In most New Jersey towns, yes: the fence permit application asks for a copy of your property survey showing where the fence will go, and the fence must sit inside your boundary. Even where a permit isn't required, you need to know exactly where the line is before you dig. If you don't have a recent survey with the corners physically marked, hire a licensed surveyor to locate and stake the line before the fence company shows up.
What the township actually asks for
Fence rules are set at the municipal level, so Toms River, Brick, Howell and Manalapan each have their own ordinance — height limits, setbacks from the sidewalk, which side the finished face goes on. What almost all of them have in common is the permit paperwork: a copy of your survey with the proposed fence line drawn on it. Some towns accept the survey from your closing. Others, especially where a fence goes near an easement or a corner lot sight triangle, want something current.
The important point: the township is checking that the fence is on your property. They are not going to come out and find the line for you. That's what the survey is for.
Why the old survey from your closing often isn't enough
The survey you got when you bought the house shows where the lines are on paper. It does not tell you where they are on the ground today. Iron pins and monuments get buried under mulch, pulled out during landscaping, or knocked over by snowplows. Fences and hedges drift. After ten or twenty years, the paper is still accurate — but nobody standing in the yard can see the line.
If your survey is more than a few years old, or the corner markers can't be found, the right move is a corner-marking or stakeout from a licensed surveyor. We recover or reset the corners and set stakes and flagging along the line so the fence installer has something physical to build to.
What happens if you skip it
Fence disputes are the most common boundary case we get called into after the fact. A fence built over the line — even by inches — is an encroachment. Your neighbor can demand it be moved, it can show up as an exception on a future title survey when either of you sells, and moving a finished fence costs more than a survey would have. Building to a line you actually know is cheaper in every version of the story.
Which survey do you need?
- You have a recent survey and can find the corners: you may not need us at all. Confirm the pins with your fence company and go.
- You have a survey but the corners are missing: a corner-recovery and stakeout — we locate the boundary from the record and mark it.
- You have no survey, or the lot has changed hands several times: a full boundary survey, which produces a new sealed plat you can use for the permit and for every project after this one.
What it costs and how long it takes
Cost depends on lot size, how good the existing record is, and whether the corners can be recovered or have to be re-established from adjoining properties. Most residential fence stakeouts are a single site visit. Use the cost calculator for a range, or send us the address and we'll quote it.
Where we do this most
Fence surveys are everyday work for us across the inland and shore towns of Ocean and Monmouth County — particularly newer subdivisions where original pins are still recoverable and older shore lots where they aren't: