Legal description Methods Flashcards
s a description of a property that is distinct and precise enough to distinguish it from all other properties. These descriptions can be used by courts to clarify any potential disputes about the property.
Legal Description
is the process and physical product of finding and measuring the boundaries of a piece of real estate, including the location of improvements, encroachments, and easements. (Improvements are permanent, human-made additions to the property.)
Surveys
is a land survey process in which a licensed land surveyor starts at a readily identifiable point of beginning and defines the boundaries of a property in terms of distances and compass directions, finally returning to the point of beginning.
Metes and Bounds
were used as points of beginning or markers for the metes and bounds system. Monuments are fixed landmarks, either natural or human-made. Natural monuments can include things like streams, large boulders, or trees. Natural monuments were very commonly used in the early days of surveying. 🌳
Monuments
permanent markers of known location and elevation as established by a government survey team.
Benchmarks
It’s a type of legal description that identifies a piece of platted property by referring to the section, lot, and block numbers in a subdivision. This is the most modern type of legal description. It’s well suited for cities and suburban communities.
Lot and block
Plat: a drawing of a development used in the block and lot method (Keep in mind, this is called a “plat” and not a plot. A plot is what you get buried in.)
Parcel: a part or portion of land; often used to identify a specific lot within a larger tract of property
Lot: individual piece of land measured and defined by the metes and bounds system
Block: a collection of lots
Tract: the totality of the property represented on a plat
Vocabulary
may also be called the government survey system or public land survey system. It was developed by the federal government to improve, simplify, and standardize surveying. Physical monuments and boundary descriptions aren’t required. The rectangular survey system method depends on a grid using the longitude and latitude system of mapping. Today, more land in the United States is defined by the rectangular survey system than by any other method.
Rectangular Survey System
run north to south. They segment the globe along Earth’s poles
Meridians (longitude lines)
, run east to west, parallel to the equator.
Parallels (Latitude)
run parallel to the principal meridian, running north and south. Range lines are spaced six miles apart from one another. The area of land between two consecutive range lines are called ranges, which are six miles wide.
Ranges
Township lines run west and east, parallel to the baseline and, like range lines, are six miles apart from one other. The areas of land that township lines create are called tiers, which are – you guessed it – six miles wide.
Like ranges to meridians, tiers are numbered by their positions either north or south of the baseline.
Tiers
Range columns run parallel to meridians and create six-mile ranges, and township lines run parallel to baselines and create six-mile tiers. So what happens when a six-mile range intersects with a six-mile tier? Well, you get an area of 36 square miles called a township, my friend.
This is because:
6 miles x 6 miles = 36 square miles
Range Columns & Township Lines
Township rows are numbered consecutively, north and south of a baseline. For the first tier of townships lying north of a baseline, the entire row is “Township 1 North”, or T1N. All those comprising the first row south of the baseline are labeled “Township 1 South” or T1S. Range columns are labeled much the same way.
Township Numbering
Each 36-square-mile township can be divided into 36 individual square mile sections (yes, that’s the official term), beginning in the upper right-hand corner. Each square mile contains 640 acres, and every acre has 43,560 sq. ft.
Numbers on a township map represent the different sections. They begin in the top right corner. From there, numbering goes from right to left on the top row, down to the second row, where numbering goes from left to right. On the third row, numbers move from right to left, alternating until every section is numbered. This pattern is called a “snaking” pattern, an alternative to traditional left-to-right numbering.
Sections of a Township
