Why would you rewrite a description that has no changes in bearings and distances?
Several very good reasons.
First the ties from the point of commencement to the POB may have changed, and they can change drastically.
1/ A tie from a street intersection can change with right of way widening or realignment.
2/ A tie from a junior/senior tract corner can disappear with an adjacent lot to lot merger resubdivision.
3/ The physical tie monument may have changed.
4/ The desire to update bounds calls, "John Smith's southeast corner was very relavent when John Smith owned it 50 years ago but a call to the southeast corner of Lot 5 in Block 72 can outlast, Smith, Jones, Brown and Robillard.
Why changes within the description body:
5/ Previously called for monuments may have changed, gone missing (especially if you have a contract not to replace missing corners) or a previously unmarked corner has be monumented.
6/ Again the desire to update bounds calls, "the concrete monument at the southeast corner of John Paul's farm may now be the corner of "John Paul's Highlands, Map Book 72, Page 19".
7/ The desire to add passing calls, "along John Paul's farm" now becomes "along said "John Paul's Highlands" Lot 1, 2 and 3 N 07 W 427.02 feet passing iron pins with caps found at 150.00' and 300.00' to..."
8/ The need to add passing calls, "along said "John Paul's Highlands" Lot 3, 7 and partially alonb lot 9 N 83 E 157.02 feet passing iron pins with caps found at 1.53' and 156.02' to..."
What gets me is when my surveyed lot has not changed dimensions at all, but the new filed map subdivision next door reports the bearing on 1 line as 3" off of record. Do I or do I not change a good description?
Paul in PA
In my local area, every new survey generally gets a new property description.
Personally, I only want to do a plat that shows any changes and updates any information when bearings and distances remain to be correct.
After all, plats are a form of metes and bounds. They include all the information included in the narrative that the attorneys want.
One thing that I have been unable to get anyone to do is to attach my plat to the deed. The title companies, lawyers, clients or anyone else simply refuses to include their plat as a part of public record.
It is such a simple process and none have a worthy excuse for not doing so.
:-S
Paul,
I read through the post below off and on all day today as I checked in on the Board between drafting.
I generally write a property description for almost every survey I do. Sometimes mostly for one or more of the reasons that you state in your original post.
I can give two examples on recent surveys why, in my humble opinion, a new description was needed.
Example 1
I surveyed a platted rural 2 acre lot that had 1/2" capped rebars for the rear corners, and set cotton picker spindles set in the center line of a gravel road. The spindles had been torn out during road maintanance. I resurveyed the lot, and set 1/2 inch capped rebars outside of the road, and at locations where they would not be torn out, and set steel "t-posts" as witness corners. I wanted those new monuments to be introduced into the record so that the lot could easily be retraced in the future. I think my actions were warranted and were good sound surveying practice. The geometry of the lot did not change, but the need for additional reference to new monumentation needed to take place.
Example 2
I am currently working on a boundary survey of an 8 acre tract. I believe that the original deed has a scrivener's error in it, that makes the deed a little harder to interprete. All of the adjoining property owners have changed, and the called are in poles and are very general in nature. No distances are given along the road frontage, and the east call is "along the road in a northeasterly direction, to where the east line of the original 100 acre tract, thence north to the south line of Jones". Looking at the tax map, my parcel, and the parcel on the east side of the road, calculate out to about 98 aceres, more or less. The road does not cross the east line of the original 100 acre tract.
There are times where new property descriptions are necessary, and you have outlined many good reasons why. This is a good example of professional judgement.
Our fellow professionals that work mostly in the PLSS states may not ever see the vague desciptions that we do, and calls for bounded deeds and the like where the adjoining owners have changed numerous times. It gets hard ot tract down sometimes.
Just my humble opinion,
Jimmy
Duh, I Forgot To Add "When I Set A Marker"
That being a little more important than finding something different than record.
Paul in PA
I remember an attorney wanting a M&B description, because he didn't/couldn'y'wouldn't understand an aliquot description.
(We did it, yuck)
I spend a lot of time trying to educate clients, lawyers, landowners, etc about the importance of attaching the plat with the deed. One county in particular has very few plats recorded that way, making future surveys tough. My client really seemed to understand but a few months later, after he purchased the property I surveyed, the legal was recorded but not the plat. I envy the states with plat recording laws.
> I spend a lot of time trying to educate clients, lawyers, landowners, etc about the importance of attaching the plat with the deed.
The battle you're fighting is attacking the wrong direction. The survey information depicted on plats are an expression of the surveyor's opinion with regard to the LOCATION of real property boundaries. Surveyor's opinions are non-binding. Survey retracement information should not be mixed with the title record. It should be housed in a separate repository. Title records are binding; survey records are not. Title records serve as constructive notice to landowners and future purchasers; surveys should not.
>I envy the states with plat recording laws.
That's the real battle that surveyors should be fighting. In fact it should be no battle at all. We, alone, are the profession that is charged with defining, determining and defending the locations of boundaries. We are the ones who benefit from the perpetuation of retracement survey evidence. Boundary location is a survey issue, not a title issue.
The reason we're having any of these discussions about whether a surveyor can or cannot re-write a parcel description hinges primarily on the fault of our own profession to provide a mechanism for perpetuating survey retracement evidence. That failure requires us to interject our opinions into the title record system by reforming the title record to keep up with our need to perpetuate survey evidence. We're blurring the lines between title law and boundary law every time we do it. We've invented ways to circumvent the reformation laws to compensate for our failure to properly perpetuate survey evidence.
I'd venture that the vast majority of the states which "require" surveyors to prepare "property," "as-surveyed," or "field note" descriptions for surveys are states which have no public survey repository separate from the title records. There are ways to perpetuate survey evidence which are as varied as the states in which we work.
If you're in a state that doesn't have a repository, why not fight the battle with your own state society? Why do we need to pass a law? Shouldn't every surveyor (who is licensed to protect the public interest in land boundaries) have a professional duty to provide a system for perpetuating survey evidence? Why can't the society make it's own repository? What about the County Surveyor's office? What about the historical society? There are lots of options available short of creating a new branch of government.
If we have ways to perpetuate the survey evidence, we don't have a need to re-write "deed" descriptions, "property" descriptions or "field notes" every time we do a survey. The picture depicted on your survey map along with the notes and narrative provided is more the 10,000 word description any day.
JBS
> Example 1
> I surveyed a platted rural 2 acre lot that had 1/2" capped rebars for the rear corners, and set cotton picker spindles set in the center line of a gravel road. The spindles had been torn out during road maintenance. I resurveyed the lot, and set 1/2 inch capped rebars outside of the road, and at locations where they would not be torn out, and set steel "t-posts" as witness corners. I wanted those new monuments to be introduced into the record so that the lot could easily be retraced in the future. I think my actions were warranted and were good sound surveying practice. The geometry of the lot did not change, but the need for additional reference to new monumentation needed to take place.
>
This is an excellent example, not for re-writing property descriptions, of why we need a repository for survey evidence which perpetuates the boundary location by providing information of new or updated monumentation and a pedigree that links the monuments with the original markers. Evidence fading or changing over time is the issue we face. A good survey record will provide the evidence without a need for reforming the title record.
> Example 2
> I am currently working on a boundary survey of an 8 acre tract. I believe that the original deed has a scrivener's error in it, that makes the deed a little harder to interpret. All of the adjoining property owners have changed, and the called are in poles and are very general in nature. No distances are given along the road frontage, and the east call is "along the road in a northeasterly direction, to where the east line of the original 100 acre tract, thence north to the south line of Jones". Looking at the tax map, my parcel, and the parcel on the east side of the road, calculate out to about 98 acres, more or less. The road does not cross the east line of the original 100 acre tract.
>
Check your state statutes. They likely provide for recording a "scrivener's affidavit" as a mechanism to alert subsequent parties (adjoining owners who have standing) to incorporate the repair (by legally reforming their descriptions). We can file a surveyor's affidavit to alert people of title issues we discover. The affidavit is not considered binding, but may provide someone with the information they need to incorporate the proper reformation when opportunity arises.
> There are times where new property descriptions are necessary, and you have outlined many good reasons why. This is a good example of professional judgement.
>
There are two circumstances where it is necessary to prepare a description: (1) when forming a composite of several parcels or when (2) dividing an existing parcel by creating a new boundary (most states don't allow this without an approved plat).
> Our fellow professionals that work mostly in the PLSS states may not ever see the vague descriptions that we do, and calls for bounded deeds and the like where the adjoining owners have changed numerous times. It gets hard to tract down sometimes.
>
Life's not near as rosy in the PLSS as the colonial surveyors would like to presume. All those colonial settlers came west and brought their bad habits with them. I'm currently working on a project with over 250 property descriptions, three of which are PLSS descriptions. Metes and bounds and bounding descriptions are the norm. I am grateful that our title index system is by STR. They started with GTO/GTE indexing pre-PLSS, but converted, so only the oldest records are still GTO/GTE. Another advantage we have here is that we're a century shorter in history.
Our biggest advantage, by far, is our public repository of survey records in the County Surveyor's offices. We've only got a Century-long gap in those to contend with. We've come a long way in 25 years since the repository was formed. The amount of survey evidence we have already documented is a huge addition to our ability to retrace boundaries with confidence.
JBS
JBStahl ? GTO/GTE ? Assuming Grantor/Grantee
Being in a Colonial State my whole life, I do not understand your problems with Grantor/Grantee records?
The legal concept of land title transfer is you cannot sell what you do not own.
Paul in PA
JBStahl ? GTO/GTE ? Assuming Grantor/Grantee
:good:
JBStahl ? GTO/GTE ? Assuming Grantor/Grantee
> Being in a Colonial State my whole life, I do not understand your problems with Grantor/Grantee records?
>
I've got no problem with GTO/GTE records systems. As you proceed west with the PLSS system, the indexes are made by location broken into Township/Range, Section and quarter/quarter section. The early records here ran both systems in parallel for a while. They eventually dropped the statutes requiring the GTO/GTE system in favor of the STR system.
The location indexes make research much easier as you're only researching a few hundred deeds rather than the whole county and you can jump into the research at almost any point. The name indexes force you search through more entries to accomplish the same thing, only you don't have to worry about the location changing like you do with names. Just easier, that's all. Both systems work.
A big advantage to STR indexes is that there is only one set of books, rather than two sets required for GTO/GTE systems. There are some unique cross-indexing methods to both that some of the counties use that can be helpful as well.
JBS
