We had a house near us get surveyed wrong and about a third of the way into framing they realized that part of the house was on the neighbors property. They tore out part of the foundation and added a funky bend to the driveway. When you look at it today completed, all you see is a weird bend in the driveway. Opps.
Yep happens a lot. I was a part owner in a surveying/engineering firm for 20+ years. Lots of similar situations.
First was a survey I did back around 1980. My girlfriend's parents owned a farm with a homestead and wanted to plat some lots for the kids and a few to sell. One piece of property had already been sold and built on by the oldest daughter. But built in the wrong place. So she had to quit claim her property back to the parents and the parents deeded her the lot that corresponded where house was. Easy.
Another was a whole 100+ lot subdivision where our firm platted and designed the subdivision, but construction was handled by the builder's surveyor. Streets, utilities, and houses were all built in the wrong location by about 10-20'. Luckily nothing was sold when the error was found. We were able to resurvey the location of everything that was built and I filed a corrected plat to fix the problem.
Another - We did a subdivision of about 20 five unit townhouse buildings. Each building had its own plat with legal description of the townhouse to include front and back yards adjacent to each unit.
We gave the plats to the developer's lawyer to get title work started. About the same time, the lawyer called our office asking for individual addresses for the townhouses. We got the addresses from the city, and gave the lawyer the addresses over the phone.
Problem was that the lawyer had his plats upside down when he transcribed the addresses to his copies of the plats. And he set up all real estate contracts initially by address, and later title was brought down based the legal descriptions matching his erroneously placed addresses.
Somehow I found this snafu. But by this time about 50 units had been sold. 4 out 5 units in every building were occupied by people who owned a different unit in the building. IE - family living in an end unit actually had a deed to the other end unit. Only the middle unit owners had a legal description that matched where they lived.
I explained this to the lawyer and I don't think he understood the gravity of the problem. Deeds to the wrong pieces, mortgages, construction lien waivers - 100's of incorrect documents.
I explained it to my replacement and retired soon after. I have no idea how they fixed that.
