the right scope of work for the ALTA Survey.
In this GlobeSt. article, we look at four types of scopes of work and how they differ from one another. I also discuss what survey users can do to prepare prior to ordering an ALTA survey and best practices that could help CRE transactions go smoothly.