A family farm with an older but infortunately not uncommon deed description as follows.
Three separate tracts totaling 180 acres with descriptions alternately in chains and poles
Two vague exceptions with some rough acreages and names and that is it for reference.
Eight other exceptions with actual metes and bounds within the last fifty years.
The larger parcels around this farm have fifteen page deeds, largely consisting of descriptions and exceptions as well.
An old cemetery within yet somehow excluded from the farm.
The owners want to split off another portion for one of the children. I trying to convince them to fix centuries of half-@$$#* splits and surveying the whole farm and have new legal descriptions written for the new piece and remainder. A landowner does not have to have a new legal description for a remainder piece in Kentucky and it gets out of hand like this sometimes.
I would estimate the actual remaining acreage to be a hair over 100 acres now. What would a job like this run in your neck of the woods.
Too much.
I saw plenty of those in the Yakima Valley. In the depression, the few who had cash bought up bunches of land at tax default sales, then start redescribing off parts through time. When I see this type history, I tell them give me ten grand against $$$ per hour and I will get back to you in a month or two if more is needed.
Planning is drooling over large tracts of land acquired over time and waiting for it all to be re described as one unit. Does not matter the reason why, once it is re described and a permit is needed from planning, they will inform you that they have control over what happens on all of your lands within that new description. A disservice to your client to consolidate his lands unless each individual unit is describe as a stand alone tract. Attorneys, bankers and estate planners love to have consolidated all the holdings into one description when they get involved. Need to think about future effects of the increasing control of government on all of our privately held lands and not provide the means for an owner to loose his rights to use the lands as he wishes and as it was originally described. My advice here is to not re write descriptions in order to remove all of the individually acquired descriptions from the whole.
jud
Jud
I may be able to keep the three tracts (or what is left of them) separate in a new description if I can actually determine where those lines were. I wouldn't be surprised to see many hundreds of feet of overlap/gap, lost monuments, generally a surveying bad scene. The property is for all intents and purposes not described on paper. An existing fenceline may well be the best evidence of property lines and those disappear and move over time. I think the public is well-served with a modern survey straightening out exactly what it is that they own, particularly as evidence disappears and future results would be different. The remainder of the farm is not subject to any requirements of the planning commission, just the new parcel. Those requirements are simple road frontage, total acreage for that zone, and dedicated right-of-way.
Planning and zoning boards have caused the surveying crowd a fair amount of grief trying to get things through but I have worked in many counties with no rules and anarchy is a big problem. On one survey, in doing the research, the county clerk and PVA had no idea who owned three different adjacent parcels. No taxes, no records. Other states only allow two exceptions on a deed or none before a resurvey of the parent tract is required. From experience, I like those requirements, though it does burden the landowner somewhat. The long term problems are greatly mitigated.
KY is a tough place to survey. Many times, and this can be said for many places in WV too, the cost of a survey, done correctly, is higher than the value of the land.