4 ms·

Does the US federal government not have a department that handles land survey?

• herewulf 8y ago
  United States Geological Survey (USGS), Department of the Interior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Geological_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Geological_Surve...
• objectivetruth 8y ago
  Not for buildings - thanks to federalism, that is the responsibility of the state, county, or local government entity. (But USGS does a great job for other things.)
• reaperducer 8y ago
  Does the US federal government not have a department that handles land survey? Land surveying, yes - The USGS. Building surveying, no. It's the "private" part of "private property." Unless someone's committed a crime being investigated by a federal agency, the federal government has no right to know what's on my property. And even then there are limits. The feds can look down from a satellite, but so can anyone else. But the feds can't come onto my property and laser measure my house, as was the scenario proposed by the parent commenter. As I stated earlier, external-only building surveys can be done by the local tax collection agency for the purpose of assessing taxes in places where taxes are assessed based on improvements to the land. And your insurance company may also want to make similar measurements, but those are usually done only very rarely these days. They were more common in the past when structure fires were more of a problem. (Think Sanborn Maps† and The Great Chicago Fire.) † https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps