Land surveyors
Around Long Beach, a boundary survey usually starts at the recorded tract map that created your lot and at the monuments in the street that the map was measured from. Those monuments are searched for, checked against each other and used to rebuild the block, and your corners are then measured out from them. The drawing shows the record lines alongside what is physically there - the block wall, the fence, the garage, the neighbor's patio cover - so any mismatch is visible. In most tracts that mismatch is small; the survey exists for the cases where it is not, and for anyone about to build near the line.
Most house lots around Long Beach were created by a recorded tract map, and that map - not the deed on its own - is where a residential boundary survey begins. Tract maps tie each lot to monuments set in the street, usually at centerline intersections, so the practical job is recovering enough of those street monuments to rebuild the block and then measuring the lot out from them. Repaving and utility trenching have destroyed a good share of them, and in the older neighborhoods of Long Beach and Signal Hill the original maps predate modern instruments. Part of every job is deciding which recovered monuments still hold their original position.
LA County Public Works holds the tract maps, corner records and filed surveys for most of the service area. Seal Beach and Los Alamitos are in Orange County, so their records come from the Orange County Surveyor instead.
The boundary question that comes up most in Southern California is the concrete block wall between backyards. In Lakewood, Bellflower and the eastern tracts of Long Beach, those walls were often put up by one owner years after the houses, and not always on the line. A wall sitting a few inches onto one lot is an ordinary result.
California Business and Professions Code section 8762 requires a Record of Survey to be filed with the county surveyor in certain cases - for example, when monuments are set to mark property lines or the survey reveals a material discrepancy with the recorded maps. Where existing monuments are used as control, a corner record is the usual filing. Either filing becomes public record.
If a new wall, fence or backyard ADU is planned, marking the line first costs far less than moving work later. If neighbors want the line itself moved, that is a lot line adjustment, and a commercial parcel headed for a lender usually needs an ALTA/NSPS survey instead. Whether an old wall affects ownership is a question for a real estate attorney; the survey supplies the facts they work from.
How long does it take? Field work is typically one visit on an ordinary residential lot. Record research and monument recovery set the schedule, and a block where many street monuments have been lost takes longer.
These are usually asked for on the same transaction:
Surveys, exhibits and legal descriptions for moving a boundary between adjoining parcels under the Subdivision Map Act exemption.
Learn More →Lot lines, existing buildings, setbacks, easements, utilities and grades - the measured base an ADU site plan is drawn on.
Learn More →The national survey standard title insurers and commercial lenders rely on, with every title commitment exception plotted or noted.
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