How to Read Survey Metes and Bounds

Years agone when I got into the championship search business, way before I did cell belfry searches and commercial title searches, I worked for a friend who showed me the ropes – but only a certain length.

The only type of searches she did, and therefore all she could teach me, was residential searches. And of those only those types of searches that were platted. If it was commercial, ship it back. If it has metes and bounds, send information technology back.

When I spread my wings and started my own title search business concern, I became concerned that I was missing out on opportunities by not tackling the metes and bounds searches. And if you are going to practise commercial and cell belfry searches, you absolutely MUST understand metes and bounds.

So I studied up on it, practiced reading them, mapping and basically getting my mind effectually the subject as much as I could. Good thing I did too. Every bit more and more than residential work went in-house and overseas, the more it became credible that doing commercial piece of work and jail cell belfry searches was a must, not an selection.

Offset off, let's wait at the name of this legal description system. Mete means measure and bound means boundary. Aye, there are other definitions, but these are the definitions we are concerned with. Therefore Metes and Bounds literally means Measurements and Boundaries.

A elementary case would be a property line – any belongings line. It starts at a marker of some sort, say a fencepost, goes a certain altitude in a certain direction and ends at a certain marking. The distance and direction is the mete that makes up that bound. See?

Put a bunch of these together in a legal description and you take plural, metes and bounds. Without any further explanation, at its core, it really is that elementary.

But the two words in the higher up description that make it tricky (or seem so) is distance and direction. And then let's break that down.

Distance these days is measured in feet, in the United states of america anyhow. But going back in time to old deeds you will notice in some deeds legal descriptions using regional, and now primitive, units of measurement. In Texas and California for example you lot volition come across the word 'Vara'. This one originated in Spain, Portugal, and South America. The real fun thing about this 1, is that it varies by region anywhere from 32 – 43 inches. But luckily the Mexican Vara is 32.09 inches. So in Texas and California it equates to 33.five and 33 inches respectively.

Upwardly north effectually the colonies and then spreading into the Midwest yous run into measurements by the proper name of rod or perch or pole. This was a surveyor's tool and a unit of length that is about 16.5 anxiety. That is almost ¼ a surveyor'southward concatenation or 1/320 of a "statue mile". All of those come from Jolly Old England and the Weights and Measurements Act of 1593 under Queen Elizabeth'due south lookout. Although established every bit common utilize by Henry the Eight, it is the reason our miles today are 5,280 feet.

Simply if you lot ever run into these measurements in your legal descriptions, thankfully Google has online conversion tools for these. Or you can detect diverse conversion tools on the Internet in gild to make sense of the whole thing.

But since you almost probable will exist reading it in feet, let's go with that.

Direction is a bit more than circuitous but non necessarily difficult if you are familiar with the concept of compass directions, i.eastward. North, South, Eastward, Due west. And you have to be familiar with compass degrees like 90 degrees and 45 degrees

As compass readings/degrees commonly are the least understood of the two, permit's tackle that one start. Accept a look at this prototype.

Quadrant Compass

In that location are basically ii types of compass readings. Quadrant meaning 4 different areas and Azimuth meaning directions globally. The second 1 is much more than complex than what I described information technology as, but nosotros don't demand to go into that every bit luckily the first one, quadrant notation, is the one nosotros use for reading legal descriptions.

Take a look at this. These are the quadrants. There are 4 and they are carve up upwardly similar 4 pieces of pie.

If you put the degrees and North, South, East, and Due west on it, y'all have this, the Quadrant Compass.

Quad Compass

Since the acme correct quadrant is between Northward and East it is the Due north Eastward or NE Quadrant. The rest of the quadrants follow accommodate. Now measures are from the viewpoint of the observer equally if yous were standing in the middle of the cantankerous, where all quadrants touch. So if y'all were standing on the cross and someone said to await 60 degrees NE, yous would expect right and up, simply mostly right. And if they said expect thirty degrees SW you would expect down and left, but mostly down. If someone were to say to await 45 degrees NE you would look in the direction that is between 30 degrees and 90 degrees. See?

Now, 99% of the time you volition never see the directions ninety degrees or 0 degrees used. You will rather run into "Due North" or simply "North" or "Due Due east" or "East" etc. Merely if read 89 degrees NE, that is almost exactly due e and slightly north of the right hand line. 89 degrees SE would be slightly south of the right hand line.

So, we have 0 to ninety degrees in each quadrant where 0 starts either on Due north or South and ends on the ninety'due south at either West or East. But in modern surveying, technology has allowed the surveyors to break downwards the degrees into smaller units chosen minutes and those broken down even further to seconds.

What does management have to do with time? Nothing. In fact, nosotros are using unlike definitions of the words "minute" and "second". And so before we totally confuse things whatsoever farther permit's look at those definitions.

Minute – the sixtieth 1/60 role of a degree in angular measurement.

2nd – the sixtieth one/sixty part of a minute in angular measurement.

The word itself comes loosely from the Latin discussion "diminished". No need to go whatsoever further with that. This isn't etymology class after all. Simply know that a minute is one/60^th of a degree and a second is 1/sixty^thursday of minute.

Now, unless you are a surveyor, you are never going to use those. Only yous need to know what they mean and so that you don't get bogged down in the legal description. And you need to know how they are represented in annotation in a legal description.

A degree is represented past the note of a picayune circle to a higher place and to the correct of the number. This you already know. Simply the minute is represented by a single quotation mark and the second by the double quotation mark. Then that in a legal clarification it looks like this.

Compass Degree Numbers

Now, in that picture information technology looks like double quotation marks are really triple. They aren't. That 'third' mark is a part of the uppercase "West" for W. See, in legal descriptions (and quadrant compass notations in full general) directions are written out starting with either 'North' or South', then the degrees, minutes, and seconds and so either 'West' or 'East'. Like, North 56 degrees, four minutes, 1 2d West. If information technology is abbreviated it looks like this.

Compass Direction and Degrees

And information technology would look like this.

Compass Direction Reading

Equally you lot can encounter the blueish line is at (roughly) 54 degrees on the NW quadrant. Starting with the give-and-take "North" gives usa our vertical management, followed by the caste down (considering North is always 0) and then "Westward", lets us know our horizontal orientation.

That is how we go our direction. This sets the stage for Part 2 of How To Read Metes And Premises

How to Read Survey Metes and Bounds

Source: http://www.probitytitle.com/how-to-read-metes-and-bounds-part-1/

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