California Surveyors Forums

I am working on a Tentative Parcel Map and the County is requiring a Certificate of Compliance for the property. I am still reviewing the Chain of Title but for the sake of this discussion lets say it was deeded post March 4, 1972.

There have been multiple building permits issued on the property through the years and from what I understand issuing permits is a pathway to parcel validity. However, I have only been successful by providing a land use permit, not a building permit, for a Certificate of Compliance. I have Planners telling me no, building permits don't prove parcel validity, but I have read other surveyors being successful in their pursuit.

Can anyone provide me some reference's I can include with my application package, if building permits are in fact sufficient? I have spent sometime researching this but I am coming up short.

I appreciate any help or direction any of you can provide.

SMA 66499.34. Look at last paragraph. It also refers to 66499.35(c).

Thank you both, I don't know how I missed that section.

The issuance of a permit or grant of approval for development of real property, or with respect to improvements that have been completed prior to the time a permit or grant of approval for development was required by local ordinances in effect at the time of the improvement, or with respect to improvements that have been completed in reliance upon a permit or grant of approval for development, shall constitute “real property which has been approved for development,” for the purposes of subdivision (c) of Section 66499.35, and upon request by the person owning the real property or a vendee of such person pursuant to a contract of sale, the local agency shall issue a certificate of compliance for the affected real property.

Side note, when you are searching through legal code, ask AI to summarize it for you (Chat GPT, Copilot or similar), then read through it again, you can even have it read it for you slowly, out loud.
This can really help those of us who don't read legal code all day long and don't have law clerk skills.