How Hubby saved us $800

Ok, so that's a little misleading - we weren't planning on spending $1100.......or even $800 but hey, I got your attention right?!

A recent request for a couple of quotes on what it would cost to have our property corners re-located has been interesting.  We (and our neighbors on all sides) have lived here for over 20 years. Dh said said there is one marker on the far back corner left, the other 3 corner markers are either buried or got dug up over the years.  One one side of our property is a fence along the property line, our neighbor put up 20 some years ago.  The front of our property has a private road easement, so everyone can get to their properties.  Dh was kind of curious as to exactly where our front corners are, just to make sure, when he starts his landscape project, that he is not cutting into the road easement.  Not that any of our neighbors would give a hoot, but Dh likes to do things right. (I think "Right" is is middle name)

Dh sent out a couple of emails requesting a price from surveyor ads he found on Craigslist. The first estimate was $1100.  Seriously?! We were thinking maybe it would cost $400? The next quote came in at over $1200.  Dh emailed both back and said, sorry - way more than what we hoped to spend just to find 3 corner markers.  The second guy came back with "if you pay cash I will charge $450, plus there is a $128 fee to the county for recording".  Hmm...we still decided to pass as that would take up over a quarter of what we budgeted for our landscape project.  Dh just told him it was still out of the price range we were hoping to find and we also did not care about recording it with the county, we just wanted a simple locate of our corners.  I'm sure a recording fee was done almost 25 years ago when the property was short-platted and someone paid to have it recorded - and it does us absolutely no good to find our corners now - county said we'd have to have a survey - so what's the point of paying them another $128 to record it?

Now, the surveyor has come back with a 3rd quote.  He'll do it for $300 cash and no county recording or drawing of the property lines! Now that's more like it.  We don't care about the drawings, either. Dh just wants to make sure he's staying off the road easement when we put in our landscape block retaining wall along the front of our property. Obviously, if they guy can do it for $300 he sure is overpricing to begin with.  He'll be here on Saturday :)