OT Where to find property line

I was wondering if there is a place on the net where you can get the gps cordinates for property corners? We have a little handheld garmin gps unit and thought it would be fun to try it out. Dont need to be real accurate but would be nice to know the aprox location of some jogs in the property line.

Thanks

Try your county website. Many have GIS. That will get you started.

Don"t know the answer to your question, but I"d like a cheap GPS that would be accurate enough to find property lines, or lay out fence lines. Last time I drew up a pasture, the GPS I borrowed was accurate to about 50 feet. Not nice for laying out fencelines!

Our county PVA has a website that you can pull up maps with the lines marked. You can zoom in to a pretty close satellite photo. All the property lines that I know well you can zoom in real close and they are all within 10' and most are closer than 5'. What is kind of funny, our county is pretty backward about alot of stuff but a few months ago no other county around us had a site like it.

Dave

Bill is right. Ours here in southest Iowa is called Beacon.

Irv*

It's a bit of a shot, but if the property was ever surveyed, surveyors will often pound in a piece of rebar or other metal stake at the important points and junctions. It is usually deep enough not to be found by casual examination but if you have access to a metal detector give it a try at the corners or anywhere you are sure of and check it out. If so it is entirely possible they were used on jogs and angles. You may find some of them if the NEIGHBORS property was surveyed instead of yours. Good luck.

The property lines you get from county databases are just drawn for tax purposes and are often inaccurate. They only get fixed when a taxpayer complains.

To my knowledge, not even surveyors will use GPS coordinates. Not accurate enough.

Best way I know to do it is - first read your deed and property description. Then go on-line to some place like Google-mapping, Terraserver, etc. and pull up an aerial view of your property. It will give you GPG coorinates. If you recognize landmarks, you can get the coordinates.

I just did this 50 acre remote parcel I have up north, so some hunters can find their way around with a GPS.

<a href="http://s104.photobucket.com/albums/m162/jdemaris/?action=view&current=worthcoordinates.jpg" target="_blank"> </a>

GPS Coordinates are in one place but theres no guarantee that any of your actual property corners are in any such location.

In the event any of your property corners are at section corners or half sections there may well be landmarks left from original or more recent surveys by county or private surveyors. A good physical inspection and a metal detector (driven iron rods, pins or pipes) may well locate them and if found DO NOT DISTURB but preserve and flag and document them for future reference. Look for evidence such as red flagging and wooden lathes or shiners or PK nails or evidence on trees.

In our jurisdiction the county surveyors re set and document and record section corners and the recorders office records private surveys so check with the county surveyors office and your recorder.

Often in rural areas boundaries are along old fence lines so look for fences or evidence where some may have existed.

Our county has a website with property lines superimposed over aerial photography that may help BUT those arent necessarily accurate at all.

Do your homework and research (start with your Deed) then get out in the field n start lookin n diggin...

John T

I went to the Land Registry office and bought a copy of the survey.Took a while to find the pins hidden in and under the sod.

We were given the coordinates for the corners of a piece of property we have because it is surrounded by state land so a state forestry surveyor calculated them. It's not that simple, common, or accurate! The GPS's that the foresters use cost thousands of dollars, some have antennas on long telescoping pole for working in timber. Thy are accurate to within one foot on a good day!

here is a fun thing to play with.and pretty accurate and you do not have to do all the walking.

jack
click here

(quoted from post at 20:49:11 11/25/09) Had my land surveyed by a Licensed Land Surveyor, the neighbor used some simple kind of GPS, his findings was off by over 200 feet,

could be you have to know how to us GPS, or spend Thousands of dollars for accurace, but this was my findings.

Click to expand...

o obtain survey kind of accuracy, they use augmented GPS, meaning they set up a ground based transmitter at a local known position to augment satellite data. You don't obtain that kind of accuracy from satellites alone.

Down at the local cross-roads is a square piece of granite rock, or maybe some other stuff, set in the front lawn of a home. There is a "plus" sign made into the top of the stone. folks say it has something to do with the local land surveys.
One nut wanted to dig it up, but the home owner came out a-hollerin and jumping up and down, and scared the miscreant away, so it is still there!

Supposedly, on some recent surveys here in New York, woodens survey pins that had been in the ground since the mid 1700s were found. That's kind of amazing. They had to know exactly where to look, and carefully dug down until they found a column of discolored soil (that had once been the pin).

Find the section corner marked by a large round brass piece that will have all the info that you need to locate it on your GPS don't get excited you could be off by 15 to 20 ft. even with the best one.. If you have access to a Military GPS it will put you right in the ballpark but the marker could be off by 15 to 20 ft. as they were installed over 100 years ago with very poor equipment. today we don't use GPS for finding property lines do to the fact that the old lines were off by 15 or so ft. We start at the section marker and work from there.
Walt

I think they also say 'do not disturb under penalty of law'.

I really love this website http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/WebSoilSurvey.aspx
You can spend hours on it and never get bored. You can measure buildings and acreage, look at soil types, and all kinds of neat stuff.
Websoil Survey

Thanks guys! I went to he county website and found the gis maps and they did everything i needed! I was able to measuse from a corner of a building to get to the property line and i didnt even have to leave my living room! Like i said, i was looking for the approx area and not exact spots.
Thanks again for all the replys!!