What is a metes and bounds description?
A metes and bounds description is the written boundary of a tract, given as a series of calls: a bearing, a distance and the monument or adjoiner each line runs to, recited around the property until it closes. It tells you what the deed claims. Where those corners sit on the ground today is a question for a land surveyor.
A single call: the direction, the length and the thing it ends at
Open an older deed to rural land and the description often does not start with a lot number. It starts somewhere on the ground and walks. Take one line of that walk on its own, something shaped like thence North 42 degrees 15 minutes 30 seconds East 318.46 feet to an iron pin found, and it holds three separate pieces of information.
- The bearing. The direction of the line, measured from north or south toward east or west. A current Virginia boundary survey plat shows bearings to the nearest one second of arc.
- The distance. How far the line runs in that direction. The same plat standard carries distances to the nearest hundredth of a foot.
- The monument. What the line ends at: a pin, a pipe, a stone, a point in a stream.
That sample call is an illustration, not a line from any recorded deed. Put a run of calls like it end to end, each beginning where the last one stopped, and the lines return to the starting point. That closed loop, written out in words, is the whole description. The short definition of metes and bounds sits in the glossary; this page is about reading one.
What a complete description recites beyond its lines
When a surveyor writes a narrative description for a newly performed boundary survey, Virginia's standard spells out what goes in it, and the list is a useful checklist for reading an older one.
Under 18VAC10-20-370, the surveyor prepares that narrative description when the client or the client's agent asks for it. It has to reflect the bearings, distances and curve data "sufficient to reconstruct the geometry", the area of the property, all pertinent monuments, and the names of the record owners of the adjoining land or other appropriate identification of the adjoiners. Customarily the calls run clockwise around the property.
- Curve data. Where a line follows a road or a bend instead of a straight run, the description gives the curve's data so the geometry can be rebuilt on paper.
- The acreage. The description states the area. On the rural plat behind it, area is shown to the nearest hundredth of an acre.
- The adjoiners. The description names the record owners of the land across its lines, or otherwise identifies those adjoiners, which is how one tract's description ties into the next one's.
The description is the part of the deed that Virginia's statutory deed form leaves open for describing the property, and the form asks that it include the city or county where the property is located. It is also only as tight as the measurement behind it. For a boundary survey in a rural area, the regulation sets the maximum permissible error of closure for a field traverse at one part in 10,000.
Older descriptions are often thinner. A call may run to an object that no one can find now, or name an adjoining owner who sold decades ago, and a description compiled from earlier deeds carries forward whatever those deeds said. How the field work behind a description is done, from the record search to the sealed plat, is laid out in how a land survey works.
A description tells you the claim, not the corner
Reading a description closely answers what the paper says the tract is. Two questions stay open after the last call.
The first is where the lines are on the ground today. A monument named in a deed may have been moved, buried or lost, a fence may follow a line of its own, and two neighboring descriptions written years apart may not meet cleanly. Finding the physical corners is a different job, set out in how to find your property corners, and when a new survey and the deed do not agree, the page on what happens when the survey and the deed disagree takes it from there.
The second is whether the division the description creates was lawful. Where a subdivision ordinance applies, Va. Code 15.2-2254 bars selling or transferring land of a subdivision before its plat is approved and recorded, unless the subdivision was lawfully created before the ordinance, without preventing the recording of the transfer instrument or the passage of title between the parties, and it says a metes and bounds description in the instrument of transfer does not exempt the transaction from the statute's penalties or remedies. Selling off part of a tract is its own subject, covered in whether you can sell just part of your land.
Where the written description and the plat drawing meet
A metes and bounds description and a boundary survey plat describe the same lines in two forms, one in sentences and one in a drawing.
The plat shows what the words recite and a little more, including recording references and which monuments were found and which were set. Laying a deed's calls beside a boundary survey plat, line by line, is the plainest way to see whether the two tell the same story. What a plat is, and what a recorded one does, is answered on what a plat is.
Find the beginning
Locate the point of beginning and the first monument named. Everything after it depends on that start.
Follow the calls in order
Match each bearing and distance to a line on the plat, in the same direction the description travels.
Check what each line ends at
Note whether the plat shows the named monument as found, set, or not there at all.
Compare the area and the adjoiners
See whether the acreage and the neighboring owners in the words match the drawing. A mismatch is a question to bring to the surveyor who sealed the plat.
None of that reading moves a line. It tells you which questions to carry to the surveyor, and it keeps a buyer's first look at the tract anchored to the record rather than to a fence.
A deed description you are trying to read line by line?
Send the county and the tax map number or deed reference. Lowell will pull the recorded deed and plat for the tract so the questions about its description reach a land surveyor early. No cost, no obligation.
Got it. Thank you.
We'll be in touch shortly with an honest read.
Questions this raises
Why do the calls in a description usually run clockwise?
Virginia's boundary survey standard says the metes and bounds in a narrative description are customarily recited in a clockwise direction around the property. The regulation's word is customarily, so it describes the usual order rather than a fixed rule. The practical effect is that a reader can follow the lines from the point of beginning in a predictable order and arrive back where the walk started.
Can a surveyor write a new description for land I already own?
Yes, as part of a new boundary survey. Under Virginia's survey standard, the surveyor prepares a narrative metes and bounds description on request for any newly performed land boundary survey, reciting the bearings, distances, curve data, area, monuments and adjoiners. Whether a new description should go into a deed is a question for the attorney preparing it.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.
- 18VAC10-20-370, minimum standards and procedures for land boundary surveying practice Virginia Board for Architects, Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, Certified Interior Designers and Landscape Architects
- Va. Code 55.1-300, form of deeds Virginia General Assembly
- Va. Code 15.2-2254, effect of approval and recording of subdivision plats Virginia General Assembly