Land Surveyors in Manhattan, NY

The Record Is the Hard Part

Manhattan is the one place in this market where field work is routinely the smaller half of the job. A parcel here can carry a chain of title running back to the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 and beyond, and the grid that plan imposed cut across farms, estates and colonial-era grants whose descriptions still surface in the deeds. Below Houston Street the grid gives out entirely and the lots follow lanes that predate it. Establishing what the parcel legally is takes days of reading before anyone sets up an instrument.

Three Things That Are Almost Unique to Here

Vault space is the first: cellars extending out under the public sidewalk, licensed rather than owned, carrying a city charge, and expected on the drawing even though they lie outside the lot line. Party walls are the second - a wall shared with the buildings on both sides, governed by an agreement that has to be found and read. Development rights are the third: unused floor area transferred to a neighbouring lot and recorded against it, invisible on the ground and decisive to what the site is worth. All three land on the same sheet as the lot lines.

What Gets Ordered Here

Commercial transactions dominate, so the ALTA/NSPS survey is the workhorse, usually with a topographic survey alongside where a development is contemplated. Residential closings in co-op and condo stock need a title survey. Development rights and zoning lot mergers drive subdivision survey work. Interior fit-outs and conversions generate as-built survey requests, new towers need construction stakeout, disputes over an alley or a lot line need a full boundary survey, and the mapped edges of lower Manhattan occasionally call for an elevation certificate.

Manhattan Survey FAQs