Land Surveyors in Long Beach, CA

A City With Water on Three Sides

Long Beach runs from the harbor in the west to Alamitos Bay in the east, and a lot of its most valuable housing sits within a few feet of sea level. Naples is built on three islands threaded by the Rivo Alto and Naples canals, with a City-maintained seawall and a public walkway between most homes and the water. The Peninsula is a single row of blocks between the ocean and the bay, and Belmont Shore sits just behind it. Much of that shoreline is state tidelands the City has held in trust since 1911, which is why an accurate line between private lot and public frontage matters so much here.

The Ground That Moved

Production from the Wilmington oil field made the harbor district sink, by about 29 feet at the center by 1958, until water injection that began in 1953 finally stopped it. Monuments and benchmarks from that era moved with the ground. When an old plat or elevation disagrees with today's measurement, subsidence is often the reason, and the answer is to tie to current control rather than the record.

Bungalow Districts Inland

Bluff Park, California Heights and Bixby Knolls hold much of the city's 1920s and 1930s Craftsman and Spanish Revival housing. These are older, narrower lots with detached garages at the back, and those rear garages are where a lot of the city's backyard units are now going.

What Gets Ordered Here

An elevation certificate is routine in Naples, the Peninsula and around the bay. Bungalow owners adding a unit start with an ADU site survey, and disputed fences or garages call for a boundary survey. Architects on waterfront and hillside remodels ask for a topo survey. Commercial deals near downtown and the port need an ALTA/NSPS land title survey, new builds need construction staking and a final as-built survey, and neighbours redrawing a shared line use a lot line adjustment.

Long Beach Survey FAQs