Boundary Surveys, Easements, and Encroachments Before a Georgia Closing

A boundary survey is the cheapest insurance policy most Georgia buyers decline. Georgia closings routinely happen without one, and most of the time nothing goes wrong. The exceptions are memorable: a driveway that turns out to sit six feet onto the neighbor's lot, a shed built inside a sanitary sewer easement, a fence that has been in the wrong place so long it has created its own legal argument. None of those are discovered by a title search alone.

This is a process explainer on what a survey shows, how title insurance treats survey matters, and what Georgia requires of the surveyor. It is not legal advice. Anything specific to your property should go to a Georgia real estate attorney and a licensed land surveyor.

What Is a Boundary Survey and How Is It Different From an ALTA Survey?

A boundary survey locates and marks the legal limits of a parcel, sets or recovers corner monuments, and produces a plat showing bearings, distances, area, easements, and observed encroachments. An ALTA/NSPS Land Title Survey is a more extensive, title-driven product built to a national standard.

Why the ALTA Product Exists

The ALTA/NSPS standards state the reason directly: members of the American Land Title Association have specific needs, unique to title insurance matters, when asked to insure title to land without exception as to the many matters which might be discoverable from survey and inspection, and which are not evidenced by the public records. That single sentence explains the entire subject. Public records show recorded documents. They do not show where the fence actually is.

The Current Standard

The 2026 Minimum Standard Detail Requirements for ALTA/NSPS Land Title Surveys took effect February 23, 2026, superseding the 2021 version for surveys commenced on or after that date. An ALTA survey is ordered against a title commitment, requires the client to furnish the most recent commitment or other satisfactory title evidence, and has a defined measurement tolerance. It must show the evidence, location, and extent of potentially encroaching structural appurtenances and projections, and evidence of easements burdening the property. A new Table A item requires the surveyor to summarize potential encroachments over boundaries, into rights of way, and across setback lines in a table on the face of the plat, without expressing a legal opinion. The ALTA land survey standards page is the authoritative reference.

For most residential Georgia purchases, a boundary survey is the practical product. ALTA surveys are typically ordered for commercial transactions and for unusual residential situations involving significant acreage or complicated title.

Does Georgia Require a Survey to Close?

There is no Georgia statute we could locate that requires a survey for a residential closing. What drives the decision is the lender, the title insurer, and the buyer. Georgia regulates how a survey is performed and what can be recorded. It does not mandate that you obtain one.

Title Insurance and the Survey Exception

This is the mechanism that matters. The standard ALTA Owner's Policy covers encumbrances, violations, boundary line overlaps, and encroachments only if the matter would have been disclosed by an accurate and complete land title survey of the land. The policy also separately covers no right of access to and from the land. Schedule B is where specific exceptions from coverage get listed, and insurers customarily place a standard survey exception there when no current survey is provided.

Read that together and the logic is clean. Encroachment coverage is defined by what a survey would have shown. Decline the survey, and the insurer typically excepts survey matters from coverage. You are not buying protection against the very thing a survey would have found.

What Does Georgia Require of the Survey Itself?

Quite a lot, and the standards double as a checklist for buyers.

The Licensing Body and Technical Standards

The Georgia Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors Board licenses surveyors, adopts rules, sets standards for licensure, and investigates and disciplines negligent or incompetent practice. The Board notes that many complaints result from land surveyors failing to prepare survey drawings that conform to minimum technical standards.

Those standards live in Chapter 180-7 of the Georgia rules. They establish minimum degrees of accuracy, completeness, and quality, including closure accuracy of 1:10,000 in urban and suburban areas and 1:5,000 in rural areas, with positional tolerances ranging from 0.1 foot on urban blocks to 0.50 foot in rural settings. Corner monuments must be durable, incorporate ferrous material, run at least 18 inches, and be identified with the Georgia registration number of the land surveyor.

What Has to Appear on the Plat

The Board publishes a plat checklist that is, in effect, a list of red flags for a buyer. It calls for apparent encroachments, gores and overlaps, boundary line evidence such as fences, servitudes or easements with references, adjoining right-of-way widths and road names, properly labeled property corners with description and size, the appropriate surveyor certification and seal, and notation of cemeteries or possible burial grounds. If you are handed a plat, those are the items to look for.

Georgia's Plat Act

Under O.C.G.A. 15-6-67, a plat is a drawing prepared by a land surveyor that describes and depicts real property boundaries, including a map, condominium plat, subdivision plat, as-built survey, easement survey, or retracement survey. Plats submitted for filing must be prepared by a registered land surveyor, be at full size of the stated drawing scale, reserve a box of not less than three inches square in the upper left corner for the clerk's filing information, and carry one of four prescribed certifications attesting to compliance with Georgia's minimum technical standards. Subdivision plats additionally require planning commission or governing authority approval before filing.

The Three Problems a Survey Actually Finds

Encroachments

Fences, driveways, sheds, retaining walls, pools, and overhanging structures are the usual suspects. An encroachment is not automatically a deal breaker. It is a negotiation item that needs a documented resolution: a boundary line agreement, an easement, removal, or a title endorsement. What kills deals is discovering it in the final week with no time to resolve it.

Easements That Limit What You Can Build

Utility and drainage easements grant a utility the right to enter your property to install, inspect, maintain, replace, or repair its lines, and they restrict what you can put on top. The City of Marietta's water and sanitary sewer development regulations, for example, specify permanent easements of a minimum 20 feet in width, 10 feet on each side of the line, and provide that construction, digging, grubbing, clearing, filling, or other earth moving within the easement area is prohibited without written permission.

For a buyer planning a pool, a detached garage, an addition, or even substantial landscaping, the easement location determines what is possible. That is a survey question, not a listing photo question.

Access

A survey shows the relationship between the parcel and the road serving it, including the right-of-way width and the nature of the access, by dedicated street or by easement. Buyers on shared or private access should read this alongside our guide to why the county line matters when you buy, since jurisdiction affects who maintains what.

Practical Guidance for Buyers and Sellers

Buyers

Order the survey early in due diligence, not the week of closing, so there is time to resolve what it finds. Ask the closing attorney directly what the title commitment excepts and what an endorsement would cost. If the property has acreage, a creek, a shared drive, outbuildings near a line, or a fence that does not match the plat, the survey is not optional in any practical sense.

Sellers

If you have a prior survey, produce it at listing. If you know a fence or shed sits close to a line, get ahead of it. An encroachment disclosed at listing is a condition the market prices. The same encroachment discovered in week three of a contract is a renegotiation. Sellers preparing a property will find the same principle in our piece on renovating before selling a Marietta home.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a survey required to close in Georgia? We found no Georgia statute requiring a survey for a residential closing. The decision is driven by the lender, the title insurer's survey exception, and the buyer.

Does title insurance cover encroachments? The standard owner's policy covers boundary line overlaps and encroachments only if the matter would have been disclosed by an accurate and complete land title survey. Insurers customarily except survey matters when no current survey is provided.

What is the difference between a boundary survey and an ALTA survey? A boundary survey locates the legal limits of the parcel. An ALTA/NSPS Land Title Survey is a title-driven product built to a national standard, ordered against a title commitment, with defined tolerances and required encroachment reporting.

Can I build over a utility easement? Generally no. Easement language commonly prohibits construction, digging, clearing, filling, and earth moving within the easement area without written permission, and preserves the utility's right of entry.

Conclusion

A survey converts assumptions into facts on the one asset most people never verify. It costs a fraction of a single month's payment, it is the trigger for encroachment coverage under a title policy, and it is the only document that will tell you where you can actually build. Order it early enough that what it finds can still be fixed.

Clareo Group, powered by The Agency Atlanta, builds the survey conversation into due diligence rather than leaving it to the closing attorney's checklist. Reach out and we will help you decide what the property in front of you actually needs and get it ordered on a timeline that works.