While the majority of our properties have an exact, detailed location, occasionally we do come across properties that require further deed research and/or a survey.
At The Lot Store, we are a high volume seller of real estate and while we would love to have the time available to research every property we sell, it’s simply not possible.
These properties are located in our DIY section and represent land that requires further research in order to determine the exact location and boundary lines.
If you’re looking to purchase properties for pennies on the dollar, while investing a bit of work into locating the property, this section is for you.
While we’re unable to cover every aspect of how to locate these properties, a brief explanation of what is involved is below.
Option #1 – Hire a local abstract company or deed research firm to located the county records needed to generate a legal description which can be used to order a survey for the property. This is the hands off approach and does not require any time on your part.
Option #2 – First, visit the assessors office at the courthouse in the county in which the property is located. The assessors office will have quite a bit of information in their property records, including prior property owners, a records of deed transfers, and in some cases, the exact location of the property. If further research is needed after visiting the assessors office, the next stop would be the circuit clerk’s office for deed research. The circuit clerk’s office has on file a record of all of the deed transfers and legal property descriptions going back to the sovereignty of the land. The process involves searching for and pulling the deeds for the prior owners until the legal description is found, which will be used to order a survey for the property.
What are you looking for in a legal description? Generally properties are described legally by either Lot and Block, or metes and bounds. Examples of each are below:
Lot and Block Properties – These properties have a plat map filed of record with the circuit clerk’s office are are simple to locate as you can visit their office and pull the plat map from their records. An example of this type of legal description is as follows:
Lot 1, Block 2, Edwards Addition
You would visit the circuit clerk’s office, pull the plat map for Edwards Addition, and find Lot 1, Block 2, on that map. In most all cases, these maps also include the dimensions of the property.
Metes and Bounds Legal Descriptions – These properties are described based upon a starting point and the direction and distances from that point. An example of a metes and bounds legal description is as follows:
Begin at the Southwest Corner of the Northwest Quarter of Section 34, Township 10S, Range 23W, and run due South for 100 feet for the Point of Beginning; thence run 50 feet west, 100 feet north, 50 feet east, and 100 feet south to the Point of Beginning.
Once you have located the legal description of the property, a surveyor uses that description to mark the corners, and if you desire, complete a full survey of the property.