So, basically you're agreeing with what I observed about your views.
Kent, there you go again talking for me, or attempting to misstate my views to the forum. I can talk for myself. Forum members can read.
KENT, WE DON'T AGREE ABOUT ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's an absurd statement. How can I know what you observed about my views. I don't know what's in your mind. You think you know what's in my mind. Talk about a communication problem!
You're like the dictator of North Korea, got a confession. You going to execute me? You probably would if you could.
"...a thousand years from now its going to be more than colossal in scope to go through every record..."
That is one hell of a good point, Leon.
Dave
> "...a thousand years from now its going to be more than colossal in scope to go through every record..."
>
> That is one hell of a good point, Leon.
Actually, when a surveyor resurveys a tract and identifies the original conveyances that created the tract boundaries, in best practice those are actually referenced on the map and written description. That provides the next surveyor with the means to easily go right to those key instruments without doing the heavy lifting of abstracting the entire chain of title. Naturally, even that shortcut into the title would probably still seem like too much work for a surveyor who wanted to just download a shape file from the GIS and go to it, but as land surveying goes, it is hardly the burden that the folks who don't do much research imagine it to be.
In the interest of due diligence, you'd need to at least briefly glance at every record of survey that touched on a property. Especially so for a property bordering a river, or one that called a tree that no longer exists, or had markers that replaced original markers, or perhaps the original conveyance had ambiguities or was lost fifty years ago in a fire at the courthouse. And since most properties today are subdivisions of subdivisions of subdivisions, you'd have to look for intent on the part of the seller of each subdivision. How far back do you go? When Congress "originally" sold it out from under the Indians' feet?
It's what they pay you for--your opinion. It is also the reason why most people are shocked at surveying fees. They don't realize how complicated the search for evidence, both physical and paper, can be. Leon makes a very good case for definitive GIS corners. As the paper trail piles up, at what point are people going to say, "Screw it, I'll use the Assessor's Map. I can't afford a surveyor!"
Dave
> The map of the future is going to be at minimum a pdf with attachments. ....
I'm not going to engage in far reaching speculation. But I would say that the first step down such a path would be a system of statewide, possibly nationwide, rigidly enforced CAD and technical standards.
The Province of British Columbia operates under the Torrens System, and as such there is a provincial Surveyor-General, who has a small number of Survey Registrars working for him, and they enforce such standards. They have the power to accept or reject not just survey maps, but the surveys themselves. When the government is guaranteeing title, they get those resources and that power. The Torrens system has been tried in several US jurisdictions and has not caught on. Americans, being the kind of people they are, will not stand for it.
Having witnessed a state board attempt to formulate even basic written standards, having seen the written standards of another state waved at in passing, and having been involved in management attempts to enforce internal standards at a couple of different companies, I see this as a giant leap for survey kind. Until this hurdle is passed, you can forget about a GIS stuffed with high definition cadastral data.
Let's concentrate on things like recording laws for the 35 states that don't have them first. Then lets try to get the maps on the same sized sheet of paper.
> In the interest of due diligence, you'd need to at least briefly glance at every record of survey that touched on a property.
Examining records of prior surveys is a different proposition than examining the entire chain of title. Leon's point was that somehow the stack of subsequent conveyances complicates the fact that a boundary was created by exactly one conveyance. Obviously that isn't true. If a whole pile of records of surveys was filed, all showing material differences, of course that will be a complication, but as complications go, it wouldn't be much of one since a careful surveyor will file a record of survey that resolves and explains the prior differences, or so I'd think.
> ... a careful surveyor will file a record of survey that resolves and explains the prior differences....
I haven't followed all the twists of this thread, but I am currently working in a state in which nobody files a Record of Survey on anything. Which is the situation in 35 states. So are we taking about something that doesn't exist here?
> I haven't followed all the twists of this thread, but I am currently working in a state in which nobody files a Record of Survey on anything. Which is the situation in 35 states. So are we taking about something that doesn't exist here?
David Stoll's thesis was that over time there are just going to be an unwieldy number of records of survey to examine. Zero records of survey doesn't sound as if it will take that much time to look at. :>
Mark...errr.. I mean Norman..
Even though we are not required by statute to file surveys in Oklahoma, a great number of us do just that. A good deal of the county searchable databases have "SURVEY" as an instrument type on their searches.
I will admit that sometimes the search is a little more difficult than say looking up a specific "Book & Page", but surveys regularly get filed and they are retrievable.
Here's a screenshot of Cleveland County's:
These particular parameters brought up a "whole mess" of 'em.
Leon's right. That stack of subsequent conveyances, the chain of title, definitely complicates the "original" conveyance. How many 170-year-old ranchers do you know that have never subdivided their 2300-acre tract patented to them by the Republic of Texas? Each conveyance, each subdivision, must be looked at to understand the intent of the seller, and whether that seller actually owned what he sold. There isn't a single piece of property in America that isn't defined by a string of conveyances. That string keeps growing. And you're telling me you can set property corners from a single 170-year-old document?
I'd feel very comfortable hiring Leon to set my corners. And his maps are way better than your skimpy little cocktail napkin drawings.
Dave
Norman! It's Norman!
> These particular parameters brought up a "whole mess" of 'em.
There are some. I engaged in a bit of hyperbole. I applaud you for recording. But, for example, our friend Joe Ferguson recorded Record of Survey No. 63,867 in Multnomah County earlier this month.
Here is one I did back in 1997, before I was licensed. Ah, good old C&G.
> Leon's right. That stack of subsequent conveyances, the chain of title, definitely complicates the "original" conveyance. How many 170-year-old ranchers do you know that have never subdivided their 2300-acre tract patented to them by the Republic of Texas? Each conveyance, each subdivision, must be looked at to understand the intent of the seller, and whether that seller actually owned what he sold.
Sure, if you want to proceed from the wacky theory that some subsequent conveyance by a grantee will be sufficient to enlarge or alter the original grant to him, you'd need to read all sorts of extraneous stuff just to do something simple like finding original land grant lines.
Naturally, in the real world, some subsequent subdivision of a land grant has absolutely nothing to do with where the land grant line was originally surveyed. The grantee's supposed "intent" in subsequent conveyances cannot modify the terms of the instrument by which he acquired his title. Later surveys may perpetuate old lines, but do not alter them.
This same principle applies to the boundaries formed by the division lines of a grant. They were created by a specific transaction and are where the language of the transaction and possibly the contemporaneous acts of the parties show them to be, not where Joe Doe later decided that they were.
So once the boundary of the original grant is found and once the lines of the subsequent subdivisions of it that form the boundaries of the parcel of interest are found, the problem is solved in that the shape and location of the land described in the record title has been determined. The real research work is the abstracting that is required to identify the sequence of the original land grants (in a metes and bounds state) and to identify the subsequent conveyances by which the grant was divided to form the present boundaries of the parcel. The idea seems remarkably straight forward.
"So once the boundary of the original grant is found and once the lines of the subsequent subdivisions of it that form the boundaries of the parcel of interest are found, the problem is solved in that the shape and location of the land described in the record title has been determined. The real research work is the abstracting that is required to identify the sequence of the original land grants (in a metes and bounds state) and to identify the subsequent conveyances by which the grant was divided to form the present boundaries of the parcel."
Kent, if you reduce that stupendous pile of pomposity down to its essense, that's exactly what I said. Only, I'm more eloquent:
"Each conveyance, each subdivision, must be looked at to understand the intent of the seller, and whether that seller actually owned what he sold."
Don't tell anyone how easy it is to be a surveyor. They'll think you're overcharging them.
Dave
>
> "Each conveyance, each subdivision, must be looked at to understand the intent of the seller, and whether that seller actually owned what he sold."
Your thesis that you actually posted in support of was:
That stack of subsequent conveyances, the chain of title, definitely complicates the "original" conveyance.
Sorry, but that is obviously false, as I pointed out above. :>
Kent,
You have yourself a Big Ol' Nice Day, Y'hear!
Dave
