What’s the real estate legal description that goes on a deed? A real estate legal description for a deed is not made up of the glowing words in a real estate marketer’s flyer — as grand as that would be! It is not simply a street address, or a tax description copied from the home county’s website. None of these make a deed legally able to transfer a piece of real estate from one person to another.
A legal description is a precise, legally meaningful and binding summary of a property survey. You can find it on the existing deed — that is, the last deed used to transfer the property. The legal description may have a border around it, or it might be indented to make it easy to spot. Sometimes it appears on an attached exhibit, incorporated by reference on the face of the deed. The description on a mortgage agreement or title insurance commitment should match the legal description on the deed.
Whenever an interest in property is transferred from one party to another, the real estate legal description is representing the property exactly. It is proof to lenders that the property is just as it’s shown on the deed, to be valued accordingly. And it allows a future surveyor to precisely trace a property’s angles, corners and borderlines.
It’s a hard rule that deeds have to include the property’s complete legal description. Each county has specific requirements for how that description is made, but the point is to submit the right description for the deed being prepared. That might be all you really want to know!
But if you are curious about the main types of legal descriptions, and the components that form them, read on.
Continue reading “Real Estate Legal Descriptions for Deeds”
