Legal Descriptions
How to Read a Metes and Bounds Description
Only a licensed surveyor prepares or certifies a legal description. Nothing here is a substitute for a survey, and a licensee who drafts a description invites a title defect.
A metes and bounds description identifies land by walking its perimeter in words. It fixes a starting point, then recites a series of directions and lengths that return to that point, closing the figure.
It predates the federal rectangular survey and remains in use across the states settled before that survey existed. Exam items rarely ask you to plot a parcel. They ask whether you can name the parts and rank them when they disagree.
The Walk Around the Parcel
Every description of this type opens at a point of beginning, which must be locatable on the ground and tied to something permanent. Without a fixed opening point, the rest of the recital floats and describes nothing in particular.
From there the text moves in segments. Each segment states a direction and a length, and the word thence signals the next leg. A direction is normally given as a bearing, meaning an angle measured away from due north or due south toward the east or the west, so a bearing of north forty-five degrees east points exactly northeast.
The recital closes by returning to the point of beginning. If the final leg lands somewhere else, the description is said to fail to close, and the parcel it purports to describe cannot be laid out with certainty. That is a defect for a surveyor to resolve, not an agent.
Corners are anchored by monuments, which are simply physical objects at the turning points. Some are natural, such as a watercourse or a long-standing tree; others are placed by a surveyor, such as a driven pin or a set concrete marker.
The Terms the Exam Scores
Learn these as precise labels rather than as general ideas. Items in this area turn on which word applies to which element.
Point of beginning. The fixed, identifiable origin of the walk and the point the last call must return to. Often expressed relative to a road intersection, a recorded corner or a set marker.
Metes. The measured parts: the lengths of the boundary legs and the bearings along which they run.
Bounds. The physical or described limits at the corners and along the sides, including monuments and calls to adjoining ownership such as running along the land now or formerly of a named neighbor.
Call. One instruction in the recital, consisting of a direction, a distance and usually a destination monument. A description is a chain of calls.
Bearing. The compass direction of a leg, expressed as an angle east or west of north or of south, rather than as a single number between zero and three hundred sixty.
Monument. The object marking a point on the boundary. Natural monuments existed before the survey; artificial monuments were placed for it.
Closure. The condition of a recital whose calls return exactly to the origin. A recital that does not close is defective on its face.
When the Parts of a Description Disagree
Old descriptions contradict themselves routinely. A call may name a pin and then recite a length that stops short of it, or state a bearing that points somewhere other than the named corner. Courts resolve these conflicts with a rough order of reliability, and the exam tests the top of that order.
A monument on the ground generally prevails over a recited measurement. The reasoning is evidentiary rather than technical: the parties saw the marker and agreed to it, while the numbers in the deed passed through a chain of transcription where an error can hide indefinitely. Between monuments, a natural feature is usually treated as stronger evidence than an object someone placed.
Below monuments sit the recited courses and distances, and below those sits any statement of total acreage. A quantity of land recited at the end of a description is the weakest element of all, because it is normally computed from the other calls rather than measured independently.
Jurisdictions phrase this hierarchy differently and a court can depart from it where the evidence points the other way. For an exam item, the safe answer is that the marker on the ground controls a conflicting number, and a stated acreage controls nothing.
Where This Shows Up on the Test
Matching the Method to the Land
You are given a parcel and asked which description system fits. Irregular boundaries that follow a creek or an old fence line point to metes and bounds. A numbered parcel inside a recorded subdivision points to lot and block. A rural tract identified by section, township and range points to the rectangular survey.
Naming the Element
A short excerpt is quoted and one phrase is underlined. You identify it as the point of beginning, a monument, a bearing or a distance. These are recall items, and they are free points once the vocabulary is exact.
Resolving a Conflict
A call names an iron pin and recites a length that misses it. The question asks which governs. Answer from the reliability order: the monument the parties can stand on outranks the number in the text.
Spotting a Defect
A recital is presented that never returns to its origin, or whose opening point is described so loosely that no one could find it. The correct response is that the description is unreliable and a surveyor has to correct it before the transaction relies on it.
Boundary Vocabulary in One Place
Five words carry most of the scoring weight in this area. Fix the exact sense of each one before you work any item.
Point of Beginning (the POB)
Where the written walk starts and where it has to finish. A usable one is permanent, locatable by anyone on the ground, and tied to something already of record such as a section corner or a road intersection.
Metes
The measured half of the recital: how far each boundary leg runs and along which compass course it runs.
Bounds
The limits themselves, named rather than measured. This covers the markers at the corners and along the sides, and calls that run a line to a creek, a road or the land of a named adjoining owner.
Monument
An object on the ground that fixes a point in the description. Something already in place, such as a stream or a mature tree, carries more evidentiary weight than a pin or stake set for the survey, and either one generally outranks a distance, which in turn outranks a direction.
Bearing
The direction of a leg, written as an angle swung east or west from either north or south. A bearing of N 45 degrees E points exactly northeast, halfway between due north and due east.
Common Questions About Boundary Descriptions
Which states use this system?
Broadly, the states whose land was conveyed before the federal rectangular survey began, which covers the original colonies and the states formed from them, along with several others whose land history ran independently of federal survey. Many of those states also contain platted subdivisions described by lot and block, so both systems appear side by side in the same county records.
Can one parcel carry more than one form of description?
Yes, and it is common. Acreage originally conveyed by a perimeter recital is later platted, and the resulting lots are then conveyed by reference to that recorded plat. Both forms can appear at different points in the chain of title for the same ground.
Should a licensee ever write one?
No. Preparing and certifying a legal description is surveying work and is licensed as such. Copy an existing description exactly from the recorded instrument, and route anything that looks wrong to a surveyor and to counsel.
What does it mean that a description does not close?
It means the calls, followed in order, end somewhere other than the point of beginning, so the perimeter never encloses a definite area. The cause is usually a transcription error or a superseded monument. A surveyor reconciles the record against what is on the ground and prepares a corrected description.
Do I have to do trigonometry on the exam?
No. Boundary items on a licensing exam test vocabulary, the reliability order and the ability to recognize a defective recital. Plotting a parcel from bearings is survey work and sits outside the scope of a salesperson or broker exam.