Legal description
A legal description identifies a parcel of land precisely enough to distinguish it from every other parcel. It is what deeds and recorded documents use, and it is not the street address.
The three systems#
Lot and block references a recorded plat: lot 7, block 3, of a named subdivision, in a named county. Common in platted urban and suburban areas, and the simplest to read, because the plat carries the actual dimensions.
Metes and bounds describes the boundary by direction and distance from a defined starting point, running the perimeter and closing back where it began. Older and rural parcels frequently use it, and a description that fails to close is a genuine problem.
Public land survey system describes land by section, township and range — the rectangular grid laid over most of the country including Minnesota. A quarter-quarter section is forty acres, which is why so many rural parcel sizes are multiples of forty.
Why the address will not do#
Addresses are assigned for postal and emergency-service convenience. They change when roads are renamed or renumbered, they can be duplicated between jurisdictions, and they attach to a building rather than to land.
None of that identifies boundaries. A parcel with no building has no address at all, which is why vacant land transactions depend entirely on the legal description.
Where errors cause damage#
Legal descriptions get copied between documents, and copying introduces error.
A dropped call in a metes and bounds description, a transposed lot number, a missing "except the north 30 feet" — each creates a cloud on title that may not surface until the next sale, when a title examiner reads the chain and finds two documents describing different land.
Correcting it means a corrective deed if the parties are available and cooperative, or a quiet title action if they are not.
The rule that prevents most of this: copy legal descriptions from the prior deed or the title commitment, never from the tax statement, which often carries an abbreviated version intended as an identifier rather than as a description.
Legal description and parcel number#
They answer different questions and are not interchangeable.
The parcel identification number is the county's administrative handle for tax purposes. It is convenient, it is what most databases key on, and it gets reassigned when parcels are split or combined.
The legal description describes the ground itself, and survives the administrative changes.
Anything consequential — a conveyance, a mortgage, a lien — uses the legal description. Anything administrative uses the PIN. Confusing them is how a lien ends up attached to the wrong parcel.