Parcel Maps in Kensington, CA

Kensington is one of the few East Bay communities where your subdivision application does not go to a city planning counter at all. As an unincorporated community, Kensington is governed by Contra Costa County: county planning reviews the tentative map, county public works conditions it, and the Contra Costa County Recorder and County Surveyor handle final map recordation under the Subdivision Map Act. That changes the playbook. County staff apply countywide hillside and hazard policies rather than a local zoning code, so we always start with a feasibility check — confirming the zoning district, minimum lot area, and frontage requirements — before anyone spends money on a tentative map that cannot be approved.

Terrain is the second gatekeeper. Kensington's mid-century homes sit on steep, narrow streets in the East Bay hills landslide belt, and the Blakemont slow-moving landslide area on the El Cerrito border is the canonical local hazard. Any proposal to split or reconfigure a slope lot here should expect the county to require a geotechnical report alongside the survey, and wet winters can reactivate creep that shifts fences and old monuments. That is why lot line adjustments are often the most useful tool in Kensington: decades of slope creep and casual fence-building have left many occupied boundaries a few feet off the deed lines, and an LLA under the Subdivision Map Act can legally reset the record boundary to match long-standing use without a full subdivision. Where original monuments must be disturbed or reset, we follow B&P Code §8771 and file the required records with the County Surveyor.

Our Trimble terrestrial laser scanner earns its keep on these parcels. County hillside review needs both a boundary determination and an accurate topographic base — slopes, retaining walls, driveways, drainage — and we capture all of it in a single mobilization as a combined boundary and topographic survey, with a survey-grade point cloud the geotechnical engineer can use directly. One visit, no return trips up those narrow streets.