Land Surveying in East Point, GA

What an East Point Plat Has to Clear

East Point covers 14.7 square miles of land by the Census Bureau's 2024 gazetteer and sits wholly inside Fulton County, so the recording question here is simple. Every deed and plat goes to Fulton. The complications are local, and they are procedural.

Fulton County land records are handled by the Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts Real Estate Division, in the Deeds and Records Room on the ground floor of the Lewis R. Slaton Courthouse at 136 Pryor Street SW, northeast of East Point. That office records and indexes deeds, lien filings, plats, surveys and condominium floor plans. Parcel and assessment data is published separately by the Fulton County Board of Assessors at fultonassessor.org, and the city also runs its own open GIS portal with zoning and parcel layers.

The city rule is stated plainly in East Point's subdivide and lot combination packet. No real property in the city may be subdivided and offered for sale, and no plat may be recorded, until it has first been approved by Planning and Community Development staff and the City Engineer. There are three categories, the preliminary plat, the minor plat and the final plat, and they are governed by Chapter 4 of the zoning code. A minor plat covers a development of no more than three lots. Every application submittal must go through the city's BS&A online portal. Planning and Community Development is at 2757 East Point Street.

A final plat carries more than staff initials. It requires certification for recording plus ratification by the Director of Planning and Community Development and the Director of Public Works, and consent by the East Point City Council. The plat itself must be drawn clearly and legibly in black ink on permanent reproducible material at a recommended scale of 100 feet to the inch, and it must show the accurate location, material and description of monuments and markers. The city's own packet warns that plats filed at Fulton Superior Court have to meet Georgia plat standards, and that the clerk can and will reject a document that is not legible or does not comply.

The application form asks for the district and land lot, so the land lot work has to be settled before submittal. Where infrastructure is involved, the final plat also needs certification from public works, the water system and the city engineer that the improvements have been installed or bonded.

The ground under East Point is more varied than the street grid suggests. Camp Creek and its north fork, South Utoy Creek and the head of the South River all run through the city and the ground immediately around it by the USGS National Hydrography Dataset, so buffered water shows up on lots that look entirely urban. East Point grew up at the eastern end of the Atlanta and West Point Railroad and was incorporated in 1887, and its older neighborhoods carry the platting of that era, with markers set by earlier surveyors that may or may not still be where the deed says. The city also runs its own electric utility, which is one more set of facilities to locate on a topographic survey or an as-built.

Everything runs out of the office at 549 West Ave in Cedartown, and the plat carries the seal of William "Bart" Sims, the licensed Georgia land surveyor. S&S works only in Georgia, where it is licensed.