Ask A Surveyor
If you are a landowner seeking advice from surveyors, please post your questions and issues here.... View more
Organizer:
- Organized by
-
Help writing a Legal Description – for Agricultural Homestead quitclaim deed
Help writing a Legal Description – for Agricultural Homestead quitclaim deed
Hello, I’m looking for some help/guidance on the below situation. I don’t know anything about surveying, so please be gently with your responses if I’ve completely missed the mark. Any help is appreciated. If there are any other details I can provide, let me know.I own the 10 acre parcel shown as PID: R01.033.0750 on the attached. Here’s the legal description:Sect-33 Twp-117 Range-03010.00 ACE 330′ of S 1/2 SW 1/4
A majority of this property is currently in agricultural production and it was previously designated as Agricultural Homestead. Since building a home on the parcel, the designation was changed to Residential Homestead. My county (McLeod County, MN) requires a full 10 acres in agricultural production to qualify for an Agricultural Homestead designation.My goal is to get the land designation switched back to Agricultural Homestead. To do so, my brother will be quitclaim deeding me 5 acres of adjacent agricultural land – PID R01.033.0700. Here’s what the new 15 acre parcel will look like.
I could use help writing the legal description of the land to be acquired.My best guesses are: W 1/2 of NE 1/4 of SE 1/4 of SW 1/4 of Sect-33 Twp 117 Range 030 5.00 AC or E 165′ of W 3/4 of SE 1/4 of SW 1/4 of Sect-33 Twp-117 Range-030 5.00 ACHere’s a wide view of the entire section, with the current 10 acre parcel highlighted in red.
—- 3 Replies
I see you are in Minnesota. You probably need a surveyor licensed in Minnesota to check the title history on both parcels and get it right. The way the 5 acres was separated from some larger tract in the past will influence how future descriptions are written. The half and quarter descriptions don’t often get down to 5 acres, and the fact that you have a 330 ft distance rather than a fraction complicates it.
.
Good luck, but my advice is to at least stop in and chat with a local licensed surveyor, what you propose may or may not be allowed, and at least you can find out what the process is.
I don’t like the two descriptions you reference, they aren’t the way to do this, it’s the classic case of a distance vs a fraction, it will technically never work, although often assumptions will be applied by future retracers to “clean it up”. Much better to follow the chain of title and use it to guide the description process.
Had to do a double-take because there is McCleod, Texas in eastern part of Cass County
The Appraisial Distric office, they take amounts of land measured from Google Earth and other aerial sources to use for Agricultural and Timber exemptions and do not require any written property description for exemptions.
That is how things differ from state to state and from rural to metro areas.
Log in to reply.