Parcel Maps in San Francisco, CA

Dividing or reshaping a lot in San Francisco runs through one office: the County Surveyor, inside Public Works' Bureau of Street-Use and Mapping, administers the Subdivision Code for the whole city. A lot split of four or fewer parcels needs a tentative parcel map, which state law and the city's own application require a licensed land surveyor (or a pre-1982 registered civil engineer) to prepare, followed by a final map for recording with the Assessor-Recorder. SB 9 urban lot splits follow the same path — the subdivision application goes to Public Works first, and the Public Works application number is then referenced on the Planning Department's SB 9 form. Lot line adjustments and certificates of compliance for parcels created without a map are separate applications with their own review fees, and the current fee schedule makes each one a serious investment, so the survey has to clear map check on the first pass.

The city's map standards are specific. Public Works' checklist requires the block to be tied to at least two city monument lines with two monuments per line, CCSF-CS13 as the basis of bearings (the coordinate system established by Record of Survey 8080 in 2014), the reference monument maps used, and a current title report. Because records before 1906 mostly burned, chain-of-title research frequently bottoms out at a McEnerney decree, and lots on the older grids — the Mission, Potrero Hill, the Western Addition — carry a century of small discrepancies between record dimensions and occupation. On hillside lots, Planning's site-survey requirements and the Slope and Seismic Hazard Zone Protection Act (properties over a 4:1 average slope or in mapped hazard zones) shape whether a split is buildable at all, so we usually pair the map with a laser-scanned topographic survey of the same site.

We handle title research, the boundary survey, map preparation, monument setting, and the back-and-forth with BSM through recording. Deliverables are the tentative and final map, Record of Survey where the boundary resolution requires one, and a DWG of the resulting parcels. See also San Francisco topographic surveys and monument preservation for construction that follows.