Land Surveying in Alpharetta, GA

Land Surveying in Alpharetta, Georgia

Alpharetta covers 26.9 square miles of land inside Fulton County, and the Forsyth County line runs along the northeast side of the city. A parcel that sits wholly inside those limits records in Fulton. A tract that reaches past that line does not. Settling the question from the land itself, before a plat is drawn, costs less than settling it at the recording window.

Fulton County land records are kept by the Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts Real Estate Division, which records and indexes deeds, lien filings, plats, surveys and condominium floor plans for the whole county. Its Deeds and Records Room occupies the ground floor of the Lewis R. Slaton Courthouse, 136 Pryor Street SW, south-southwest of Alpharetta in downtown Atlanta. Assessment data lives in a separate system. The Fulton County Board of Assessors publishes parcel records through qPublic, searchable by owner name, street address or parcel number, and the county runs a customer service center inside Alpharetta at 11575 Maxwell Road.

A plat gets city approval before it gets a book and page. The Alpharetta Community Development Department reviews the plat and signs it, and the owner is then responsible for recording the approved plat with Fulton County Superior Court. The city's minor subdivision and combination plat application asks for the district, section and land lot the tract falls in, the parcel ID numbers, and contact information for both the owner and the surveyor. The land lot research has to be finished before that application goes in, not during review.

Big Creek is what turns a lot of Alpharetta jobs into elevation work. NOAA's National Water Prediction Service runs a gauge named Big Creek near Alpharetta, with action stage at six feet, minor flooding at seven feet, moderate at eleven and major at thirteen. The record crest there, 13.05 feet, was set on February 3, 1982. The greenway trail that follows the channel through town lies largely inside the floodplain and has closed when the creek comes up. Long Indian Creek, Caney Creek, Goswick Creek and Foe Killer Creek also run inside the city limits, and each one brings a state stream buffer with it.

Alpharetta parcels that are not on public sanitary sewer fall under the Fulton County Board of Health Environmental Health Services program, which permits and inspects on-site sewage management systems and reviews development plans to confirm lots are properly sized. The North Fulton Regional Health Center that handles that work is at 4700 North Point Parkway, inside the city.

The survey work that follows is specific and ordinary. An older lot gets retraced before a fence, an addition or a pool goes in close to a line. A commercial parcel along a corridor gets an ALTA/NSPS survey for a lender. New construction gets building corners and setback lines staked, then a foundation survey and an as-built for the closing file. Anything mapped inside a special flood hazard area gets an elevation certificate.

The office is at 549 West Ave in Cedartown. William "Bart" Sims is the licensed Georgia land surveyor here, and his seal goes on the finished plat. The firm holds a Georgia license and works in Georgia.