We specialize in providing legal land surveying services such as ALTA Surveys, Property Surveys, Boundary Surveys and FEMA Flood Elevation Certificates.
   We know that when service is your only product, how well you meet the needs of the client will determine the quality of your business.* * * Jerry L. Webster, Arizona Registered Land Surveyor, Owner

• Home
• Land Surveying
  • Arizona Land Surveying
  • ALTA Survey
  • Boundary Survey
  • Lot Property Survey
  • FEMA El. Cert's
  • Lot Split
  • Plats | Condominium Plat
  • Legal Description
• Civil Design
• Information
  • About Us
  • Property Survey Cost
  • ALTA Survey Standards
  • Arizona Survey Standards
  • Service Area
  • AZ Land Surveying
• Testimonials

More About Legal Descriptions

A legal description is written information describing property. The legal description may be for defining property ownership or the location of an easement. Some are very basic and can be written with one sentence. Others are extremely complicated and take pages to complete.

There are different ways of describing property depending on the location and the purpose of the description. Some of these are as follows:

• Metes and bounds descriptions are bearings and distances given around the perimeter of the boundary being described. They start and end at a specific point called the "Point of Beginning"
• Aliquot parts of the US Public Land Survey System have descriptions which are portions of a specific 1 mile by 1 mile "Section", which is part of a specific 6 mile by 6 mile "Township".
• Simple lot descriptions identify a specific lot located in a subdivision. The subdivision will have a recorded plat map which will define each lot.
• Strip descriptions describe a centerline of a piece of land. It will specify the overall width of the land and how wide each side of the centerline the property will be.

No matter which form the description takes, the professional Land Surveyor must be attentive to accuracy while writing the legal description. One simple mistake on a legal description causes confusion. The land surveyor interpreting it must scientifically study the overall description to determine where the error occurred. In a metes and bounds description the boundary will not close back to the point of beginning. An error in an aliquot type legal description can leave the land surveyor in total confusion. Accurate legal descriptions can be confusing enough. Following is an example of an actual legal description on a property I surveyed. There is nothing wrong regarding the way it is written, but it demonstrates how the land surveyor needs to pay attention when he is writing or reading a legal description.

"The east 100 feet of the west 133 feet of the south 110 feet of the north 135 feet of the north half of the south half of the south half of the southwest quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 11"

Below is an actual example of a poorly written legal description. The complete legal can be seen at the Maricopa County Recorded Document website under No. 2010-0405437 :

Thence north 74 degrees 06 minutes 00 seconds west (record) north 74 degrees 06 minutes 27 seconds west (measured), a distance of 219.24 feet to a point on the southwesterly boundary of that parcel of land described in Docket 10610, Page 25, records of Maricopa County, Arizona

That is one part of an eight page legal description overloaded with confusing dialog. The first error is dictating Record and Measured distances in the legal description. When writing a new legal description, the measured data is relevant. Furthermore, when dictating "to" another recorded boundary, the legal description of that recorded document would take precedence over any measured data described in the new Legal Description. To make the Legal Description even worse, there were two previously recorded Legal Descriptions entirely duplicated within this one; doubling the length of the description. Both of those descriptions were written by the same person, so both descriptions continually repeated record and measured information.