Parcel Maps in Novato, CA

Novato covers more ground than any other Marin city, so the same service means two different jobs depending on which side of town you are on. In the postwar tracts of San Marin, Marin Country Club, and the neighborhoods east of the freeway, the underlying subdivision maps are modern, the monuments are usually recoverable, and a lot line adjustment or an SB 9 split is a matter of clean retracement and careful map math. Out toward Indian Valley, Black Point, and the Sonoma County line, the parcels descend from ranch conveyances written in courses and distances that reference fences, creeks, and long-vanished trees, and a split there begins with weeks of record research and a search for evidence that may be a rotted post or a rock mound. The Novato Planning Division publishes handouts for tentative maps, lot line adjustments, and certificates of compliance, which is a good indication of the paths available.

Our process is the same in both settings, scaled to the evidence. We pull the chain of title and every relevant map and Record of Survey, recover controlling monuments, run a GNSS and total station control network with closure we can defend, and reconcile what the ground says against what the record says. Where improvements matter to the map — walls, driveways, wells, septic areas, structures near a proposed line — we scan them so the exhibit shows real geometry rather than an approximation. New corners are monumented and, where the resolution warrants, filed as a Record of Survey.

You receive the tentative map exhibit, the checked parcel map or lot line adjustment package, and the boundary analysis behind it, filed through the Marin County Surveyor and recorded with the Marin County Recorder in San Rafael. See our Novato monument preservation work and the explainer on parcel maps versus tract maps.