To read a legal description of a property, first figure out which of three formats you’re looking at — metes and bounds, lot and block, or the Public Land Survey System — because each one follows its own pattern and its own shorthand. Once you know the format, the description becomes a set of instructions you can follow line by line, either tracing a perimeter, looking up a lot on a recorded map, or drilling down through a grid of numbered squares. A street address won’t do the job; it’s fine for mail but useless for defining where one parcel ends and another begins. The legal description is what a courtroom, a title company, and a lender all rely on.
Find the Real Description First
The deed is the primary source. Every deed that transfers ownership contains the full legal description of the parcel being conveyed. If you can’t lay hands on your own deed, the county recorder’s office (also called the clerk of court or register of deeds in some places) keeps copies of every recorded deed in the jurisdiction, and many counties now let you search online by owner name, parcel number, or recording date.
Title insurance policies reproduce the description verbatim because the policy has to identify exactly what parcel it insures. Mortgage documents include it too, since the lender needs to know precisely which property secures the loan.
Skip the tax bill. Assessment notices and property tax statements often carry a shortened or informal version of the description that leaves out boundary calls or reference points. Go back to the deed or the title policy for the authoritative text.
Which Format Are You Looking At
A quick scan tells you which system you’re dealing with. If the text reads like walking directions with compass bearings and distances (“thence North 45 degrees East, 200 feet”), it’s metes and bounds. If it names a lot number, a block number, and a subdivision, it’s lot and block. If it references sections, townships, and ranges, it’s the Public Land Survey System.
The PLSS covers roughly 30 states, mostly west of the Appalachians plus several southern states. The original 13 colonies, Texas, and Hawaii don’t use it, so descriptions there will be metes and bounds or lot and block.
Reading a Metes and Bounds Description
Metes and bounds is the oldest and most detailed format. “Metes” means measurements; “bounds” means the lines between corners. The description starts at a Point of Beginning, gives a compass bearing and a distance to the next corner, then another bearing and distance to the next corner, and continues around the perimeter until it returns to where it started. Think of it as connecting dots around the property line, each dot a corner and each line between dots a specific heading and length.
Two abbreviations show up constantly. P.O.B. stands for Point of Beginning, the anchor spot where the boundary starts and must eventually return. The word “thence” signals each new leg, essentially meaning “from here, go in this direction for this distance.”
The Point of Beginning is usually tied to something permanent: an iron pin, a concrete monument, a stone marker, or a natural feature like the intersection of a creek and a road. The whole description hangs on that anchor. If the monument has been destroyed or moved, applying the description on the ground gets harder.
Decoding the Bearings
Bearings measure an angle of less than 90 degrees from either due north or due south. The first letter tells you whether to face north or south. The number in the middle is the angle, written in degrees (°), minutes (‘), and seconds (“). The math works like a clock: 60 seconds make a minute, 60 minutes make a degree. The last letter tells you which way to rotate.
So N 72° 15′ W means face north, then swing 72 degrees and 15 minutes toward the west. S 10° E means face south, then swing 10 degrees toward the east. Every bearing starts with N or S and ends with E or W, which tells you which quadrant of the compass the line points into. Sketching each call on graph paper as you read makes the shape of the property emerge.
Closure
A valid metes and bounds description forms a closed shape. The final call should bring you back to the Point of Beginning. When it doesn’t, surveyors call that a closure error, and it’s one of the most common problems in recorded descriptions. Closure errors usually trace back to a typo: a bearing written “South” when it should say “North,” or a distance off by a digit. Even a small mistake can shift a boundary line by feet or yards on the ground, enough to encroach on a neighbor or miss part of your own land. If the last call doesn’t return to the P.O.B., that’s a flag worth raising with a surveyor.
Reading a Lot and Block Description
Most residential subdivisions use this simpler format. Instead of bearings and distances, the description names a lot and a block within a recorded subdivision and points you to a plat map. A typical example: “Lot 7, Block 3, Sunset Ridge Subdivision, as recorded in Plat Book 42, Page 15, of the records of [County], [State].”
The plat map is where the actual dimensions live. It’s a scale drawing of the whole subdivision showing every lot’s shape and size, the streets, and often the locations of utility easements and building setback lines. The lot and block description is a shortcut that says, “go look at this map, and find this specific lot.”
To verify one, pull the plat book and page number at the county recorder’s office. The plat should show the lot’s exact shape, its relationship to neighboring lots, and any recorded easements crossing it. If the reference is missing or the numbers don’t match any recorded map, treat that as a title problem needing professional attention.
Reading a Public Land Survey System Description
The PLSS divides land into a grid of squares built from two reference lines: a principal meridian running north-south and a baseline running east-west. From those references, the system creates rows called townships (north or south of the baseline) and columns called ranges (east or west of the meridian). Each township-range combination identifies a roughly six-mile-by-six-mile square, and that square is divided into 36 numbered sections. Each section is approximately one square mile, or 640 acres.
Sections get subdivided further. A quarter section is 160 acres. A quarter of a quarter section is 40 acres. Here’s the part that trips people up: the description reads from smallest unit to largest, the opposite of a mailing address. “The NW 1/4 of the SE 1/4 of Section 10, Township 3 North, Range 5 East” means start with Section 10, find the southeast quarter of that section (160 acres), then find the northwest quarter of that smaller area (40 acres). You’re drilling down, not zooming out.
To visualize it, draw a square as the section. Cut it into four quarters (NW, NE, SW, SE). Pick the quarter named in the description and cut that into four more quarters. The one you end up with is the parcel. The township and range numbers tell you where in the larger grid that section sits.
Shorthand and Older Units of Measure
Legal descriptions are packed with abbreviations. Directions are N, S, E, and W. Angles use degrees, minutes, and seconds. Beyond those, older deeds frequently use measurement units that predate modern surveying, and if you’re reading a description written before the mid-twentieth century, especially in the eastern United States, you’ll likely see them.
- Chain: 66 feet. A standard surveyor’s chain (a Gunter’s chain) contained 100 metal links and measured 66 feet end to end.
- Link: 0.66 feet, or about 7.92 inches. One one-hundredth of a chain.
- Rod: 16.5 feet. Also called a pole or perch in some older documents. Four rods equal one chain.
The conversions are straightforward: multiply chains by 66 to get feet, links by 0.66, and rods by 16.5.1National Institute of Standards and Technology. U.S. Survey Foot: Revised Unit Conversion Factors If a deed mixes older units with modern feet, convert everything to feet first so the numbers line up.
Easements and Exceptions
Many legal descriptions don’t stop at the boundary. They also list easements, restrictions, or exceptions that affect the property. An easement grants someone else the right to use part of your land for a specific purpose, and it usually appears at the end of the description or in a separate section of the deed. Common ones include utility easements for power lines, drainage easements that prevent building over a stormwater path, and access easements letting a neighbor cross your land to reach theirs.
The language typically identifies the easement by location (often a strip of a certain width along a property line) and by whoever holds the right. Read these carefully. An easement can prevent you from building a fence, adding a structure, or landscaping in the affected area. If the description references easements “as shown on the plat” or “of record,” the details are in another document you’ll need to pull from the recorder’s office.
When Elements Conflict: The Priority of Calls
Pieces of a legal description sometimes contradict each other. A deed might say a boundary runs 500 feet to an oak tree, but the actual distance is only 480 feet. Or the stated acreage doesn’t match the area you’d calculate from the boundary calls. Courts resolve these conflicts using a hierarchy called the priority of calls. From most authoritative to least:
- Natural objects: rivers, ridgelines, lakes, and trees named in the description. The most reliable, because they were visible when the description was written.
- Artificial objects: iron pins, concrete monuments, fence posts, and other human-placed markers referenced in the text.
- Distances: the measured lengths between corners.
- Bearings: the compass directions.
- Acreage: the total area stated. This is the least reliable element because it’s usually calculated from the other measurements rather than independently verified.
In practice: if a deed says “300 feet to the stone wall” but the wall is 285 feet away, the wall wins. If the stated acreage is 2.5 acres but the boundary calls produce 2.3 acres, the boundary calls win.2Bureau of Land Management. The Basics of Boundary Law Study Guide The hierarchy exists because the person writing the description was identifying specific physical features, and the math is secondary to what they actually saw.
When to Call a Surveyor
Reading the description on paper is one thing. Knowing where those boundaries fall on the ground is another. That gap is where a licensed land surveyor earns their fee. Situations that warrant one:
- Boundary disputes with a neighbor. A surveyor’s opinion, based on fieldwork and monuments, carries weight in court.
- Building near a property line. Setback requirements are measured from the legal boundary, not from where you think it runs. Building too close can force a teardown.
- Buying rural or unimproved land. Metes and bounds descriptions for large or irregular parcels are prone to closure errors and outdated monument references. Walking the boundary with a surveyor before closing can reveal encroachments or access issues that don’t show on paper.
- Title insurance without a survey exception. Lenders often require an ALTA/NSPS Land Title Survey to remove the general survey exception from a title policy. That’s a comprehensive boundary survey that identifies encroachments, overlaps, and easements through physical inspection rather than a records review alone.3National Society of Professional Surveyors. 2026 ALTA/NSPS Standards
A basic boundary survey for a standard residential lot typically runs from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on lot size, terrain, and how much records research the surveyor has to do. Wooded or hilly properties cost more because the fieldwork takes longer. That price is modest against a boundary lawsuit or a setback violation caught after the fact.