This really feels like a "spirit of the law" vs "letter of the law" situation - requiring that only a licensed surveyor "depict the location of property lines" seems totally reasonable as to prevent the "location of property lines" from eroding legally, but banning a site loaded with "THIS IS NOT A SURVEY" disclaimers does not.
A discrepancy between requirements from building departments and planning and platting departments is par for the course. Everywhere I have ever lived, the building department will accept an informal description of boundaries to determine whether or not a plan interferes with setback requirements, while a planning department or platting recorder will demand an officially certified survey to determine the actual parcel boundaries.
I think this site's "If your building department DOES NOT require a Surveyor, Engineer, or Architect Stamp our plans are just what you need!" disclaimer is quite spot-on and it is rather frustrating that they are getting targeted.
My own county (Boulder County, CO) offer a county-sponsored GIS service which is not surveyor-approved, with similar disclaimers. My surveyed parcel at my current household differed from their assessment by 5% and at my last household, by 10%. While this is a significant number, for building purposes, it isn't unreasonable - just a few degrees either way in the projection of edges. I think these sites should be allowed to stand with the acceptance that a suit based on the material contained in these sites would be bogus.
It sounds to me like what the law intends to say is that only professionals can actually draw the property lines--a quite reasonable restriction because a mistake can be hidden and expensive. However, it seems to me that what he's doing is simply taking the existing legal documentation and converting it to a 2D printout.
So Zillow should be banned? Informal drawings of property lines are useful and "good enough", and giving a monopoly on that to surveyors would be silly.
I'm not saying he's wrong. I'm saying he's not actually drawing property lines, but rather converting the existing text description into a graphic one. Creating that initial description should be limited to the pros, but it shouldn't take a pro to convert that description into a picture.
Seems pretty clear to me that the site's maps should be generating the warning on them. A downloaded PDF file is only an email away from being consumed by various forms of agents, fence builders, etc. and quickly loosing the disclaimer of the site. If they look legit, no reason why someone might not accidentally overlook when they do something based on the reasonable looking map
Maybe all they need to do is add the disclaimer to the generated maps?
Doesn't matter. Theyre not claiming to be legal property records. If they were, they'd say so, by whom, and what date.
It is a 1fa issue that I can say "This appears to be my property and I'm going to put my gardens in this area around my house".
And, you (royal, not personally) are an idiot if you trust non-authotarative pictures of boundaries for a real legal survey, and then do major things based on that.
A discrepancy between requirements from building departments and planning and platting departments is par for the course. Everywhere I have ever lived, the building department will accept an informal description of boundaries to determine whether or not a plan interferes with setback requirements, while a planning department or platting recorder will demand an officially certified survey to determine the actual parcel boundaries.
I think this site's "If your building department DOES NOT require a Surveyor, Engineer, or Architect Stamp our plans are just what you need!" disclaimer is quite spot-on and it is rather frustrating that they are getting targeted.
My own county (Boulder County, CO) offer a county-sponsored GIS service which is not surveyor-approved, with similar disclaimers. My surveyed parcel at my current household differed from their assessment by 5% and at my last household, by 10%. While this is a significant number, for building purposes, it isn't unreasonable - just a few degrees either way in the projection of edges. I think these sites should be allowed to stand with the acceptance that a suit based on the material contained in these sites would be bogus.