Plats of record

John,

Having endured my entire career in a non-recording State, I agree with you whole heartedly.

In my mind what it actually boils down to is the site itself, the monuments..the corners. That's where the surveying takes place.

Being an old codger I sometimes question employees that have three times as much office time on a job than field time. Their reply is generally a rationalization that includes word like "research" and "calculations"...

Now I realize a lot goes into putting a survey together, both field and office. But my "playing the devil's advocate" retort to them is usually something along the lines of "just think how many of your questions could have been answered if all these hours had been spent researching corners in the field..." You can calc and cad a job to death and it never moves any of those existing pins even one iota.

Recorded and public info is a good aid in following an old survey. But you can't follow it merely by reading, the bounds must be physically investigated, traversed and located; plat or not.

I'm in a nonrecording state also, and I'm used to working without recorded surveys, but some of the recent posts sound like even subdivision plats are not recorded. Is that the case, or am I just reading something into the posts that isn't there?

We produce individual plats for each lot in subdivisions for clients. They don't want to pay the taxes so they ask for plats for each lot. Many times though the individual plat gets recorded with the deed and the subdivision plat is also recorded. Doesn't make much sense to me about the taxing. When you pay a few hundred a year in taxes on a piece of property. You don't want to be paying a few thousand for the same land just because you split it up to sell. Start charging the new owner for their lot but leave the subdivider out of it. Lots are only worth more once they are sold. Until that point they are just a part of a larger property. (this is what I have been told by people subdividing. As I have never been the guy subdividing my property I do not know exactly how it works with the taxes.)

The way things are taxes make people not want to put the plats on record until all or most of the lots are sold.

There is an entire town in a county next to me that used to have a plat that was never recorded or was lost at some point. I tried to track it down once. But the last person known to have a copy had passed away. So no luck. The tax map shows a bunch of streets and alleys with no widths. Many of the descriptions just call for the streets as the boundary with no distances. Rumor has it that the tax map was produced by the original town survey map but our tax maps don't generally give much detail and are only outlines of surveys with approximate distances so it's a pain in the butt to say the least to do much in the town. Cottageville.