The survey is the least discussed document in a Texas purchase and one of the more consequential. It is the only thing in the file that tells you where your property actually ends, which is frequently not where the fence is.
What it shows
A survey maps the legal boundaries and locates everything relevant within and across them: the house, the driveway, outbuildings, fences, easements, setback lines, and any encroachment either onto the property or from it onto a neighbour.
That last category is where surprises live. A neighbour's shed sitting three feet over the line, a driveway that crosses a boundary, a fence built years ago in the wrong place. None of these are visible to a buyer walking the property, and all of them become yours to deal with.
Easements are the other common revelation. A utility easement running down one side of the garden, a shared access easement, a drainage easement. These constrain what you can build and they do not appear on a listing.
The Texas shortcut
Rather than requiring a new survey on every transaction, Texas practice allows the parties to reuse the seller's existing one, accompanied by a T-47 affidavit. In that affidavit the seller swears under oath that nothing has changed since the survey was made.
With that in hand, a title company will generally accept the older survey and provide the associated coverage. The buyer saves the cost of a new survey, which on an ordinary residential lot is a worthwhile saving and on acreage is a substantial one.
This is a genuinely sensible mechanism, and it works exactly as long as the affidavit is true.
When the shortcut does not work
The affidavit fails, and a new survey is needed, whenever the ground has changed. In practice that means:
- A fence has been replaced or moved. Extremely common, and fences drift.
- A pool, deck, patio, or shed has gone in. Any new structure changes the picture.
- The house has been extended. Setback compliance is now an open question.
- The driveway has been altered or a second one added.
- No survey exists at all, which is more common than you would expect on properties that have not traded in decades.
- The seller will not sign it. Which is itself informative, and worth asking about rather than working around.
Sellers sometimes sign the affidavit without thinking carefully, because it is presented as routine paperwork. If you can see with your own eyes that the fence is newer than the survey date, do not rely on the affidavit.
Read it against the title commitment
The survey and the title commitment answer each other. The commitment lists easements and exceptions in words. The survey shows you where they physically are.
An easement described as running along the south boundary sounds harmless until the survey shows it crossing the part of the garden where you intended to put a pool. Read the two together during the option period, while you still hold an unrestricted right to terminate. See title insurance in Texas and the option period explained.
Acreage is a different problem
On larger parcels the stakes rise considerably. Boundaries may never have been precisely established, older descriptions can be vague, fences may have been placed by convenience rather than by survey, and access may depend on an easement across someone else's land.
On rural land, also confirm legal access. A property reached by driving across a neighbour's field for thirty years does not necessarily have a recorded right to do so, and a handshake arrangement does not transfer with the deed. This comes up around Dripping Springs and Spicewood more than people expect.
On any meaningful acreage purchase, a new survey is usually money well spent rather than a cost to avoid.
The cost question, honestly
A new survey is not free, and it is small relative to the problems it prevents. A boundary dispute discovered after closing is expensive, slow, and unpleasant, and it is the sort of thing that surfaces when you try to sell rather than while you are living there.
Who pays is negotiated in the contract like everything else. In the current market, with roughly 5.9 months of inventory, asking a seller to cover it is a reasonable request rather than an unusual one.
What we do about it
We look at the existing survey against what is actually on the ground before advising you to rely on a T-47, and we read the survey against the title commitment rather than filing both. Where a fence is clearly newer than the survey, we will say so, because that affidavit is a sworn statement and it should be accurate.