Most of us navigate the world using street addresses as markers. When a friend moves, they don't send out address change cards that read Lot 1, Block 3, Harrison's Addition to St. Paul! Instead we use street addresses to find our way.
In the real estate world, however, legal descriptions are the "addresses" used to identify which property is being bought and sold. Maps of all the land in the county are on file at the county seat with their respective legal descriptions. The maps are called plat maps. The county seat also has records of every transaction that has occurred on every piece of property in the county. These records are organized in books by addition name and then by block and lot number.
One of my abstracts (Abstracts record the history of every transaction, bankruptcy, divorce, etc., for owners and the property.) has the first entry dated October 31, 1849, even before Minnesota became a state. The dated entry is on the original paper and someone from that era actually handled the papers in my abstract. That boggles my mind.
The parcel was first described this way: "The West 1/2 of the NW 1/4 Sec 31, T 29, R 22. Sec means section, T means township, and R means range" and was conveyed from the United States of America to Richard Freeborn. By the 1920's, the legal description had changed from the metes and bounds measure above to a plat system. Someone lost the property during the big depression due to non-payment of their contract for deed. Now the property is described as Lots 5 and 6 Block 13 Brewster's Addition to St. Paul. Mr. Brewster must have been the developer or maybe it was named after a brewery! The property was lost for not paying nine $20 payments. Imagine a $20 mortgage payment today.
If a purchase agreement is written using a street address and there is a mix-up on the legal description, the buyer could end up owning the neighbor's property. Not a pleasant thought. Twice this has happened in transactions for my buyers. The first was a new town home complex which had been improperly filed at the county by the developer. Every one of the 300 town homes had a tax ID number and street address assigned to the legal description of the neighbor's property. The association had to hire a lawyer to get the mess straightened out.
The second conflict between legal and street address was a surprise to the seller. He did not know he was using the wrong street address for his property. It was a rural location where the postman knew the individuals and didn't worry about wrong street addresses. When title work was done, the street address had to be changed on the purchase agreement to fit the legal description of what was being sold.
It's possible errors like these that are the reason for a title search on a property. Title searches are required in order to finance a property because the bank wants to make sure the buyer is buying the right place!
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