I recently had problem with different legal descriptions (recorded) on the same parcel. I used the documents I found (which matched) and surveyed before I received title which turned out to be a mistake.
Upon receipt of title and reviewing the documents it contained I quickly discovered that I had set 3 monuments out of position due to missing calls in the recorded legal’s (2 matching), so now I have to go move them, therefore cutting into my bottom line.
Did I get ahead of myself? Absolutely. I just happened to be down the street from this particular project and rolled the dice and lost.
Going back several years I had a problem with a particular old title agent. This guy was old, nasty and would only hear what he wanted. He was holding up a land division over some wording he found to be incorrect or disliked (I think the latter). I jumped through all kinds of hoops to keep this guy happy because of my client. After I completed everything this old guy wanted he then said to me “good, now I can re-write it the way I want”.
Needless to say I was royally pissed and have since then told a few title agents to pack sand.
Now I do understand the fact that technology is starting to get rid of this practice due to copy and paste, pdf and laziness.
However I am wondering why this practice ever even occurred? What makes anyone think that they are better than a surveyor at writing descriptions?
We as Land Surveyors have had to eat the worlds shit by having to decipher title agents, attorneys and the average Joe’s hand written legal’s. (Note: The average Joe’s are often better than the aforementioned due to the fact that they don’t know anything so they pull something up and plagiarize it.)
Also I am still on the fence about and description writing software; I personally think it promotes laziness and mistakes, the old “well the software said it was true” syndrome and makes it real easy to write a non-compliant description.
Maybe it has improved over time. The first software I looked at was garbage and I was so disgusted I have refused to try another. Maybe I need to open up a little?
Are we professional interpreters? Yes we are and most of us have become really good at it.
Maybe Santa will bring us all Crystal Balls:)
Personally I never understood why the title company felt the need to re-write the legal description. Once the parcel is created why not reference the legal by deed citation or plat reference that created it. Now that surveys are "supposed" to be recorded you would think it would be easier to reference property by the last vesting document. Rather than rewriting the same legal over and over.
ReplyDeleteWhen I write legal descriptions I add a caviat (on the sealed original)that any changes including abbreviations, truncations or deletions eliminates any and all liability to the surveyor and places all libel on the part of the party who performs the alterations for any future losses incurred.
ReplyDeleteThere is an interesting history behind "legal descriptions" here in AZ. I know some, but perhaps a more lerned colleague can explain it better. A long time ago lawyers changed the law to say only attorneys could write "legal descriptions". Realtor's sued and a judge made a ruling that "anyone" could write a description. For those trying to "change our profession" maybe going back to court and having a ruling that only surveyors can write property descriptions is a good place to start.
I actually ended up in court over a botched description where the owner wrote the legals back in 1967 and it took until now to find it and the parcel which sold for only 2700 then was worth over a million today. It was an interesting situation and I even recorded a map to show the overlap on the southeast corner of Power and Ray.... It is a perfect example of why only Surveyor's should be able to write parcel descriptions...
Rich Waage
I would be lost without my legal description writer. It is a big factor in effiency, and, largely eliminating transcription errors. I"m astonished anyone is writing legals by hand.
ReplyDeleteI'm in the title business. I wouldn't think of rewriting the description that came from the surveyor. Don't put all title guys in the same basket.
ReplyDeleteI too, have had a lot of bad experiences with title company rewrites. At one seminar I attended, there was a nice gentleman, a title examiner, who I have a lot of respect for, and I approached him with the, "How come you guys always rewrite our descriptions."
ReplyDeleteHe explained. Not ALL descriptions get rewritten. Generally, new parcel descriptions prepared by surveyors aren't. Generally, that is.
He futher explained that when a surveyor writes a new description that is part of a parent parcel, CITE the reference to the original description ("A part of that parcel of land as desribed in . . ."). That way, it tells the title examiner exactly what your intentions are right up front. Also, if you have a tie to a record line, call that out as well (". . . to a half inch rebar with plastic cap stamped ABC, accepted as the southeast corner of that parcel as described in a deed recorded in . . ."
Again, this tells the title examiner exactly what your intentions are.
I discussed the point of calling out a line as defined by two existing monuments and why that was better, in a surveyor's eyes than just calling out a line without any monument references.
He explained that yes, calling for the monuments AND the record line you are saying the monuments define is a sure-fire way of telling the title person that, "Hey, here's the record line and it is defined be the location of these two monuments."
Then, he explained something to me that I had never considered. He said from a title examiner's point of view, when they have an original description that they have previously insured title on, it's gold (or should be in a perfect world). Now, take it one step further and say the north line of this parcel has a deed call for "EAST a distance of 100 feet."
A new survey is done to split off a piece from the parent parcel and uses the found monuments on the north line to define it's location, but does not call out for these monuments to define the deed line location. And, because we always have a difference between record and measured, that line is now called out as "North 89 degrees 55 minutes East a distance of 100.05 feet to a found half inch rebar."
From a title examiner's viewpoint, since a call wasn't made to the deed line or some statement added like "accepted as the northeast corner of . . ." WE have just created an overlap or gap.
There is now a 5 minute angle between the original deed line and also a .05' excess onto the next parcel, so from a title examiner's point of view, do they insure title to this new parcel knowing there's a potential for the discrepancy?
I think most of us are on board with calling for found or set monuments and we understand why that's important, but after hearing this guy's take on it, I gained a whole new perspective and in addition to that, started writing my descriptions in a whole new way that make them as bulletproof as I possibly can.
This guy wasn't saying he knew a better way of writing descriptions (although I have had many a fight with title people who felt they could!). He was merely saying there are other ways of looking at deed descriptions. In retrospect, I have a lot of respect for this gentleman's integrity. He was doing his job and also gave ME an education.