ALTA/NSPS Land Title Surveys: what the standard requires and who asks for one

An ALTA/NSPS Land Title Survey is a boundary survey performed to a published national standard and tied directly to a title insurance commitment. It exists because commercial real estate transactions cross state lines, and a lender in one state needed a way to order a survey in another state and know in advance what would come back. The standard is jointly maintained by the American Land Title Association and the National Society of Professional Surveyors, and it is revised periodically, so the first practical rule is to confirm which edition your client and title company are working under.

The short way to describe it: a boundary survey answers where the lines are, while an ALTA/NSPS survey answers where the lines are and how every item on the title commitment relates to them. That second half is what the extra fee buys.

Why a separate standard exists

In an ordinary residential purchase, the parties know the property and the risk is small. In a commercial deal the buyer may never have walked the site, the lender is somewhere else entirely, and the money at risk is large. Everyone involved needs a document whose contents they can predict before it is ordered.

The standard supplies that predictability. It defines a minimum scope every such survey must meet regardless of who performs it or where, sets out the research the surveyor is expected to do, describes how the plat must be presented and certified, and provides a menu of optional additions so the parties can negotiate extra scope explicitly instead of discovering after the fact that they wanted something the surveyor did not do.

The title commitment is the spine of the job

This is the structural difference from a plain boundary survey. The surveyor is furnished with the current title commitment together with copies of the documents listed in its exceptions: easements, rights-of-way, restrictive covenants, prior plats, leases, and anything else of record affecting the property. The surveyor then goes through those exceptions one by one.

For each item the surveyor determines whether it can be plotted. Some can be plotted precisely because the document contains a description with courses and distances. Some can only be plotted approximately, from a sketch or a vague call. Some are blanket easements with no defined location. Some do not affect the surveyed parcel at all. The plat says which category each exception falls into, and that annotated correspondence between the title exception list and the drawing is the core value of the product.

What the base scope generally covers

Descriptions below are general. Do not rely on this page for the operative wording; read the current edition of the standard itself, which is published openly by the sponsoring organisations.

• A boundary determination made to the same professional standard as any other boundary survey, with monuments recovered and set and the evidence documented.
• Research of the record, including the documents furnished with the title commitment and other records the surveyor's professional judgment calls for.
• Location of the improvements on the property, and observation of features that suggest rights not shown in the record, such as worn paths, utility poles crossing the parcel, or an access drive serving a neighbour.
• Location of the parcel's relationship to adjoining streets and rights-of-way, including whether the property has physical and apparent record access to a public way.
• Evidence of encroachments, in either direction, and of gaps or overlaps with adjoiners.
• A plat drawn to the standard's presentation requirements and a certification in the form the standard prescribes, addressed to the parties who are entitled to rely on it.

Table A: the optional items

The standard includes an appendix, commonly called Table A, listing optional items the client may request. Nothing in Table A happens automatically. If it is not checked on the request, it is not in the scope and it is not in the price. Reproducing the list here would serve nobody, because it is revised between editions and the exact wording matters; what follows is the character of the items so you know the kinds of things you can ask for.

• Additional monumentation beyond the minimum, or specific monument types.
• Quantification of area, and expression of it in particular units.
• Vertical information such as spot elevations or contours over the site, which turns the job into a partial topographic survey.
• Location of substantial features on the site, and of parking, expressed as counts and striping.
• Additional research or plotting relating to zoning classification, setbacks, height and floor area restrictions, generally based on a zoning report the client supplies rather than on the surveyor's own legal interpretation.
• Utility location work of varying depth, from plotting what the record and visible evidence show, up to coordination with a subsurface utility engineering provider.
• Flood zone annotation from published mapping, and other items tailored to particular property types.

Who orders one, and when

How to keep the job on schedule

1. Send the current title commitment with legible copies of all exception documents, not just the commitment's list of them.
2. Return the Table A selections as a decided list, agreed among lender, buyer and counsel, rather than in three separate revisions.
3. Confirm who must be named in the certification before the plat is drafted; adding a party afterwards means reissuing a sealed document.
4. Arrange site access, including access to interiors, locked yards and tenant areas, before the crew mobilises.
5. If a zoning item is requested, supply the zoning report promptly, since the surveyor plots what the report states rather than interpreting the ordinance independently.
6. Allow time for the title company to review a draft and raise comments before the final is issued.

A well-run ALTA/NSPS survey is a coordination exercise as much as a measurement exercise. The measurements are rarely what delays it.