Legal Description That Uses Degrees Minutes and Seconds

Surveys are detailed surveys of a parcel of land. They use various techniques to describe and map terrain. One of the most important parts of a survey is the determination of land boundaries. The “Metes and Bounds” method of creating a legal description of land uses detailed instructions from a route that defines boundaries. The legal description appears in several places in real estate documents, such as purchase agreements, mortgage documents, deeds, title information, etc. It is used to track a property`s history to ensure a clear title, and lenders need it to make sure they have the right collateral for the loan. Wherever it appears, it must be carefully checked to confirm that the description is correct. The term “legal” is often used because these descriptions are used for the legal transfer of land on documents such as deeds, land grants, etc. State laws give the county auditor or tax assessor the authority to transfer real property. The property must be defined by a legal description in order to recognize and transfer the land.

The transfer form (an act or deed containing the legal description) is then registered at the county registrar`s office so that there is an official public record of the transfer and description. The district auditor or tax assessor also relies on the description to appraise the property for tax assessment purposes. First, let`s look at the name of this legal description system. Mete means measure and bound means border. Yes, there are other definitions, but those are the definitions we are looking at. Therefore, Metes and Bounds literally means measures and limits. Cardinal capes are usually expressed in numbers. For example, north is a direction of 0 and west is a direction of 270, meaning northwest would be 315 degrees or in N45W survey systems.

N44W is slightly further north and less to the west than N45W. If you need more precision, you can also use fractions of degrees. A sixtieth of a degree is called a minute. If the description of the instructions in minutes is not precise enough, you can also further divide the minutes into seconds so that there are 60 seconds in one minute. But since you`ll probably be reading it in feet, let`s continue with that. So we have 0 to 90 degrees in each quadrant, with 0 starting north or south and ending in the 90s west or east. But in modern surveying, technology has allowed surveyors to break degrees down into smaller units called minutes and those that are then divided into seconds. It is possible to define a property by simply quoting the boundaries.

Many earlier legal descriptions may have been presented in this way in the country`s early education before surveyors or state laws for investigations. A property may have been defined as bounded on the north by the road from Salem to Siler City, bounded on the east by Jones Land, bounded on the south by the low-water mark of the Ohio River, and bounded on the west by Smith Farm. This certainly opens the door to disputes between adjacent owners. This is the most recent surveying system developed when dividing parcels of land. A flat map or cadastre marks the parcels of a subdivision and is recorded as a legal description. Lots are usually sold in one piece, and blocks have a group of adjacent lots, with blocks separated by roads throughout the subdivision. Please take a few minutes to review the table below: But if you ever encounter these metrics in your legal descriptions, thankfully, Google has online conversion tools for them. Or you can find various conversion tools on the internet to figure it out. While the description of government surveying for large parcels is quite simple, for small parcels of land, the description becomes longer and longer to get the finer details. This can become unmanageable, so a different system is often used for subdivisions. The line number is also used to label points in the drawing that do not have a point name. A simple example would be a property line – any property line.

It starts at some kind of marker, say a fence post, goes a certain distance in a certain direction and ends at a certain mark. Distance and direction are the mead that makes up this boundary. To see? But the two words in the above description that make it difficult (or seem so) are distance and direction. Let`s break that down. As an additional double check, many descriptions also include words such as “southwest” or “north” to describe the general direction of a curve. Metes and Bounds is a legal real estate tenure system used to describe irregular parcels and veneered subdivisions. Metes are a measure of length and boundaries are limits. In addition, Metes and Bounds uses the storage system. Latitude and longitude are given in decimal degrees, where longitude is a negative number in the Western Hemisphere. “Metes” are exact measurements in a straight line from a defined “terminal” or land point to another terminal. “Borders” are descriptions of certain features of the country that are part of the border, such as a wall or a road.

The “metes and bounds” method combines these direct measurements and descriptions to define the boundaries of a property, and the system has been around since colonial times. A survey with Métis and boundaries usually begins with a main landmark. It then describes in which direction to go from this landmark and for what distance. From this point, he describes the next jog in terms of direction and angle. The process continues until the description returns the surveyor to the original starting point. The directions in modern Metes and Bounds descriptions don`t just describe feet and degrees. They break down distance measurements into hundredths of a foot and directions into degrees, minutes and seconds. Some of the terminology used with the Metes and Bounds description includes monuments, landmarks and starting point (POB). The legal description usually includes the word condominium or condominium as well as the lot number, property number, unit number and building number. Architectural style or architecture is not always a reliable indicator. To be sure whether a property is a condominium or not, the best determination would be the legal description. The legal description can be found on the deed of ownership.

A term used to describe land boundaries and to establish all boundary lines and their ends and angles. Metes (length or measurements) and boundary description are often used when a high degree of precision is required. A description that includes both metes and borders is the most objective way to define a country. The definition of the mathematically completed figure of the property by the metes component is revealed, and the adjacency is understood by specifying the bounded component. When reviewing and comparing boundary and boundary descriptions, such as registered descriptions, new descriptions based on a new survey, or adjacent parcel descriptions, it is common to notice differences in the metes component of a defined property line. This is due to the survey on which the description is based and represents the best professional opinion of an individual surveyor. As a rule, the differences between surveyors are minimal. Well, if you`re not a surveyor, you`ll never use them. But you need to know what they mean so you don`t get bogged down in the legal description. And you need to know how to represent them in notation in a legal description. The creation of the legal description of the government survey system is based on special lines of longitude and latitude called meridians and main baselines. (37 major meridians in the United States) as starting points.

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