True or False: Goodbye Land Surveys, Hello Title Insurance?

In today’s real estate world, many lenders will not require a property survey to finance a property when there is title insurance. But does that mean your client should buy a home without having a survey?

Let’s look at a land surveys and their benefits.

A land survey describes, verifies and maps the boundary lines and improvements of the land being surveyed. The survey will reveal power lines, building locations, fence locations, where the street is, regulations, zoning and more.

It benefits the homeowner to have a survey. A seller who doesn’t have one may want to think about getting one as some potential buyers may make it a condition on an offer,

Drilling down, a survey will:

• Reveal if a fence, wall, garage or other structure from a neighbouring property is in fact on your property. There have even been instances of driveways spilling over onto another property owner’s land.
• Enable you to avoid misunderstandings as far as where your property line is as not to accidentally build a fence or other structure on a neighbour’s property.
• Reveal/end property line disputes
• Validate exact property dimensions, sizes and locations of structures on a property to be matched against a listing
• Where there are plans for future investment, a survey can help you understand if things like dividing your lot in the future are a possibility.

One of the reasons that title insurance emerged as such a competitive product is because, in the past, surveys have been somewhat time-consuming and expensive to get – but not so much anymore. Online applications like GeoWarehouse enable you in most cases to obtain a land survey for your client online.

While some have made it a question of survey or title insurance and even purchased a home without a survey just to avoid the expense, having both seems to be the best scenario. In a recent blog, Brian Madigan on OntarioRealEstateSource.com agrees: http://www.ontariorealestatesource.com/images/A%20Survey%20or%20Title%20Insurance.pdf.

With a survey and title insurance your client will know all the facts about the property and have insurance that protects them against defects in that information and even potential forgery/fraud. Title insurance protects the insured against matters that happened in the past as opposed to things that might happen in the future.

If you would like more information about how you can obtain a property survey online for your client please visit www.geowarehouse.ca.