ALTA/NSPS Surveys in Berkeley, CA

Berkeley's commercial stock concentrates along its corridors — University Avenue, Shattuck Avenue in the Downtown, and Telegraph Avenue near campus — and much of it is early-1900s construction on narrow lots where buildings share walls and setbacks were measured loosely, if at all. That history makes the encroachment section of an ALTA/NSPS survey genuinely consequential here: projecting cornices, shared party walls, basement footings, and signage that crosses a boundary by a fraction of a foot all belong on the survey under the 2021 Minimum Standard Detail Requirements, and title insurers underwriting a Berkeley corridor property will read that detail closely. Berkeley's permit culture compounds it — the city routinely requires surveyor-stamped site plans, so a buyer planning tenant improvements after closing benefits from a survey done to a standard the city will accept.

We scan these properties with a Trimble terrestrial laser scanner rather than shooting them point by point. On a zero-lot-line Shattuck or Telegraph building, that means every facade projection, awning, and rooftop feature is captured at survey-grade accuracy in one mobilization, with sidewalk vaults and adjoining-building relationships in the same dataset. Table A items — building footprint and square footage, parking counts where lots exist behind the corridor buildings, evidence of utilities — are extracted from the point cloud in the office. Because rooms in Berkeley's brown-shingle-era buildings are seldom square, the cloud also gives the buyer's design team true as-built geometry to reuse after closing; see as-built surveys for how those deliverables extend.

Title documents and recorded easements come through the Alameda County Recorder, and any Record of Survey our boundary resolution requires under B&P Code §8762 is filed with the Alameda County Surveyor. Where a property sits near the Hayward fault alignment that crosses the city, we note earthquake fault zone status on the survey when the parcel falls within a mapped Alquist-Priolo zone.