How Legal Property Descriptions Work and Why Exact Text Extraction Matters
Legal descriptions in property deeds are precise identification instruments, not general property summaries, and even slight wording differences make two descriptions legally distinct. American deeds use one of three systems: metes and bounds, lot and block, or the Public Land Survey System, each with specific required components that naive extraction often misses. A single deed may contain multiple descriptions joined by 'AND' or labeled as separate tracts, meaning data schemas must accommodate arrays rather than a single text field. Experts warn against converting legal descriptions into parsed coordinates or reconstructed text, as the verbatim string — including punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviations — is what holds legal weight in title commitments and court filings. The recommended approach is to store the description exactly as written on the recorded page, alongside the source image and character offsets, to allow meaningful human review.
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