Property Line Questions Come Up Constantly in Georgia
Georgia is one of the faster-growing states in the country, and property line disputes and questions come with that growth. Homeowners in the Atlanta suburbs are installing fences along lot lines in neighborhoods where every lot is narrow. Rural landowners in south Georgia are selling timberland where the corners were last surveyed decades ago. Buyers across the state want to know what they are actually getting before they close. In every one of those situations, the answer is a licensed Georgia Professional Land Surveyor.
County GIS maps, recorded deeds, and plat books are all useful starting points. None of them are substitutes for a certified boundary survey when accuracy matters legally.
When Do You Need a Licensed Georgia PLS?
- Installing a fence, block wall, or any structure along a property boundary
- Building an addition, accessory dwelling unit, or outbuilding near the lot line
- A neighbor dispute about an encroachment or the location of the boundary
- Buying or selling property where the boundary corners are not physically marked
- A lender or title company requiring a current survey for closing
- Applying for a building permit that requires a certified site plan
- Splitting a parcel or combining lots
Georgia PLSs are licensed through the Georgia State Board of Registration for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors. Only a licensed PLS can certify property boundaries and produce a recordable plat in Georgia.
Why GIS Maps Are Not Enough for Georgia Properties
Many Georgia counties have GIS portals that display parcel boundaries over aerial imagery. Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Chatham counties all have functional online mapping tools. These are useful for finding a parcel ID, getting a general sense of your lot's shape, or understanding how your property sits relative to neighbors. They are not useful for placing a fence or resolving a dispute.
Georgia uses a metes-and-bounds system for describing property rather than the federal grid system used in most western states. Georgia land was distributed through headright grants and land lotteries starting in the late 1700s, with each parcel described by calls to adjacent owners, creeks, county lines, and other references that change over time. The GIS lines you see on a map are a computerized interpretation of records that may themselves be ambiguous. A surveyor's job is to resolve that ambiguity through research and field work.
What Your Georgia Surveyor Does to Find Your Property Lines
The process starts with deed research at the county Superior Court Clerk's office. Georgia deeds are recorded by county, and the Georgia Superior Court Clerks' Cooperative Authority provides online access to deed indexes for most counties. Your surveyor pulls the current deed and traces the chain of title back through prior conveyances, looking for the legal description, any recorded plats, and adjacent deed calls that help establish where the boundary was intended to run.
Georgia does not use the federal Public Land Survey System grid, so surveyors cannot rely on section corner monuments the way surveyors in PLSS states do. Instead, Georgia boundary research depends heavily on deed chains, recorded plat books, and physical evidence in the field. In older rural counties, the surveyor may be working back through deeds that reference creeks, trees, and neighbors from the 1800s.
After records research, the surveyor goes to the field to locate existing corner monuments. Georgia property corners are typically iron pins or rebar with a cap stamped with the surveyor's license number. In older subdivisions and rural properties, concrete monuments or older pipe markers may be present. A metal detector helps locate buried or overgrown pins. The surveyor takes precise measurements with GPS and a total station, verifies positions against the deed and plat dimensions, and sets new monuments where corners are missing or disturbed.
The finished product is a sealed plat showing boundary lines, dimensions, bearings, and monument locations. In Georgia, a survey plat recorded with the county Superior Court Clerk becomes part of the public land record for your parcel.
Find a Licensed Georgia Land Surveyor
Every surveyor in our directory is sourced from Georgia State Board licensing records. Browse by county to find licensed professionals near your property, from the Atlanta metro to the coast to rural south Georgia.