Legal Descriptions
How Real Estate Parcels Are Legally Described
Which method governs a given parcel is a local matter. Recording requirements, plat approval, survey standards and the office that holds the records are set by state statute and county practice, so confirm the specifics through the recorder or land records office where the property sits.
Every conveyance needs a way to point at one parcel of land and no other. That job belongs to the legal description, and American practice settled on three ways of doing it: tracing the boundary, locating the parcel inside a national survey grid, or referring to a map already on file with the recorder.
Exam items rarely ask you to draft a description. They ask you to recognize which of the three you are looking at, to name the part being described, or to convert a fractional survey call into acreage. This page works through all three methods with that in mind.
What the Description Has to Accomplish
A description is legally sufficient when a competent surveyor could take the document, go into the field, and mark out the same boundary every time. That standard is the reason a mailing address will not serve. Addresses are assigned for delivery and can be renumbered, reassigned, or shared by several units; they say nothing about where the boundary runs.
Deeds, mortgages, leases of long duration, easements and purchase contracts all carry a description for the same reason. If the writing does not identify the land with certainty, the instrument may be unenforceable or may cloud the title of whatever it was meant to convey. Courts have long treated ambiguity in a description as a defect rather than a technicality.
The three systems answer the same question in different grammar. One walks the perimeter. One names a cell in a grid laid over the public lands. One cites a map by name and points to a numbered piece of it. A single parcel can be described more than one way, and descriptions are sometimes combined, as when an irregular remnant inside a platted subdivision is written out by course and distance.
Which System You Will See Where
Geography and history decide which method a document uses. Knowing the pattern lets you identify a description on sight.
Boundary tracing came first. The colonies were granted and settled before any national survey existed, so land along the eastern seaboard was described by walking it. The same method is used anywhere a parcel is too irregular for a grid cell to capture, in any state.
The government survey grid covers the public domain. Territory the federal government surveyed before disposing of it carries township, range and section language, which is why descriptions across much of the interior and the West read as coordinates rather than directions.
Recorded plats dominate developed ground everywhere. When acreage is subdivided into building lots, the developer records one map and every later deed simply refers to it. This is the description most residential buyers actually see on their paperwork, regardless of region.
Condominium and similar interests add a vertical dimension. Air lots and unit descriptions reference a recorded declaration and its plans, because the parcel being conveyed is a volume of space rather than a footprint on the ground.
Assessor parcel numbers are not descriptions. A tax roll identifier is an administrative convenience for the county; it does not fix boundaries and does not substitute for one of the three methods in a conveyance.
Terms Used in Legal Descriptions
These are the words exam items reach for. Learn what each one locates, not just what it is called.
Metes and Bounds
A written walk around the perimeter of a parcel. The writer fixes a starting corner, then states a direction and a length for each leg of the boundary, one after another, until the course closes back on the corner where it began. Metes are the measured lengths; bounds are the calls that fix direction, which may reference monuments, waterways or adjoining tracts. Predominant in states settled before the federal survey.
Rectangular Survey System
The federal grid, also called the government survey or the township and range method. Surveyors ran a pair of controlling lines for each survey area and then laid a grid of squares six miles on a side against them, subdividing each square into 36 smaller squares of one mile each. A description names the grid cell and then narrows to a fraction of it.
Lot and Block Reference
Identification by reference to a subdivision map on file in the public record. Once the plat is approved and recorded, a parcel can be conveyed by citing its lot, its block and the name or recording data of that plat. Short to write, easy to search, and the ordinary method inside subdivisions.
Principal Meridian
The north-south control line for one survey area in the federal grid. Columns of townships are counted east or west from it, and the count is expressed as the range in a description. Each survey area has its own named meridian, so a township and range pair means nothing until you know which meridian governs it.
Baseline
The east-west control line that crosses the principal meridian at a right angle. Rows of townships are counted north or south from this line, and that count becomes the township number. Together the two control lines give the grid an origin.
Section
One of the 36 squares inside a township, measuring a mile on each side and containing 640 acres. Sections carry fixed numbers assigned in a back-and-forth pattern that begins at the northeast corner of the township and ends at the southeast corner, so the numbering of any township is predictable once you know the pattern.
Point of Beginning
The corner where a boundary description opens and where it must finish. A valid perimeter description returns to this exact spot; if the last call lands somewhere else, the description fails to close and the parcel is not identified. The point should be tied to something permanent enough to be relocated years later.
Turning a Survey Call Into Acreage
Fractional section arithmetic is the most predictable calculation on this topic. The method never changes.
Read the description backward. The last piece named is the largest, and each earlier fraction cuts the piece that follows it. Then multiply the fractions together and apply the product to the acres in a full section.
An illustrative call: the northwest quarter of the southeast quarter of a section. Work right to left. The southeast quarter is one fourth of the section, and the northwest quarter of that is one fourth again, so you are holding one sixteenth. Multiply 640 acres by one sixteenth and the answer is 40 acres.
A second illustrative call, this one with a fraction other than a quarter: the south half of the northwest quarter of the northeast quarter. Multiply one half by one fourth by one fourth to get one thirty-second, then divide 640 acres by 32 for 20 acres. The arithmetic stays the same no matter how many calls are stacked.
Two habits keep this fast. Convert acres to square feet only when the item asks for square feet, and remember that the acre figure for a full section is the only constant you need to memorize here. Sections on the edges of a township can be short of a full 640 acres because the grid is adjusted for the curvature of the earth, but exam arithmetic assumes a regular section unless it tells you otherwise.
Questions Candidates Ask About Descriptions
How many acres does a section contain, and what are the common fractions?
A full section holds 640 acres. Half of one is 320, a quarter is 160, and a quarter of a quarter is 40. Items usually give you a stacked fraction rather than the answer, so practice the multiplication until you stop reaching for scratch paper.
What exactly is a township in this system?
It is one cell of the federal grid: six miles by six miles, containing 36 square miles of land. Its address has two parts, one counting rows away from the baseline and one counting columns away from the principal meridian, which is why descriptions read like a township number paired with a range number.
What does datum mean in surveying?
A datum is an agreed reference surface that elevations are measured from. Vertical measurements, including the descriptions used for air rights and subsurface rights, are stated as heights above or depths below that reference rather than as free-floating numbers.
Can a deed simply give the street address?
No. An address is not a legally sufficient description and will not by itself support a conveyance or a mortgage. It is fine as supplemental information, and listings and closing packages routinely include it, but the instrument still needs one of the three real methods.
What happens when a boundary description does not close?
The calls have to return to the opening corner. If they do not, the parcel has no determinate boundary and the description is defective, which is typically resolved by a corrective instrument or a new survey rather than by guesswork.
Which method should I expect on my state portion?
All three appear on the general portion regardless of where you sit. State portions tend to emphasize whichever system governs local land and the recording mechanics that go with it, so check your jurisdiction's content outline in the current candidate handbook from its exam vendor.