The legal description appears in several places in real estate paperwork, such as sales contracts, mortgage documents, deeds, title information and more. How explicit should it be? The legal description should be detailed enough for a surveyor to be able to locate the property using that information alone. The importance of using accurate measurements cannot be overstated.

It would create headaches that could have been avoided if the correct legal descriptions had been verified. Or worse, the building straddled two different properties, with two different owners. Why is this so important? You can imagine the problems if a property was bought and sold, a house built and a family moved in, only to discover it was in the wrong spot. A legal description can be long and look complicated, but it’s a more precise method of describing where a property is located. That’s why using a legal description is the most accurate way to identify real estate. In any case, if the street address was the primary way of identifying the property, these changes would create chaos, because people wouldn’t know where the old street name and number went, or how to find the new one. What are some reasons this might happen? Sometimes the streets are renamed by request from the fire department or police in order to make emergency location easier, or the residents might request a change. Not only can address numbers change, the whole name of the street can also be changed. However, while they are convenient, street addresses are not always reliable. In our everyday world, we rely on street addresses to locate property, and you might think that street addresses would be the best way to identify property. The methods used evolved as the shapes and size of properties changed. A better way needed to be invented, one that would be more permanent and reliable. Natural boundaries served as handy reference points, until the tree blew down or the stream changed course. There had to be a way to define the perimeters of a person’s property. When land ownership began there had to be a way to define the boundaries of a property so people knew where their land ended and their neighbor’s land began. Introduction to Methods of Land Description

Township definition in real estate