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The lot and block survey system is a method used in the United States and in Canada to locate and identify land, particularly for lots in densely populated metropolitan areas, suburban areas and exurbs. It is sometimes referred to as the recorded plat survey system or the recorded map survey system. [1]
The system is the most recent of the three main survey systems. It began to be widely employed in the United States in the 19th century when cities began to expand into the surrounding farmland. The owners of a large tract of land would create a plat and subdivide the tract into a series of smaller lots to be sold to buyers. This subdivision survey plan would then be recorded with an official government record keeper. The officially recorded map then became the legal description of all the lots in the subdivision. The method became widespread after the post World War II expansion into the suburbs when formerly rural areas became heavily populated and large tracts of rural land were divided into smaller lots.[ citation needed ]
The system begins with a large tract of land. This large tract is typically defined by one of the earlier survey systems such as metes and bounds or the Public Land Survey System. A subdivision survey is conducted to divide the original tract into smaller lots and a plat map is created. Usually this subdivision survey employs a metes and bounds system to delineate individual lots within the main tract. Each lot on the plat map is assigned an identifier, usually a number or letter. The plat is then officially recorded with a government entity such as a city engineer or a recorder of deeds. This plan becomes the legal description of all the lots in the subdivision. A mere reference to the individual lot and the map's place of record is all that is required for a proper legal description.[ citation needed ]
The Lot and Block system is perhaps the simplest of the three main survey systems to understand. For a legal description in the Lot and Block system a description must identify:
The legal description of a 2.5-acre (10,000 m2) property under the Lot and Block system may be something like; Lot 5 of Block 2 of the South Subdivision plat as recorded in Map Book 21, Page 33 at the Recorder of Deeds . Some simple maps may only contain a lot and map number, such as Lot C of the Riverside Subdivision map as recorded in Map Book 12, Page 8 in the office of the City Engineer. The more technical details of the legal description are all contained in the recorded plat map and there is no need to reiterate them in a deed or other legal description.
By contrast, a Public Land Survey System legal description of the same 2.5 acres (10,000 m2) property would be something like SW 1/4 SW1/4 NE1/4 SW1/4 SEC 18 T1S R1E Humboldt Meridian. The metes and bounds description may be something like, Beginning at a monument located at the SE corner of the property now or formerly of J.W. Smith; thence north 330 feet to a point; thence east 330 feet to a point; thence south 330 feet to a point, thence west 330 feet to the place of beginning.[ citation needed ]
A type of the Lot and Block system is frequently used for tax identification purposes in the United States. This designation, often called a Tax Identification Number or Tax Parcel Number, is not directly based on the legal description of the property.
The system can be used even if the property is not legally described by the Block and Lot system. A property legally described by a metes and bounds description may still be assigned a Tax Identification Number based on a separate Lot and Block system. In this case, a survey of all parcels in the county or municipality would be combined to create a separate Block and Lot system to identify the properties for taxation purposes. For example, a metes and bounds described parcel may be assigned the Tax Identification Number 14-55-118, which has nothing to do with the legal description of the property recorded in the deed other than its use to create the tax Block and Lot maps. In this case, the first number may be used to indicate the local municipality, the second number indicates the tax map on which the property is recorded, and the third number is the parcel identification number on the indicated map. A similar system might be Tax Identification Number 205-K-33 where "205" is the map book volume number, "K" is the individual map, and "33" is a parcel number.[ citation needed ]
The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is the surveying method developed and used in the United States to plat, or divide, real property for sale and settling. Also known as the Rectangular Survey System, it was created by the Land Ordinance of 1785 to survey land ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, following the end of the American Revolution. Beginning with the Seven Ranges in present-day Ohio, the PLSS has been used as the primary survey method in the United States. Following the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, the Surveyor General of the Northwest Territory platted lands in the Northwest Territory. The Surveyor General was later merged with the General Land Office, which later became a part of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Today, the BLM controls the survey, sale, and settling of lands acquired by the United States.
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A township in some states of the United States is a small geographic area.
In the United States, a plat (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Surveys to show the distance and bearing between section corners, sometimes including topographic or vegetation information. City, town or village plats show subdivisions broken into blocks with streets and alleys. Further refinement often splits blocks into individual lots, usually for the purpose of selling the described lots; this has become known as subdivision.
In U.S. land surveying under the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), a section is an area nominally one square mile, containing 640 acres, with 36 sections making up one survey township on a rectangular grid.
Metes and bounds is a system or method of describing land, real property or real estate. The system has been used in England for many centuries and is still used there in the definition of general boundaries. The system is also used in the Canadian province of Ontario, and throughout Canada for the description of electoral districts. By custom, it was applied in the original Thirteen Colonies that became the United States and in many other land jurisdictions based on English common law, including Zimbabwe, South Africa, India and Bangladesh. While still in hand-me-down use, this system has been largely overtaken in the past few centuries by newer systems such as rectangular and lot and block.
Subdivisions are the act of dividing land into pieces that are easier to sell or otherwise develop, usually via a plat. The former single piece as a whole is then known as a subdivision. Subdivisions may be simple, involving only a single seller and buyer, or complex, involving large tracts of land divided into many smaller parcels. If it is used for housing it is typically known as a housing subdivision or housing development, although some developers tend to call these areas communities.
A cadastre or cadaster is a comprehensive recording of the real estate or real property's metes-and-bounds of a country. Often it is represented graphically in a cadastral map.
In surveying and property law, a land description or legal description is a written statement that delineates the boundaries of a piece of real property. In the written transfer of real property, it is universally required that the instrument of conveyance (deed) include a written description of the property.
In real estate, a lot or plot is a tract or parcel of land owned or meant to be owned by some owner(s). A plot is essentially considered a parcel of real property in some countries or immovable property in other countries. Possible owner(s) of a plot can be one or more person(s) or another legal entity, such as a company/corporation, organization, government, or trust. A common form of ownership of a plot is called fee simple in some countries.
A tract index is a document which summarizes real property transactions in certain U.S. states and may be available in the offices of Recorder of deeds.
George L. Kinnard was a Representative from Indiana; born in Pennsylvania in 1803; moved with his widowed mother to Tennessee and completed preparatory studies; moved to Indianapolis, Ind., in 1823; studied law; was admitted to the bar and practised in Marion County, Indiana; assessor for Marion County in 1826 and 1827; member of the State house of representatives 1827–1830; county surveyor 1831–1835; colonel of the State militia; elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses and served from March 4, 1833, until his death on November 26, 1836; interment probably in Presbyterian Burying Ground, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Gaps and gores are portions of land areas that do not conform to boundaries found in cadastre and other land surveys based upon imprecise measurements and other ambiguities of metes and bounds. A gap, also known as a hiatus, occurs where the descriptions in deeds describing adjacent properties (unintentionally) overlook a space or "gap" between them. A gore occurs where descriptions in larger administrative boundaries of adjacent jurisdictions or, large parcels, all fail to include some portion of land between them, forming an unclaimed, characteristically triangular "sliver" of land.
An assessor's parcel number, or APN, is a number assigned to parcels of real property by the tax assessor of a particular jurisdiction for purposes of identification and record-keeping. The assigned number is unique within the particular jurisdiction, and may conform to certain formatting standards that convey basic identifying information such as the property type or location within the plot map.
A unit of real estate or immovable property is limited by a legal boundary. The boundary may appear as a discontinuation in the terrain: a ditch, a bank, a hedge, a wall, or similar, but essentially, a legal boundary is a conceptual entity, a social construct, adjunct to the likewise abstract entity of property rights.
Manhattan was a proposed city in a development that was located in northern Manatee County, Florida near the present-day town of Parrish during the Florida land boom in the 1920s. The town was intended to be the centerpiece of an agricultural community called Manatee River Park Estates.
Cadastral surveying is the sub-field of cadastre and surveying that specialises in the establishment and re-establishment of real property boundaries. It involves the physical delineation of property boundaries and determination of dimensions, areas and certain rights associated with properties. This is regardless of whether they are on land, water or defined by natural or artificial features. It is an important component of the legal creation of properties. A cadastral surveyor must apply both the spatial-measurement principles of general surveying and legal principles such as respect of neighboring titles.
In English common law, real property, real estate, immovable property or, solely in the US and Canada, realty, is land which is the property of some person and all structures integrated with or affixed to the land, including crops, buildings, machinery, wells, dams, ponds, mines, canals, roads, and other things. The term is historic, arising from the now-discontinued form of action, which distinguished between real property disputes and personal property disputes. Personal property, or personalty, was, and continues to be, all property that is not real property.
Texas, along with the original thirteen states and several others in the Southwest which were originally deeded with Spanish land grants, does not use the Public Land Survey System. Land grants from the state of Texas to railroad companies were often patented in blocks and sections, and occasionally in units of square miles, officially considered sections.
Butts and bounds, shortened form for "abuttals and boundaries" of a property, are the boundary lines delineated between plots of land, usually those which define the end of an estate, as used in legal deeds, titles, etc. These are usually descriptive features in the property, such as trees, outcroppings of stone, or riverine brooks, etc., and are signified in the legal deed for purposes of identification.