Land Survey - What Is Accepted Practice?

[kaptainrob]

Long story short:-

Vacant block of land (96 talangwah) in a popular mooban has existing homes either side.

Chanote shows parallel side boundaries @ 15m apart. Government land (khlong/easement) & rice paddy at rear.

Physical measurements at rear (between centres of boundary hedge/fences) equals ONLY 12.9m .. and that's being generous with hedge thickness.

I suspect one neighbouring (side) boundary has been established 2m out of whack, vectoring toward rear.

Vendor (mooban developer) staff says "mebbe tack 3 muns gubbermen man cum chek" .... lol ....

[How the <deleted> do they ever sell property?]

My question is:- are registered surveyors available to check Chanote (title deed) boundary pegs and if so, is this acceptable in law? Or must one still wait '3 muns' for official confirmation?

[Greenside]

Only took about 3 weeks for our local guy to come and confirm the boundaries although your mileage may vary. He's hardly likely to want to encourage you to sort it out, is he?

[Dante99]

The Land Offices sometimes offer expedited service for a fee, not large, and they are the ones to do it.

[eyecatcher]

Surely the vendor needs to have his land accurately measured or else he maybe trying to cheat a purchaser by suggesting a plot is bigger than it is.

I am plot searching at the moment, and always run a tape over it to check. when I find a plot we are seriously interested in, I will be on there sharpish with a theodolite.

[BB1955]

We found here in Hang Dong the land office will only come out if the owner of the land requests it . We were told if we didnt own the land we could not have it checked . Personally I would have the owner request it and offer to pay the fee. If you add a little to the fee you will get faster service . Much easier to have them put the poles in the right places before you try to deal with the land hog .... We were in a moo baan as well .

[kaptainrob]

We found here in Hang Dong the land office will only come out if the owner of the land requests it . We were told if we didnt own the land we could not have it checked . Personally I would have the owner request it and offer to pay the fee. If you add a little to the fee you will get faster service . Much easier to have them put the poles in the right places before you try to deal with the land hog .... We were in a moo baan as well .

I'm of the same opinion as Eyecatcher.

Given the massive size of this mooban and the price asked for land, I expect them to expedite survey work at their cost. I can already see there's a problem and have no desire to prove this at my cost unless it leads to rectification and recompense.... which I doubt will be forthcoming. Certainly not in time to purchase the land and commence construction before wet season.

I also foresee a legal fight with owners of the property which encroaches ... we don't wish to be party to that.

Might walk away from this one.

Of interest 2 other nearby vacant plots, of ~ 90 Talangwah, are virtually useless; cannot be built on due to drainage easements (khlongs) passing thru the middle and also located at rear of the land. A current 6m setback requirement is to be changed, this month(?) to 3m which means someone could build a small house yet the vendor is asking top dollar for the land. TiT. Caveat Emptor!

[Dante99]

Walking away is looking better and better as you offer more information about the vendor. If they are that way now, you can't expect much about their future maintenance of the development.

[Ticketmaster]

Well, I'm in Phit'lok, and I can tell you it ain't like in the US. In the US, the surveyor, assuming the land has never been previously surveyed (very rare), looks at the metes and bounds in the deed (which almost always reference some official benchmark as a starting point) then lays it out, staking the land. As to the locations of the stakes, the licensed surveyor is pretty much god, and with modern equipment, it would be rare for different surveyors to reach different results.

With a lot of previous experience in the US, I located the concrete markers (short poles), and laid out the land we purchased. It seemed short compared to what was on the chanote. Much to my chagrin, this is what I learned after diligent and repeated interrogation:

Official government "survey markers" are the little round concrete pegs with numbers inscribed on the tops of them. Often they are underground and you have to dig around to find them. They are referenced on the land office plot maps, and may be referenced on the chanote. Much land in Thailand has never been surveyed, so there are not any of these markers (my situation).

The short, pointed concrete poles (maybe a meter) that marked this land, I learned, were simply put in by previous land owners, sometimes with agreement of neighbors and sometimes arbitrarily. In other words, they don't mean much. So I drug my wife down to the local land office intending to get copies of the recorded plats so I could determine where the land borders really were. This is where I was really turned on my head. Recorded plat? Ha, ha, ha. The land description and drawing (with dimensions) on the chanote, in cases where the land has NOT been previously surveyed, are taken off the maps at the land office. But those maps are simply "made up." That's right. They just use an aerial photo, mark the locations of the few existing government survey markers, and then proceed to draw in the lots about where they think they should be. It's all quite meaningless.

So we called in a surveyor. The surveyor finds the nearest official government survey marker, if there is one, and looks at all the chanotes surrounding it and the property to be surveyed. He then calsl a meeting of all the neighbors owning land touching any corner of any property involved. He asks if they all agree as to the location of the existing markers, if any. If they all agree to each, that becomes the official marker and he plots it on his government maps. If they do not agree, he will put the government marker at the location where most of the people agree (usually where the old arbitrary marker is, because everybody has accepted it for so long), and he informs the disagreeing parties that if they do not like it, they have 30 days to file suit. Most Thais like to agree, so they will hem and haa and argue and eventually agree. If there is a hold-out, he typically will not do anything, and after 30 days, the survey becomes official.

I guess you would call this "survey by consensus"! Now, the surveyor does have a lot of fancy equipment. But instead of using the equipment to find and plot property corners pursuant to deeds and government records, he uses the equipment to find the geographic locations of the "corners by consensus," so he can plot them on his government map. Once this agreed survey becomes official record, it becomes immutable. This process is exactly the opposite of the US process. Often, when a villager applies for a survey, all the surrounding owners scramble to get a survey too, as a single owner could get his land squeezed smaller by surrounding surveys. If he is not present or has no money for a lawsuit, he gets stuck with the results of the surrounding surveys. This phenomenon gets the surveyor gets a burst of business.

In my case, I kind of wanted to fight with everybody at first thinking my chanote that said I had 23 meters across the back meant something. Once I finally understood how meaningless all the papers and markers were, my wife was able to get me to understand the importance of being the first to survey and the necessity of being friendly with everybody to get a favorable consensus. Pissing everybody off and getting into a lawsuit would be expensive and, ultimately, probably fruitless, as the location picked by the surveyor and partial consensus will be given a lot of weight by the judge (after all, what actual evidence do you have to the contrary?) Quiet threats of lawsuits, however, are legitimate bargaining tools at consensus time.

I had one government marker on one back corner of my property. As that was a previously agreed by consensus point, it was cast in stone. there was another of these government markers one lot over. If that neighbor got the full 16 meters declared on his chanote, my 23 meters shrank to 20 meters. I was adamant about my 23 meters. He was equally adamant about his 16 meters; perhaps more so, having inherited it from his dead mom whose ghost still resided on the property. He seemed to consider the marker posts she arbitrarily installed years before to be sacred. I offered him a shitload of money for the disputed piece, but even though he was poor, he was not about to sell out his mom's ghost for any amount of money. I threatened to go to court to resolve it. Then I suggested a compromise. Since the dispute was over 3 meters, I suggested we each give up a proportional amount of it. For him, he would lose 1.23 meters, and I would lose 1.77 meters, me losing a bigger piece because I had a bigger piece. The surveyor and all the gathered neighbors thought this was a brilliant, fair and unselfish solution and they rammed it down the reluctant dissenter's throat, giving us consensus.

Sometimes this place is unbelievable, but I wouldn't trade any of it for the oppressive enforcement of everything in the United States. Christ, you can't even have a hotdog cart in the US unless it has a refrigerator, hot water and three compartment stainless steel sink! I may not have any rights here, but I have one hell of a lot more freedom.

By the way, the "gubbermen man that will cum chek in 3 muns" is the surveyor. Surveyors are government employees here. And you can pay an expedite fee. But I warn you, you are likely to lose as the physical markers seem to get a hell of a lot more respect than what is on the chanote. A better method is not NOT seek a survey and start "encroaching" on the disputed property. You can't do much about the fence, but you can start trimming back the hedge and replacing it with lawn or something. But you've got a long way to get 2 meters.

Edited March 13, 2013 by Ticketmaster

[kaptainrob]

Thank you Ticketmaster, an interesting read and not far short of my expectations. The mooban was professionally surveyed ~ 30 years ago although by theodolite, not GPS as they do now.

There happens to be one round concrete survey marker, ironically the ONLY one and it's perfectly aligned with the skewed side boundary (at rear). I suspect the original builder/contractor/landscaper or someone non-official arbitrarily relocated it to suit the outdoor living/water feature and garden design.

Walking away .....

[eyecatcher]

Thank you Ticketmaster, an interesting read and not far short of my expectations. The mooban was professionally surveyed ~ 30 years ago although by theodolite, not GPS as they do now.

There happens to be one round concrete survey marker, ironically the ONLY one and it's perfectly aligned with the skewed side boundary (at rear). I suspect the original builder/contractor/landscaper or someone non-official arbitrarily relocated it to suit the outdoor living/water feature and garden design.

Walking away .....

Yes good background TM.

Rob, dont knock theodolite its perfect, istarted my surveying career measuring land with a chain, chaining they called it and that was cock on accurate but laborious.

And no i am not over 80, ....but over 40

[kaptainrob]

Thank you Ticketmaster, an interesting read and not far short of my expectations. The mooban was professionally surveyed ~ 30 years ago although by theodolite, not GPS as they do now.

There happens to be one round concrete survey marker, ironically the ONLY one and it's perfectly aligned with the skewed side boundary (at rear). I suspect the original builder/contractor/landscaper or someone non-official arbitrarily relocated it to suit the outdoor living/water feature and garden design.

Walking away .....

Yes good background TM.

Rob, dont knock theodolite its perfect, istarted my surveying career measuring land with a chain, chaining they called it and that was cock on accurate but laborious.

And no i am not over 80, ....but over 40

Not knocking it. Nothing better than old methods, however laborious.

If this were a recent development one could 'walk' a GPS over the site to check boundary pegs.

[Diablo Bob]

Thank you Ticketmaster, an interesting read and not far short of my expectations. The mooban was professionally surveyed ~ 30 years ago although by theodolite, not GPS as they do now.

There happens to be one round concrete survey marker, ironically the ONLY one and it's perfectly aligned with the skewed side boundary (at rear). I suspect the original builder/contractor/landscaper or someone non-official arbitrarily relocated it to suit the outdoor living/water feature and garden design.

Walking away .....

Yes good background TM.

Rob, dont knock theodolite its perfect, istarted my surveying career measuring land with a chain, chaining they called it and that was cock on accurate but laborious.

And no i am not over 80, ....but over 40

Yes, I remember those days..... add a foot or take a foot chains, thermometer for temperature corrections! This predates HP introducing the modern distance meter we used the "Old" Geodimeter!

I'm not 80 either, still in my 50's, barely though Worked on the survey crews for the California aqueduct project in the early 70's.

Edited March 13, 2013 by Diablo Bob

[onthedarkside]

Wow ... this take me back 40 odd years. And apologies for going way off the topic. I just about remember, long before the days of electronic instrumentation, I used a theodolite and transit boards to position the pipe lay (oil line) through inshore waters.Just a year later I was using real high tech (then) of a 2 channel Motorola Miniranger. These modern days anyone can buy a GPS for a very few hundred bucks. Sigh sigh ....

[MESmith]

Seems TV CM is populated by us retired land surveyors