A home addition is one of the biggest projects you can take on. You get extra space, more functionality, and it bumps up your home’s value – it all sounds perfect until you start the paperwork. As you fill out permit applications and talk to building officials, setback requirements are going to come up fast. These requirements decide if your perfect design will actually fit on your property. A lot of homeowners don’t learn about setback requirements until after they’ve already spent weeks working with contractors and committed to a particular layout.
The boundaries of your property might look obvious on paper. But they don’t usually line up with what’s actually there on the ground. The fence line that you’ve been using as a reference point – it almost never matches up with the legal boundary. The deck that the previous owner built a few years back might sit partially on your neighbor’s land.
Skipping the survey might save you a few hundred dollars up front and feels pretty tempting. This same choice might cost you tens of thousands of dollars later on, though. Work that breaks setback requirements or encroaches on easements may have to be torn down and relocated completely. Building departments across New Jersey each have their own rules for when a survey is needed for your project. Lenders add their own rules on top of all this, and plenty of homeowners don’t know about this until they’re already halfway through the permit process. Find out what applies to your situation before any of the work starts.
Let’s sort out the confusion about when surveys are actually needed for additions!
What Your Survey Shows for Additions
What you get is a map that shows the exact boundaries of your lot, along with the location of everything that’s already on the property. Your house, any sheds, patios, decks – these all get measured and marked based on where they sit relative to those property lines.
All these measurements actually matter because New Jersey has setback requirements that control how close your addition can be to the property lines. Without a survey, you’re just guessing at those distances. A survey shows you how much space you have to work with, and it’ll tell you up front if your addition plans will fit within the allowed space or not.
Your builder and architect can’t move forward until they get their hands on this information. Gas lines, water mains, sewer pipes – these utilities are all buried somewhere under your property, and they need to be located before anyone starts digging. The survey will also show you if you have any easements or rights-of-way on your lot where utility providers (or sometimes your neighbors) have legal permission to access certain areas when they need to do maintenance or repairs. Most of the surveys use GPS technology to capture these measurements, and the accuracy is dramatically better than the old plot plans from 20 or 30 years ago. The property boundaries can move a bit over time, or maybe a previous owner made some changes that never actually got recorded with the county. Either way, you want the most up-to-date data available to work from.
Surveys also document drainage patterns on your lot. Water flow can become a problem if you add square footage to your home, so you want to know which way the water moves (and where it pools up). Your builder uses this to plan around any drainage problems.
All of this works together to turn your survey document into a roadmap for your project. What you wind up with is a picture of what will and won’t actually work on your lot, and you get that information before you spend thousands of dollars on architectural plans that might not even be buildable.
Local Township Rules for Your Building Project
Your local township gets to make the call on how close you can build to your property lines, and the setback requirements can be quite different depending on where you live. One town might want you to stay at least 10 feet away from your side yard boundary. Another town just a few miles away might only ask for 5 feet of clearance. Towns like Princeton or Montclair usually have much tighter restrictions than the more rural parts of the state. The setbacks in your township could be different from what your neighbor has to follow just one town over – and that’s just how local zoning works in New Jersey.
When the zoning officers review your plans, they’re going to want to see a survey so they can make sure that everything you’re planning actually fits within those setback requirements. Without an accurate survey on hand, there is no way for them to verify that your addition will stay inside the buildable area on your lot.
Most cities and counties now ask for a survey whenever you’re planning an addition that falls close to your property lines. The magic number is usually around 10 feet or so, though every jurisdiction does this a little differently. Surveys also matter for what’s called impervious coverage, and that’s the amount of your property that gets covered by structures and pavement instead of grass or soil. Every township sets a maximum percentage for this, and your surveyor will be able to calculate if your home addition would put you over that allowed limit. Going over the cap could shut down your project before you’d even break ground.
Why Banks Ask for Addition Surveys
Banks won’t hand over the money for your home addition without putting some checks in place first. Home equity loans and construction loans usually have a survey requirement – it makes sense when you look at what’s at stake for them. Lenders need to make sure that your project stays within your property boundaries and follows the local codes in your area. Title insurers care about this, too, and here’s why. One of their main jobs is to make sure that there aren’t any boundary problems that could turn into expensive claims later. If your new addition accidentally crosses onto a neighbor’s property or pushes into an easement area, it turns into a legal mess for everyone, and the insurance company wants to stay away from that headache.
Most lenders will ask you for a survey when you’re borrowing more than $50,000 for your project, and it doesn’t matter if your local town or city even needs one. That dollar threshold is what the bank cares about. Lenders have their own set of standards and requirements that all need to be met before they’ll release any of the funds to you.
Insurers can also cause problems if you skip the survey step. If your addition ends up on an easement or doesn’t meet the setback requirements, your insurer may refuse to cover that part of your home at all. On top of that, they’ll likely raise your premiums anyway because they view your property as a bigger gamble to cover.
You still need to deal with insurance even if you paid cash for your addition. Your homeowner’s policy is going to need to show the expanded square footage, and this part can get a bit tough. Plenty of insurers want to see the survey before they update your coverage limits. This requirement actually protects them from extending coverage on a home that could have code violations or boundary disputes attached to it that weren’t disclosed ahead of time.
The Cost of Skipping a Survey
Most surveys in New Jersey run between $500 and $1,500 for a home addition project – it’s serious money when you’re ready to break ground and get started. Skipping the survey usually backfires, though, and the problems it creates wind up costing more than the survey would have.
If an addition crosses your property line, you’d wind up paying twice for the exact same project. Boundary disputes can cost you a fortune in legal fees alone. The average case runs over $10,000 after you add up the lawyers and the court proceedings – and that’s money you could have put toward better finishes or extra square footage instead.
Construction delays can also get expensive very quickly. When your building inspector shows up and stops the work because of a property line dispute, your contractor will still charge you for the downtime. Plenty of contractors bill around $500 a day, even when their crew can’t work and they’re just waiting for the approval to continue.
Let’s say you’re halfway through your construction project and you find out that you’ve built right over a utility easement that was listed in your property records. The utility company is legally allowed to access that space whenever they need to, and you don’t get a say in the matter. Depending on the situation, you might need to relocate your entire addition just to honor those access rights.
A survey usually takes somewhere around 1 to 2 weeks from start to finish. Problems that need to be fixed after you’ve already poured your foundation or framed your walls can drag on for months as you sort through the legal questions and redo the work.
When You Can Skip the Survey
Not every home project needs a brand new survey, and this can save you time and money in the right situations. Home additions that stay within your existing walls and don’t change the footprint of your property usually don’t need one.
Most local building departments will waive the survey requirement in cases like this. Small deck additions under 200 square feet also fall into this category in most New Jersey towns. An old survey that’s already on file can help you, too. Maybe you had one done between 5 and 10 years ago, and nothing on your property has changed since then. Most building departments will accept that existing survey and won’t make you pay for a brand new one.
Of course, this only works if you can show them that no new structures, fences, sheds or other additions have gone up on your property in all that time. Some municipalities will actually let you submit a more basic plot plan instead of paying for a full boundary survey, especially for minor additions. This works best when the addition that you’re planning is nowhere near your property lines, so there’s no concern about it creeping onto your neighbor’s property. Your local building department mostly just wants to check that you have enough room for the work without causing any boundary problems.
Most building codes have grandfather clauses for houses that don’t line up with current zoning, and this matters quite a bit when you’re planning an addition. Say your house already sits closer to the property line than what the code allows today. The building department will probably handle your request differently than they would for a house that already meets the setback requirements. These situations usually get a bit complicated and can mean spending extra time in review.
What you need to remember during this whole process is that if your building department says you don’t need a survey, get that answer in writing before you start doing anything. Verbal approval from the person at the counter won’t protect you if problems pop up later during construction or years later when you’re trying to sell. A written approval gives you something concrete to point to if anyone ever questions whether you did everything correctly.
Contact Our Team Today to Start Your Project
Maybe you have an old survey from the time you first bought your house, tucked away in a filing cabinet or a safe deposit box for the last 10 or 15 years. Don’t write it off or believe that it’s still usable right away – have a licensed surveyor review it first. They can tell you if a quick update will work or if you’ll need a new one from scratch. That conversation could save you some money and still give you the up-to-date paperwork that your municipality needs for approval.
A team that knows New Jersey permitting and building codes inside and out can save you a lot of time and frustration. Magnolia Home Remodeling Group has worked with homeowners on renovation projects for over 30 years, and we take care of just about anything – big family room additions, open-concept kitchens, multi-level expansions, you name it. When you’re ready to add some square footage to your home, contact our family-owned team for a no-obligation estimate. Check out our project gallery for inspiration, download our free catalog or give us a call, and we can go over your plans.
