Land Surveyors in Staten Island, NY

Suburban Rules Inside the City

Staten Island is the only borough where a survey looks like a survey anywhere else in America. Houses are detached, lots are large enough to have side yards, driveways are private, and setbacks are real distances that can be measured and argued about. Everywhere else in the city an attached rowhouse leaves nothing to dispute; here there is a fence, a shed, a garage, a pool and a side yard, and any of them can be over a line.

The Largest Flood Exposure in the City

The east and south shores - Midland Beach, New Dorp Beach, Oakwood, Great Kills, Tottenville - carry the biggest concentration of mapped flood zone in New York, and the area took the worst of Sandy. The remapping that followed was extensive, and a certificate completed against a superseded panel is worthless. That makes the elevation certificate the single most requested document on this side of the island, frequently ordered on its own rather than as part of a transaction.

Room to Divide

Staten Island is also the only borough where lots are routinely large enough that splitting one is a real prospect, so subdivision survey work appears here more than anywhere else in the city. The centre of the island has genuine relief as well, which pulls topographic survey into the picture on hillside lots.

What Gets Ordered Here

boundary survey work for fences, sheds and additions in the side yard - the classic suburban dispute - plus title survey across a very active one-family market, as-built survey for decks, garages and additions built without a filing, and construction stakeout on new build, which continues here at a scale the other boroughs cannot match. ALTA/NSPS survey work is limited to the commercial corridors.

Staten Island Survey FAQs