FREEHOLD LAND SURVEYS

This company was originally hired by the buyers of our house. They came unannounced, handed their card to our 12- year-old son while we were at work, and proceeded to perform the survey. An encroachment was noted - but NOT MARKED on site - and the only document provided to anyone was poorly marked. The encroaching wall was mislabeled as stone instead of wood, and it was impossible to determine from the image exactly where the wall crosses the property line. No measurements describing the extent of the encroachment relative to any other landmarks were provided, just an arrow on one property line on a tiny letter-sized print. This imprecision and lack of detail about something that clearly would have to be dealt with led to no end of trouble between us and the neighbor (owner of the encroaching wall) trying to work out the easement agreement before the closing date. Ultimately, we were required to pay them ourselves to come back and mark the property line with stakes. They came, but not when we asked them to and we specifically said that we and the neighbors needed to be there for the survey. The stakes were placed without any notice and against our instructions about needing to be there. They charged the buyer $450 for the first survey and us another $300 for the second trip just to mark the line to be able to interpret the original survey. While their survey may have been accurate (how would we know?), and the service was performed (if incompletely), I'd not recommend them to anyone.

They did a good job. It was tricky because neither of my adjacent neighbors' properties had site plots on file with the city, so Freehold had to survey their way over from distant properties to establish the actual boundaries of my land. Also, the back end of the property is a wooded area that was tough to get into. They got the job done in a timely manner at a fair price. I got my building permit.