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Information about Plat

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A contemporary plat map showing the location of a lot for sale.
A plat consists of a map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. U.S. General Land Office surveyors drew township plats to show the distance and bearing between survey corners, and sometimes included topographic or vegetation information. City, town or village plats show subdivisions into blocks with streets and alleys. Further refinement often splits blocks into individual lots, usually for the purpose of selling the described lots; this has become known as subdivision. After the filing of a plat, legal descriptions can refer to block and lot-numbers rather than portions of sections.

In order for plats to become legally valid, a local governing body, such as a public works department, urban planning commission, or zoning board must normally review and approve them.

Types of plats

A Plat of Consolidation originates when a landowner takes over several adjacent parcels of land and consolidates them into a single parcel. In order to do this, the landowner will usually need to make a survey of the parcels and submit the survey to the governing body that would have to approve the consolidation.

A Plat of Subdivision appears when a landowner or municipality divides land into smaller parcels. If a landowner owns an acre of land, for instance, and wants to divide it into three pieces, a surveyor would have to take precise measurements of the land and submit the survey to the governing body, which would then have to approve it.

A Correction Plat or Amending Plat records minor corrections to an existing plat, such as correcting a surveying mistake or a scrivener's error. Such plats can sometimes serve to relocate lot-lines or other features, but laws usually tightly restrict such use.

A Vacating Plat functions to legally void a prior plat or portion of a plat. The rules normally allow such plats only when all the platted lots remain unsold and no construction of buildings or public improvements has taken place.

Other names associated with Parcel Maps are: Land Maps, Tax Maps, Real Estate Maps, Landowner Maps, Lot and Block Survey System and Land Survey Maps. Parcel maps, unlike any other real estate records, have no federal, state or municipal oversight with their development.

Reasons for platting

  • Designation of roads or other rights of way.
  • Ensuring that all property has access to a public right of way. Without such access, a property owner may be unable to utilize his or her property without having to trespass to reach it. The platting process restricts the fraudulent practice of knowingly selling lots with no access to public right of way.
  • Creation or vacation of easements.
  • Dedication of land for other public uses, such as parks or areas needed for flood protection.
  • Ensuring compliance with zoning. Zoning regulations frequently contain restrictions that govern lot sizes and lot geometry. The platting process allows the governing authorities to ensure that all lots comply with these regulations.
  • Ensuring compliance with a land use plan established to control the development of a city.
  • Ensuring that all property has access to public utilities.

Reading a Plat

Plats contain a number of informational elements:
  • The property boundaries are indicated by bearing and distance. The bearing is in the format of degrees, minutes, seconds with compass point letters before and afterward to indicate the compass quadrant. For example N 38 00 00 E is 38 degrees into the northeast quadrant or 38 degrees East of North. Similarly S 22 00 00 W is 22 degrees West of South. Note that North here is true north, so magnetic orientation must be corrected for magnetic declination. (Explanatory graphic)
  • The Certification Note provides information on the surveyor and is the location where recent US plats place the flood survey code in accordance with the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968.
  • The North arrow is familiar to most map readers
  • The Title Block and Lot Numbers provide information specific to a development or land-use plan
  • An Easement is usually indicated by a dashed line, although it is also common to have to look them up in supplementary documents (such as a title report)
  • Streets are usually indicated by a graphical outline of the paved area, not the right of way

History

The word "plat" in medieval English (and ever since) refers to a piece (or "plot") of land.

The creation of a plat map marks an important step in the process of incorporating a town or city according to United States law. Because the process of incorporation must occur at a courthouse, the incorporation papers for many American cities may be stored hundreds of miles away in another state.

For example, to view the original plat for the city of San Francisco, California, filed in 1849, one must visit the Clackamas County courthouse in Oregon City, Oregon, then the capital of the Oregon Territory and the site of the closest federal land office. This happened because California did not gain statehood until 1850.

See also

External links

MAP may refer to:
  • MAP, the ISO 639 alpha-3 for Austronesian languages
  • MAP (band), an indie band from Riverside, California
  • Maghreb Arab Press, the official Moroccan news agency
  • Malawi Against Polio

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Motto
"In God We Trust"   (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum"   ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
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The General Land Office, a former agency of the United States government, was created in 1812 to take over functions previously conducted by the United States Department of the Treasury relating to the public domain.
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city block, urban block or simply block is a central element of urban planning and urban design. A city block is the smallest area that is surrounded by streets.
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street is a public thoroughfare in the built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about.
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alley or alleyway is a narrow, pedestrian lane found in urban areas which usually run between or behind buildings. In older cities and towns in Europe, alleys are often what is left of a medieval street network.
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In real estate, a lot is a tract or parcel of land owned or meant to be owned by some owner(s). A lot is essentially considered a parcel of real property in some countries or immovable property (meaning practically the same thing) in other countries.
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Subdivision is the act of dividing land into pieces that are easier to sell or otherwise develop, usually via a plat. The former single piece as a whole is then known as a subdivision; if it is used for housing it is typically known as a housing subdivision or housing development,
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section is an area nominally one mile square, containing 640 acres (2.6 km²). Nominally, 36 sections make up a survey township on a rectangular grid. As the townships are based on meridians (of longitude) which converge towards the north pole, some sections which vary slightly
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Public works are the construction or engineering projects carried out by the state on behalf of the community.

Overview

The notion of internal improvements or public works is a concept in economics and politics.
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Urban, city, or town planning is the discipline of land use planning which explores several aspects of the built and social environments of municipalities and communities.
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worldwide view.


Zoning is a term used in urban planning for a system of land-use regulation in various parts of the world, including North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
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Landowner or Landholder is a holder of the estate in land with considerable rights of ownership or, simply put, an owner of land.

In the old Europe a Landholder was usually a nobleman, see landed nobility.
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Parcel can refer to:
  • A mailable or shippable item other than a letter, book, or other document, particularly as packaging delivered by a postal service or package delivery service.

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Surveying is the technique and science of accurately determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional space position of points and the distances and angles between them. These points are usually, but not exclusively, associated with positions on the surface of the Earth, and are
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acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and US customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre.

One acre comprises 4,840 square yards or 43,560 square feet.
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Surveying is the technique and science of accurately determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional space position of points and the distances and angles between them. These points are usually, but not exclusively, associated with positions on the surface of the Earth, and are
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scrivener (or scribe) was traditionally a person who could read and write. This usually indicated secretarial and administrative duties such as dictation and keeping business, judicial, and history records for kings, nobility, temples, and cities.
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road is an identifiable route, way or path between two or more places.[1] Roads are typically smoothed, paved, or otherwise prepared to allow easy travel;[2]
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Property law
Part of the common law series
Acquisition of property
Gift  · Adverse possession  · Deed
Lost, mislaid, and abandoned property
Alienation  · Bailment  · License
Estates in land
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trespass can be:
  1. the criminal act of going into somebody else's land or property without permission of the owner or lessee;
  2. a civil law tort that may be a valid cause of action to seek judicial relief and possibly damages through a lawsuit - see trespass to land.

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Criminal law
Part of the common law series
Elements of crimes
Actus reus  · Causation  · Concurrence
Mens rea  · Intention (general)
Intention in English law  · Recklessness
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Property law
Part of the common law series
Acquisition of property
Gift  · Adverse possession  · Deed
Lost, mislaid, and abandoned property
Alienation  · Bailment  · License
Estates in land
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park is a bounded area of land, usually in its natural or semi-natural (landscaped) state and set aside for some purpose, usually to do with recreation.

History

The first parks were land set aside for hunting by the aristocracy in medieval times.
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flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land, a deluge.[1] In the sense of "flowing water", the word is applied to the inflow of the tide, as opposed to the outflow or "ebb".
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worldwide view.


Zoning is a term used in urban planning for a system of land-use regulation in various parts of the world, including North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
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Land use planning is the term used for a branch of public policy which encompasses various disciplines which seek to order and regulate the use of land in an efficient and ethical way.
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city is an urban settlement with a particularly important status which differentiates it from a town.

City is primarily used to designate an urban settlement with a large population. However, city may also indicate a special administrative, legal, or historical status.
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A public utility (usually just utility in British English) is a company that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure).
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degree (in full, a degree of arc, arc degree, or arcdegree), usually denoted by ° (the degree symbol), is a measurement of plane angle, representing 1⁄360 of a full rotation.
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