ALTA/NSPS Surveys in Santa Rosa, CA

As the county seat and the commercial center of the North Bay, Santa Rosa moves a steady volume of income property: retail centers and pads along the arterial corridors, medical office near the hospitals, industrial and flex space toward the Highway 101 and airport corridors, and the redevelopment parcels that emerged from the post-2017 rebuild. Each of those transactions eventually reaches the same question, which is whether the physical property matches the legal one. Access easements shared across multi-tenant centers, reciprocal parking agreements, utility and drainage easements crossing the back of a site, and improvements built to a line somebody assumed decades ago are ordinary findings, not exceptions.

Santa Rosa adds a diligence item that surveyors elsewhere in the Bay Area meet less often. The Rodgers Creek fault runs through the city, and the California Geological Survey has mapped Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zones along it, with revised official zone maps covering the Santa Rosa quadrangle released in 2024. Inside a zone, the state requires a geologic investigation for all land divisions and most structures for human occupancy, and no structure for human occupancy may be placed over the fault, with a minimum setback generally of 50 feet. A buyer planning to add a building needs to know where the mapped zone falls on the parcel before the diligence period closes, so we check the current state zone maps as part of our research and flag the result.

Our work starts with the title commitment and every exception document, then the Sonoma County Clerk-Recorder's deeds and maps and Records of Survey held by the County Surveyor, both in Santa Rosa. Fieldwork is scanned against a GNSS and total-station control network, which produces improvements, parking counts, visible utility evidence, and encroachment geometry at survey grade in one visit. Deliverables are a signed and sealed ALTA/NSPS survey plus a layered DWG. See our ALTA survey guide for the full process.