California Surveyors Forums

Got a call from someone (out of state banker) who wants a survey and legal description done of a piece of property.

The property has one metes and bounds description which covers about an acre and three different assessor's parcel #'s.

They want a legal description and survey of just one of the assessor lots, maybe 0.03 acres, to expedite a loan on a lease of the one assessor lot.

I can do the fieldwork and legal description and the Record of Survey for the piece but don't believe that his loan can only burden one assessor number as it is not a stand alone lot.

What would you recommend to accomplish his goal?

I said the legal he had for the whole parcel is the one he had to use but I feel like I missed an opportunity.

Thank you

I think you needed to figure out what type of lease to see if it fell within the exclusions of the Map Act. Seems like most of them do.

George Marchenko

8762.5. No record of survey of land shown on the latest adopted county assessment roll as a unit or as contiguous units, which shows a division of such land into additional parcels, shall be filed with the county surveyor or with the county recorder, unless there is attached thereto a certificate by the county surveyor if the land lies within an unincorporated area, or a certificate by the city engineer if the land lies within a city, of compliance with the provisions of the Subdivision Map Act, Division 2 (commencing with Section 66410) of Title 7 of the Government Code, and any applicable local ordinance enacted pursuant thereto.

remember APN are assigned for various reasons, it is a tax zone, not the area of legal ownership. the APN may be for a parking district and nothing else.

RAM wrote:remember APN are assigned for various reasons, it is a tax zone, not the area of legal ownership. the APN may be for a parking district and nothing else.

Exactly. A single APN may cover multiple legal parcels, or a single legal parcel may have multiple APNs. The Assessor's Parcel is only for the purposes of taxation.

In this case, if there is a single legal lot to the three APNs, then it is likely that the loan would need to be taken against the entirety of the land in question; after all, if the loan were to default it is secured by the land, and you can't subdivide the parcel due to a claim through loan docs.

Thanks for the responses
Pretty much what I told the prospective client.

{The ROS wasn't for subdivision, just needed if a survey was done}