Where your parcel's corners and lines fall on the ground, marked with stakes, and a drawing recording what the surveyor found. It shows structures, driveways, fences and recorded easements, and flags anything crossing a line. It does not decide ownership; a court does that. What it gives you is professional evidence, which is what settles most disagreements before they get that far.

Often not. Fences get built a little inside, a little outside, or where the ground was easiest to dig, and hedges creep. Years of mowing up to a line creates habit, not title. Before you replace a fence, take out a tree on the edge, or pour a driveway, have the corners located. Moving a fence is far cheaper than moving a slab.

Lenders often accept a location drawing that shows the house on the parcel and nothing more. Flood insurance is different: an elevation certificate, signed by a surveyor, records the lowest floor against the flood datum and drives what the policy costs. If you want the corners marked for your own use, ask for a boundary survey and say so plainly.

Research first. Deeds, recorded plats, road records and the surveys done nearby, sometimes going back generations. Then fieldwork, hunting for original monuments with a metal detector and a shovel, because an original marker outranks a modern measurement. The corners get rebuilt from the evidence that survives, and the drawing states what was found and what was set.

Design. It records contours, spot elevations, trees, utilities, drainage and existing structures so an architect or engineer can lay out a building, a driveway or a drainage plan against real ground rather than a guess. Anyone about to spend money on grading, a pool or an addition on a sloped lot should pay for one first.