Land Surveyors in Brooklyn, NY

Rowhouse Stock and a Long Coast

Brooklyn splits cleanly into two survey markets. Inland, it is brownstone and rowhouse: narrow lots, attached buildings, deep rear yards, and a century of alterations behind them. On the coast it is flood mapping, and the two rarely overlap.

The Rear Extension Problem

If there is one finding that defines residential survey work in Brooklyn it is the unlegalised rear extension. Rear yards here are deep by city standards, which made building into them attractive, and a very large share of what was built across the last eighty years was never filed. It surfaces at the closing, when the drawing shows the structure sitting closer to the rear line than the record contemplates. It is rarely fatal and it is almost never a surprise to anyone who has bought here before - but it has to be measured before it can be resolved, which is why the survey should be ordered when the contract is signed rather than the week of the closing.

The Coastal Half

Coney Island, Brighton, Gerritsen Beach, Sheepshead Bay, Mill Basin and the Canarsie waterfront sit in mapped flood zone, and the post-Sandy remapping moved a great many properties between zones. That makes the elevation certificate a routine request in south Brooklyn and an unusual one three miles inland.

What Gets Ordered Here

A title survey for most residential closings, a full boundary survey where a fence or an extension is genuinely in dispute, and an as-built survey wherever existing work is being legalised. The industrial waterfront and the rezoned corridors bring ALTA/NSPS survey work and construction stakeout on new build. topographic survey requests come mainly from architects working on rear extensions, and subdivision survey work turns up on the larger legacy industrial parcels.

Brooklyn Survey FAQs