Evolve or die

[94touring]

If you can wait just a few years, all those submerged houses will be priced at much more reasonable levels...

We'll be waiting awhile.

[MiniDave]

Oh come on, one pic could have been taken at high tide, the other at low tide.....

It may not happen in our lifetimes,, but unless the temp change moderates it will happen. There's a reason there were inland seas in the US......most of the country from Missouri to Colorado was under water.

I'm not trying to stir up a debate about man's impact on the climate change, but only to point out that over the millennia climate change has happened.

[94touring]

Yes once upon a time everything was underwater because it's a natural cycle of the earth. It won't happen in our lifetime.

[Jims5543]

It's been a while gents.  (I have been trying to type this for over an hour now, I keep getting interrupted)

I have been slammed busy with the business. I decided to make a lot of changes. I am no longer in the field, which is a bummer and I already feel it effecting me physically, in a bad way. All this sitting every day is killing me, I hope to be back in the field 2 days a week very soon. I also need to start adding cardio into my exercise routine.

I hired back on an ex-employee from before the 2008 crash, he is extremely reliable and very honest. The tech has changed a lot the basic principles have not, I spent nearly a month training him on the tablet and software. He is not tech savvy so it took a while.  LOL!

I also did something crazy, I purchased a small stand alone commercial building. I also had an education as to how predatory commercial lending is.  From the loan broker who claimed he mentioned in passing he collects a 1% fee at closing, but never submitted his fee for the HUD. The day of the closing he started blowing up my phone and email demanding payment. I was livid!

The bank that wrote my loan demanded I move all my business banking to them.  I opened accounts with them to satisfy part of their list of demands, I am not 100% banking with them. Their nearest branch is 30 miles from me, my current bank is across the street from me.  I am not changing banks.
The Insurance company (Farmers) for my building insurance also demanded I move all my other insurance to them. That actually worked out for the better, he is saving me a lot of money.

Here is a picture of the office with my wife and I hogging up the front parking with our Mini's. 1,400 square feet. Concrete Block construction (1970's) with a concrete roof. I just had the roof covering/waterproofing replaced.  I also have a window company coming to replace all the large windows with impact windows (Hurricane in Florida thing) and I am shopping for Bahama Shutters for the small windows. I am pumping a lot of money into it. One of my biggest problems when renting was hurricanes, I am making this building a bunker so I never have to worry about a bad storm.

[Jims5543]

Yes once upon a time everything was underwater because it's a natural cycle of the earth. It won't happen in our lifetime.

I have been measuring Mean High Water Lines (MHWL) in the same area of Florida for over 30 years. There is no change in elevation, zero. I have data in my office going back 60 years, no change.

I can go online https://www.labins.org/  and pull old data from 100 years ago, no change.

If we were in such a perilous situation with water rise, no insurance company would insure all these waterfront properties, furthermore, the elite that push this entire theory on us all own waterfront somewhere in the world.  Their actions say there is no threat.

I have not seen in my lifetime of measuring to millimeter accuracy any change in water elevations. Some neighborhoods I work in the roads are 3 feet elevation, MHWL in this part of Florida is -0.43'  a MHWL is a legal line that is mapped out and has to be able to stand up to scrutiny from Courts, and Municipalities.  When we locate that line on waterfront properties, it has to be concise. Building setbacks are established via this line, in other words, it is not something we pull out of thin air.

[94touring]

Yes once upon a time everything was underwater because it's a natural cycle of the earth. It won't happen in our lifetime.

I have been measuring Mean High Water Lines (MHWL) in the same area of Florida for over 30 years. There is no change in elevation, zero. I have data in my office going back 60 years, no change.

I can go online https://www.labins.org/  and pull old data from 100 years ago, no change.

If we were in such a perilous situation with water rise, no insurance company would insure all these waterfront properties, furthermore, the elite that push this entire theory on us all own waterfront somewhere in the world.  Their actions say there is no threat.

I have not seen in my lifetime of measuring to millimeter accuracy any change in water elevations. Some neighborhoods I work in the roads are 3 feet elevation, MHWL in this part of Florida is -0.43'  a MHWL is a legal line that is mapped out and has to be able to stand up to scrutiny from Courts, and Municipalities.  When we locate that line on waterfront properties, it has to be concise. Building setbacks are established via this line, in other words, it is not something we pull out of thin air.

I think beach erosion gets confused with the planet is doomed we're all dead in 6 years if we don't eat kale and use paper straws. I'm probably one of the few people  who have ever swam the entire coast line of NC and SC in the late 90s doing beach erosion surveys for the state. I swam for 2 years straight taking measurements, summer AND winter.  Those were the days lol. Houses falling into the ocean doesn't really correlate to rising sea waters. The water level stays the same but the coast line changes, particularly during big weather events. 

[Jims5543]

Agree 100% I also did a lot of coastline studies in Florida for erosion control, my most memorable project was Patrick AFB in The Cocoa Area of Florida.  We performed cross sections of the beach from the east edge of A-1-A to 500 feet into the ocean, it took us 6 months to complete that study, which I laughed at because the data we collected was almost immediately useless as the sand is always shifting.

Erosion is not sea level rise.  One funny thing that I noticed, I go back to the property corner I set at the surface of the ground 20+ years ago, its 6-12" below the surface, there are rare moments when a homeowner witnesses this, I joke with them that the land is rising faster than the sea levels.

[Jims5543]

I just received a phone call from a local pizza chain that has been blowing up in popularity. They have 4 locations and are adding more, they also blew up on SM nationally have have had people come to this area from all over the county to interview their pizza girl who has gone viral.

They want to know if I want to sell the building I just purchased in December.

After my first 1 week vacation in 3 years a few weeks ago and the subsequent nightmare of trying to catch back up to everyone, not having a day off in 3 weeks after. I have been questioning what I am doing lately. I am probably financially OK to retire right now. This past week has been rough for me and today has been the worst, I did not sleep all weekend due to stress from this business.


Some good friends of ours (the same ones we were on vacation with) purchased a $4 Million building last year.  They just got offered 9 Million to sell it to a burger chain. They are seriously considering selling the building and moving their 3 businesses to another location.

I am in the same boat, if I can double my money on this building now (that was my 5-10 year plan) I might go for it. I doubt they will go for it, it cannot hurt to try.  If they do, I will downsize this company to 1 crew and 1 drafter and lose a few problematic clients to just stay busy but not slammed like I am now.

[Jims5543]

"This is the smartest financial decision you have made in years" - My wife when talking about this today.

She is right, I need to stick with the plan, we have a 5 year restructure on the Commercial Loan, then in another 5 years there is a balloon payment.

The rent I am paying on the building to the LLC I formed to take ownership is over double the mortgage payment.  The goal was to pay down the mortgage at the restructure, then pay off the building at the balloon. Then decide what to do with the building after that. I will be 70 and I will not be working full time anymore. I could either keep it as a rental property or cash out of it.

That said, I was debt free before this, having this loan bothers me, I was supposed to be winding down a little when I turned 60, I was going to start working 4 days a week and taking every Friday off, that was killed when I purchased the building.

I am not sure what I want to do right now, If this cat offered me 2X what I paid for the building it was be very tempting to sell now and skip the 5-10 year wait. I guess lets see what he has in mind, it is easy to say no.

[Jims5543]

Mini rant.

When we moved into this commercial building I had no idea there were going to be so many people with their hands out..

We have to get our lift station serviced every 3 months, its like $175 a quarter nothing insane just a  surprise and annoying.

Today some lady popped in, we have to get an annual back flow test performed on our water supply from the county.  Its only $125 a year, again another surprise and annoying.

After a few months with this bank, I am over it with them. Since the nearest branch is 30 miles away, I installed their app on my phone and deposit the monthly rent payments via the app.  I discovered last week, every time I make a deposit with the app, I am charged a $50 convenience fee. I am heading into the branch very soon to find out why, if this is a normal fee, I am going deposit my rent payments for the rest of the year in one check in person and will not be using this bank at all. I will deposit my rent payments in person quarterly.

Charging $50 to deposit a check via the app is insane to me.

[94touring]

That's absurd 

[Jims5543]

My one crew just had to have a police escort to survey a property.

The man next door to the house we were surveying came running into the yard screaming at my crew to get the fuck off his land as it was his house and they were trespassing. He was not nice about it, unhinged would be a good word to use here.

We called the RE agent and contacted the title company, thinking there was a mistake everyone is perplexed.  I jumped on the property appraiser website. Unless he identifies as a lesbian woman from Ontario Canada, then he does not own the house.

I called the local sheriff to see if we could arrange an escort, they had my crew call in to coordinate with the a deputy. I will get the full report this afternoon.

Turns out the old man had dementia, his wife approached my field guy and apologized.  He was ready to throw fists over a house he doesn't own, but thinks he does in his state of mind.  Welcome to the neighborhood home buyers!!

Next week, we have to do the same thing, some asshole ran my crew off because he thinks he owns the world.

I miss 20 years ago when everyone was chill and nice and an asshole was a rarity. Now nice people are rarities.

[jeff10049]

 "Now nice people are rarities" 
 
 Sadly, yes, they are.

[Jims5543]

Pizza guy disappeared.  I was ready to retire.  LOL


A client called in today and had a term for dealing with the municipal building departments that made us laugh and adopt his phrase.

Ala cart rejections.

It is infuriating. 95% of my permit surveys go through without a comment. The other 5% are usually something different than we are used to working on and a bit of a learning curve.

i.e. installing  pre-manufactured homes, I somehow got roped into doing a few of these and have never worked on any of them before.  So I am slowly learning, the requirements vs. a regular house is wildly different a borderline comical.

A preman home has steps built along side them in some cases they a pre built and just placed there in other built on site. For whatever reason the municipalities need this shown in detail on my survey. Including the size of the landing and width of stairs.

The frustration comes when they reject it and tell me they want the width of the stairs. Fine I add that. Then they reject it again and ask for the size of the landing, you fix that, then they reject it because they want me to underlay the FEMA flood map on the survey. The problem here is, if I underlay it, you cannot see it because the flood zone is the same across the entire property. I can see this being needed if there were multiple zones across the property, it does not apply in this case. Which makes you wonder if they even know what they are asking for or just wanted to check an item off their checklist?

I have one that has been rejected 7 times and we still do not have the permit, each rejection was 1 item.


In people are assholes news, my one crew was surveying a home for a mortgage closing.  The next door neighbor popped his head out of his house and saw my crew with the GPS antenna my field guy waved to him, and went back inside not saying a word. 5 Minutes later he let his dog out to attack my crew.  They are all now equipped with pepper spray and I just ordered 32" long cattle prods for them.  After the assholes dog chased my guy around for a minute my field guy turned to the owner now outside watching and called him a fucking asshole to his face. We reported him to animal control so now there is a history started on his house.

My patience is running thin with these assholes.

[Jims5543]

The lot next door to my office is for sale. I keep thinking about it.

Right as we moved into our building there was a survey crew surveying the lot next door. I assumed it sold.

My wife and I were across the street from the office grabbing dinner after work this last week, we were looking across at the building and then we started discussing the vacant lot, wondering what it was being sold for. $279K, here is where this gets interesting.

The seller stopped in my office the next day after we were discussing this lot. I was out in the field (yay for me!!) so my wife talked to him a bit. The sale fell through because the lot is landlocked due to regulations. 

It seems they cannot obtain a driveway permit to access the property off the main Blvd out in front, some rule about driveways not being closer than 100' apart. The entrance to the subdivision to the west and my driveway to the east is causing a problem. The owner popped in to talk to us and see if we would be interested in granting an ingress egress easement across our driveway and parking lot in order to access the property next to us.

It seems the lot is useless unless I grant an easement. He said if he was in my position he would say no, I respect his honesty.  That is my initial reply too, I do not need a bunch of cars cutting through my business parking lot in order to get to a bunch of town homes.

Then I had this bright idea, I might make an offer to buy it.  I know he paid 52K for it in 2014 during the housing crash. 

I also see in the sales history it was purchased in 2006 before the crash for 260K by a Vets office, then it went into foreclosure in 2012 and was purchased for the 52K above in 2014.

I am thinking of offering 130K. Not sure what I would do with the land, I joked with my wife we could build town homes and move into one of them, the commute to work would be a 1 minute walk. (it is a 5 minute drive now, my house is 1.8 miles from the office)

As I see it right now, it is a useless piece of property this cat needs to unload, I will give him a chance to get out of if and double his money.

I probably will not do anything right now, I am still trying to recover from this building purchase.  The new roof and windows were not cheap either. 

[94touring]

Not a bad idea

[MiniDave]

What would you do with it if you bought it?

[Dan Moffet]

Up here in the wilds of Canada, if you purchase a property adjacent to one you own, you have to certify whether or not you are "assembling" land.

Another question comes to mind: What is it zoned for (residential, commercial, industrial etc.) and can the zoning be changed or a variance be approved by the municipality to overcome the driveway problem since it became landlocked due to the spacing regulation. If the property (as it currently stands vis-a-vis the survey) existed before the regulation it should be grand-fathered. Ditto if its use pre-existed the regulation.

Up here, you can't create a landlocked property without road access.

Find a good property lawyer!

[Jims5543]

I have no plans for it. When I purchased my building, the lady in the building behind me and I were talking. My plan is to only be in this building for 10 years. Then I will either sell it or rent it.  The lady behind is kind of on the same time line, we discussed placing both properties up for sale as a package deal, if I purchased the lot next door to me, I would just sit on it. Toss it up for sale with the other 2 properties which could potentially attract a buyer with deeper pockets.

I am on a very busy commercial corridor that is just about fully developed, that vacant lot is very rare.

My building is the white one right next to the parcel for sale, and then the building behind me. All 3 together could potentially be worth good money. 

If I purchase it, it would be purely for investing reasons. I have no plans to develop it.

We do not have any laws here regarding disclosure of assembling properties.

As far as the driveway issue goes, I think if you have one already it is grandfathered, a vacant lot would not benefit from that, if there was a driveway already, that would be grandfathered.

I have not dove into the issue with the property I may prepare a mock up plan and head to Planning and Zoning to see for myself what is going on.

I am thinking of reaching out and offering 100K as am opening offer to see what kind of counter he would come back with.

[Jims5543]

This is an interesting development.  I have to be honest, every time I read this article my head starts spinning trying to figure out how this is going to me phased in.

https://spacedaily.com/s-the-united-states-is-replacing-every-official-latitude-longitude-and-height-it-publishes-existing-coordinates-will-move-by-as-much-as-four-meters-and-the-million-survey-marks-in-the-ground-will-no/

This will effect not only land surveyors, anyone using navigation will also have to be adjusted. Pilots, car GPS, I am not sure about autonomous cars like Teslas.  I am not sure how much they depend on GPS.

Now, the million $$ question, when does this roll out?  Around 1991 FEMA abandoned NGVD'29 and adopted NAVD'88.  The vertical datum of 1929 was found to have many errors.  The area I live in the error was about 1.5 feet.  All our elevations here 1.5 higher than reality.  When FEMA adopted the newer datum in 2012 the county I live in would not adopt it. The refused until FEMA forced them to in 2015.

In 2012 I had a client planning and building his waterfront dream home. I knew about the datum change and told him to raise his house elevation 2 feet higher in order to avoid the fallout from the Datum change.

We have a lot of low lying waterfront homes here that is why the County was resisting the datum change. What happened in 2015 when they adopted it?  Many houses that were sitting 6 inches over the flood zone were now 6" into it or more. That caused their flood insurance to double or more.

THAT is why the county resisted so long, they knew the homeowners were going to scream at the County even though it wasn't their fault.

That advice to my customer netted me a couple of cases of beer a couple of years later. When all his neighbors were crying to him over their insurance rates, he was sitting pretty.

He called me to thank me and asked what kind of beer I liked, I was expecting a 6 pack, he arrived to my office with 2 cases. He profusely thanked me and told me that advice has saved him thousands per year.

So back to this mess that is unfolding, that means every control point existing is now wrong and will not be relied on, obviously GPS has advanced to the point where we no longer need to have reference points.

The crazy thing I keep thinking is how this shift is going to change my industry, what kind of bedlam is going to ensue.

I guess I will wait and see, I guarantee most municipalities are going to resist this change.

Edit - I finished the article without losing my mind this time:

In 2020 the agency published a Federal Register notice saying the rollout was expected between 2022 and 2025. In October 2024 it published another, revising that to 2025 or 2026. That notice also set out the sequence: components released for public testing, at least six months of testing after the last one lands, then a vote by the Federal Geodetic Control Subcommittee to approve the new system. It called that vote likely in 2026, and the agency's guidance narrowed it to mid 2026.

Mid 2026 has passed, though the notice's own window has not. NGS said it would mark the milestones with further Federal Register notices: one in late 2025 announcing that all components were available for testing, and one in 2026 after an approving vote. The Federal Register can be searched for exactly that. Notices from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration mentioning the National Spatial Reference System, published since June 2024, come back as three documents. Only one of the three concerns the reference system, and it is the October 2024 notice itself. Neither promised notice appears to have been published. Until the post-vote notice is, NAD 83 and NAVD 88 remain the official datums of the United States.

This is funny to me because it is typical FEMA,  I am using elevation certificates (EC's) from FEMA right now that expired on 30 June 2026 and no replacement has been issued.  If this plays out like past we will not get a replacement EC for 2 more years.  I have not received any push back from layman type clients, banks and title companies  When I do, I normally go to FEMA's website and you can find a letter stating the old EC is still being used until further notice. I print that and send it to clients to calm them down and show them I am not issuing an expired EC due to my own incompetence. LOL!

Then the other funny thing, every time FEMA rolls out a new EC it is so full of glitches you go crazy trying to fill it out.  This last one was revised 2 or 3X in order for us to be able to fill it out without it glitching or blocking us from filling in fields.

FEMA built in some sort of PDF security on the last EC. One City I work in will not except it because they claim it is a "locked PDF" and demand I remove the lock from it. I was dumbfounded, I am not locking them when I am digitally signing them, I have an option to do that.  I had to start printing the PDF to new PDF to remove the underlying  FEMA security. 

At our little surveyors and beers last week we were discussing how this industry has evolved.  Mostly dealing with Municipalities.  There is so much regulation now it in insane.  Something as simple as a shed needs a full blown survey, in one municipality they also require a drainage study in order to install a shed.
Then there are the people, we all agreed, it is a rare day you deal with someone normal. Everyone lies and everyone is angry now.

I just dealt with a liar. She was an older lady around 70, she called and requested a survey so she could install a new fence, the city was requiring it. We quoted for a simple drama free survey of her property boundary with stakes set so she could install her fence.

That was all a lie. The lot next to her is having a new home built on it, her fence is 4' onto the other property. They notified her she needed to move the fence.

She retained a lawyer sent out cease and desist letters to the builder and also served the builder with a gag order to not talk to her because he was causing her emotional distress. One of my Surveyors and Beer buddies is working for the builder, he called me and told me about all the drama,  My crew was budgeted to be on site for 1-1.5 hours, he was there for 3+ hours.  Partly due to the lady and her husband trying him up trying to drag him into the drama.

[94touring]

Sending that to my uncle who still surveys to see what he thinks.

[MiniDave]

Fascinating......so, if I read it right, the underlying reason for the changes is that the current numbers aren't accurate any more? Why?