An ALTA survey is the diligence step that reconciles the paper record with the physical ground, and that reconciliation is where deals get saved or lost. A title search reads recorded documents. It tells you what the county files say about ownership, liens, and easements. It cannot tell you that a neighbor's building crosses your line, that the fence sits four feet inside the deed, or that a recorded easement runs straight through your planned building pad. Those are matters of survey, and only a physical measurement finds them. Title tells you what is written. The survey tells you what is true on the dirt. The gap between the two is the risk you inherit at closing.
Key Takeaways
A title search reviews recorded documents; it cannot detect encroachments, boundary gaps, or overlaps that exist on the ground but not in the county records.
The 2021 ALTA/NSPS Minimum Standard Detail Requirements, effective February 23, 2021 and jointly adopted by the American Land Title Association and the National Society of Professional Surveyors, set a maximum allowable Relative Positional Precision of 0.07 feet plus 50 parts per million at the 95 percent confidence level.
Standard title policy language excepts coverage for "encroachments, overlaps, boundary line disputes, and any other matters which would be disclosed by an accurate survey," which means the survey is what converts those exceptions into known, priced risk.
Table A is the menu of optional survey items, zoning, flood zone, utilities, and vertical relief among them, that a buyer negotiates onto the survey to match the diligence to the deal.
A survey priced in the low thousands to low five figures routinely surfaces exposure that runs into six figures once a lost building footprint or a forced boundary cure is counted.
What Does an ALTA Survey Find That a Title Search Misses?
An ALTA survey finds physical conditions that recorded documents never capture: encroachments across boundary lines, gaps and overlaps between adjoining descriptions, structures sitting inside easements, and occupation lines that contradict the deed. A title search covers only what is filed with the county. The two answer different questions, and a clean title report says nothing about the ground.
The title commitment lists recorded matters: the vesting deed, mortgages, easements, liens, and restrictions. It is a documentary product. The survey is a physical one. A surveyor sets instruments on the actual corners, measures the improvements, and plots them against the legal description. That process is the only way to discover a loading dock that crosses the line, a shared driveway that no recorded agreement governs, or a parcel that measures smaller than its deed. As the law firm Williams Mullen notes, an ALTA survey is designed to reveal the physical conditions and encroachments that a records search cannot.
Question | Title search answers | ALTA survey answers |
|---|---|---|
Who owns record title? | Yes | No |
What liens and mortgages are recorded? | Yes | No |
Are there recorded easements or restrictions? | Yes, if filed | Yes, and it plots them on the ground |
Does a structure encroach across a boundary? | No | Yes |
Do adjoining descriptions gap or overlap? | No | Yes |
Is a building sitting inside a recorded easement? | No | Yes |
Does the fenced or occupied line match the deed? | No | Yes |
What is the true dimensioned area? | No, it repeats the deed | Yes, it measures it |
The pattern is consistent. Title tells you what should be true from the record. The survey tells you what is true on site. When they disagree, the disagreement is the finding, and an ALTA survey produces it.
How Precise Is an ALTA Survey Required to Be?
An ALTA survey is held to a national accuracy standard. The 2021 ALTA/NSPS Minimum Standard Detail Requirements set a maximum allowable Relative Positional Precision of 0.07 feet, roughly two centimeters, plus 50 parts per million of the distance between the corners being tested, measured at the 95 percent confidence level. This is a measured tolerance, not an estimate.
That precision matters because boundary disputes are won and lost on inches. The standard, jointly promulgated by the American Land Title Association and the National Society of Professional Surveyors and effective February 23, 2021, means the surveyor must monument and measure corners to a defined tolerance rather than to judgment. The 50 parts per million term scales with distance, so a longer line carries a larger allowable error, but the fixed 0.07-foot floor governs the tight measurements where encroachments and overlaps live. Law firms tracking the standard, including Womble Bond Dickinson, frame the 2021 revision as tightening the shared expectations between title underwriters and surveyors on what a title survey must deliver.
The consequence for an operator is defensibility. A survey certified to the ALTA/NSPS standard carries a known precision, which is what lets a title company remove the general survey exception and issue extended coverage over boundary and encroachment risk. The standard is the reason the survey is insurable.
What Do Table A Optional Items Add to Due Diligence?
Table A is the negotiated menu of optional items a buyer can add to the base ALTA survey to match the diligence to the specific deal. The base survey addresses boundaries, encroachments, and record easements. Table A extends it to zoning, flood zone, utilities, vertical relief, and more, each item selected and priced before fieldwork begins.
The buyer, lender, and title company decide together which Table A items the transaction needs. A vacant development site cares about vertical relief and utilities; a stabilized asset cares about zoning conformance and parking counts. Selecting the right items is a diligence decision, not a clerical one, because an unselected item is a question the survey will not answer. Per the ALTA/NSPS standard, several items depend on the client furnishing source material, zoning conformance, for instance, requires a third-party zoning report before the surveyor will map it.
Table A item | What it adds | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
Item 3, Flood zone | Plots FEMA flood zone classification on the survey | Insurance underwriting, grading design |
Item 5, Vertical relief | Contours, datum, and benchmark | Site design, drainage, development feasibility |
Item 6, Zoning | Setbacks, height, parking from a furnished zoning report | Conformance and reuse analysis |
Item 11, Utilities | Locations of observed and plotted utility lines | Development, avoiding builds over easements |
The lesson is scope discipline. A survey is only as complete as the Table A items attached to it. Under-scope the order and it comes back clean on questions it was never asked. Utilities and easements interact directly: a plotted utility line can reveal that a recorded easement crosses ground the buyer intended to build on, a conflict that neither the title search nor a base survey without Item 11 would surface.
What Does a Missed Encroachment Actually Cost?
A missed encroachment costs a multiple of the survey that would have caught it, because the exposure is measured in lost building area or a forced legal cure, not in survey fees. An ALTA survey commonly prices in the low thousands to low five figures for a commercial parcel. The condition it surfaces routinely carries six-figure consequences.
Consider a worked example. The inputs are illustrative, but the arithmetic follows from them.
A buyer acquires an 87,120 square foot infill parcel, two acres, for $2,000,000, a land basis near $23 per square foot.
The title search comes back clean. No recorded adverse matters.
The underwriting assumes a 30,000 square foot single-story distribution building, sized to the deed dimensions.
The ALTA survey monuments the corners to the 0.07-foot-plus-50-ppm standard and finds the occupied and fenced line on the north side sits 4.5 feet inside the deed line, running the full 210-foot depth of the parcel.
Lost usable width times depth: 4.5 feet times 210 feet equals 945 square feet of area the buyer paid for but does not control.
More material, the true line plus the required 20-foot setback pulls the buildable envelope in. The 30,000 square foot footprint no longer fits the compliant pad. The plan drops to roughly 27,500 square feet, a 2,500 square foot shortfall.
Value the shortfall through income: 2,500 square feet at a $9 per square foot net rent is $22,500 of annual net operating income. Capitalized at 6.5 percent, that is about $346,000 of value.
The survey that found this cost a fraction of one percent of the exposure it surfaced. Found before closing, the buyer reprices, restructures, or walks, and the $346,000 sits with the seller. Found after closing, the buyer owns it, and now negotiates a boundary cure from the weaker position of a recorded owner. This is why a title policy's standard exception for survey matters is not boilerplate. It is the insurer declining the exact risk the buyer just discovered they were carrying. The title insurance is priced around the search; the survey is what prices the ground. Encroachments and easements that constrain development compound the same way, a dynamic covered in how recorded lines cap development.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is an ALTA survey the same as a title search?
No. A title search is a review of recorded documents for ownership, liens, and easements. An ALTA survey is a physical field measurement that plots improvements against the boundary. They answer different questions, and one does not substitute for the other.
Why does a title company want an ALTA survey before issuing extended coverage?
Standard title policies exempt coverage for encroachments, overlaps, and boundary disputes that a survey would reveal. To remove that general exception and insure over survey risk, the title company needs a survey certified to the ALTA/NSPS standard so the risk is defined rather than unknown.
What is Relative Positional Precision?
It is the maximum allowable measurement error between adjacent boundary corners under the ALTA/NSPS standard: 0.07 feet plus 50 parts per million, at the 95 percent confidence level. It sets how precisely the surveyor must locate corners, which is what makes the survey defensible in a boundary dispute.
Do I always need every Table A item?
No. Table A items are optional and selected to fit the deal. A development site and a stabilized asset need different items. Under-scoping the order leaves questions unanswered, so the item list should be set with the lender and title company before fieldwork.
Conclusion
An ALTA survey is not a formality that duplicates the title search. It is the step that tests the paper record against the physical ground, and the only step that finds the encroachment, the gap, the overlap, and the easement conflict that no recorded document reports. The title search tells the operator what the county believes. The survey tells the operator what is there. When the two disagree, the survey is right, and the operator who ordered it early holds the leverage. The one who skipped it inherits the difference at closing and pays for it in building area, cure cost, or a policy exception that was never insured.