Our Process

Your Elevation Certificate order—what happens behind the scenes

With First American, getting an Elevation Certificate quote is easy. For most requests, you'll receive a quote instantly.

If we're unable to provide an instant quote, it's usually because your request is in a rural or commercial area and we need to do some extra work to get you the best price. But don't worry. We'll either email you an Elevation Certificate quote or call you within two hours.

Once you approve the Elevation Certificate quote and we receive your payment, we'll schedule an on-site visit to your property. By the way, we'll never charge more than our quoted price unless any of the variables change.

You don't have to be home while the surveyor does the work, unless you need to be there to allow access to your property, crawl space, basement, or sunken room. In that case, we'll set up a time that best fits your schedule.

Information gathering: preparing for an on-site visit

Before our surveyors ever leave the office, they research legal documents, deeds, and tax maps in preparation to visit your property. They cross-check your legal description with the physical address; this ensures they make the elevation determination on the correct location. That's why it's extremely important that you enter the legal description for your home when you submit your request.

Next, they research the location of all the elevation benchmarks in your area. This is an important part of determining your home's elevation, as this point of reference is used to measure the elevation of your home compared to the Base Flood Elevation on your community's flood map.

Working in the field: obtaining elevation measurements for your property

With all the necessary property reference information in-hand and equipped with various surveying tools (a laptop computer, scanner, and satellite uplink) the surveying team will start their field work.

The first and most critical, time-consuming task is searching for the benchmark nearest to your home; actually, it's preferable to find two benchmarks to compare elevation readings for accuracy. Most times, however, the surveying team is lucky to find just one. Benchmarks aren't always easy to locate. For instance, they may be situated several miles away from the nearest road, or buried under a foot of dirt. And benchmarks are often accidentally destroyed when an area is developed.

Once the benchmark is found, it's used as the starting point for one of several different processes that the surveying team may go through to determine your property's elevation.

The grand finale: the Elevation Certificate is made

Once all the measurements are taken in the field, the information is electronically delivered to the surveyor's office. This is where the value of our coordinating Elevation Certificate work to knowledgeable local surveyors comes through. They know from experience which types of elevation benchmarks in their community are trustworthy or if they need to subtract or add to the benchmark elevation because the earth has shifted up or down in the area since the benchmark was first measured.

The surveyor will check and double-check the field measurements and calculations, and then compare the elevation of your home to the Base Flood Elevation on FEMA's flood map for your community.

The surveyor completes FEMA's approved Elevation Certificate form, signs and seals the certificate, and sends it electronically to First American, where it undergoes a final quality check for compliance with FEMA's requirements. At that point, we send it to you as an email attachment. (If your state doesn't accept electronic signatures, then the hard copy certificate is mailed to you.) You also have the option, when you place your order, to have a hard copy of the certificate sent to you or to someone else.

Our surveyors are sticklers for accuracy.

There's an old adage in the construction business. Measure twice and cut once. Surveyors use a similar method to avoid calculation mistakes; they call it a “level loop.” The basic concept: measure to a point, and then measure back from the same point. If the numbers are the same, then it's considered an accurate measurement.

Using a level loop is just one of the many ways our surveyors ensure their readings are exact. They also re-calibrate their instruments every two weeks and ensure their surveying crews are trustworthy and knowledgeable. To remain licensed to practice their trade, they must adhere to state regulations, leaving no room for inaccuracies. When a licensed surveyor signs your Elevation Certificate, their reputation and livelihood is on the line.