From Compass Lines to Parcel Numbers: How Washington Records Real Property
A modern Washington property record can look deceptively simple. Enter an address or parcel number into a county database, and a map, assessed value, ownership information, and links to recorded documents may appear within seconds.
Behind that search result lies a much older system. Washington’s land records combine federal surveys, handwritten field notes, metes-and-bounds descriptions, recorded plats, county indexes, private surveys, deeds, and tax-assessment databases. These tools overlap, but they do not perform the same function. In particular, a parcel number helps government offices and the public locate a property record, while a legal description identifies the land affected by a deed or other recorded instrument.
Understanding how the system developed to some degree explains both its usefulness and its occasional complexity.
- Before Statehood: Federal Surveys and Early Claims.
Much of Washington’s formal land-recording history began before Washington became a state in 1889. As settlement expanded, federal land laws provided mechanisms for surveying public lands and transferring them into private ownership. Federal patents and other government conveyances became foundational documents in many chains of title.
Surveyors also created the geographic framework that remains visible in Washington legal descriptions today: the Public Land Survey System, commonly called the PLSS. Rather than identifying property primarily by street address, the PLSS divides land into a grid based on meridians, baselines, townships, ranges, and sections.
A typical PLSS reference identifies:
- A township by its position north or south of a baseline.
- A range by its position east or west of a principal meridian.
- A numbered section within that township.
- A smaller portion of the section, such as a quarter section or quarter-quarter section.
A description might refer, for example, to the northeast quarter of the southwest quarter of a particular section, township, and range. The successive divisions are intended to narrow the description from a large surveyed area to a specific tract.
The Willamette Meridian and associated baseline provide the principal reference framework for Washington’s PLSS descriptions. Although the grid appears orderly on paper, conditions on the ground were not always so neat. The earth’s curvature, survey methods, terrain, measurement limitations, and corrections built into the system can create irregular parcels and differences between theoretical dimensions and actual monumented boundaries.
- Metes and Bounds: Following the Perimeter.
Not every property fits comfortably within a township-and-section formula. Washington records therefore also contain many metes-and-bounds descriptions.
“Metes” are measurements, such as distances and directions. “Bounds” are boundary features or reference points. A metes-and-bounds description generally begins at an identifiable point and traces the perimeter of the property through a series of courses and distances before returning to the point of beginning.
A simplified description might proceed along the following lines:
Beginning at the northwest corner of Section [NUMBER]; thence south [DISTANCE]; thence east [DISTANCE]; thence north [DISTANCE]; thence west [DISTANCE] to the point of beginning.
Actual descriptions are often considerably more complicated. They may refer to bearings expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds; curves and arc lengths; roads; shorelines; section corners; iron pipes; survey monuments; adjoining parcels; or earlier recorded documents.
Metes and bounds are especially useful for irregularly shaped land, boundary-line adjustments, exceptions from larger tracts, and parcels that do not correspond precisely to PLSS subdivisions. The method can also preserve the history of how a parcel was created. A large tract may be divided repeatedly, with each later description referring to a portion of the original property.
That history can make some descriptions difficult to read. A description may convey “all of” one tract except a previously conveyed portion, then add another strip described in a different instrument. Understanding the resulting parcel can require reviewing several documents and plotting their descriptions together.
- Plats: Turning Land into Lots and Blocks.
As communities developed, recorded plats became another central method of organizing land. A plat is a map that divides a larger tract into identified lots, blocks, streets, alleys, easements, and other areas. Once recorded, the plat provides a compact way to describe individual parcels.
Instead of repeating a long metes-and-bounds description, a deed may identify property as “Lot [NUMBER], Block [NUMBER], [PLAT NAME], according to the plat recorded in [COUNTY NAME] County, Washington.”
This lot-and-block system is common in residential subdivisions and urban areas. The recorded plat ordinarily supplies the detailed spatial information, while later deeds use the lot, block, and plat name to identify the property being transferred.
Plats do more than draw lot lines. Depending on the document, a plat may depict or address:
- Public streets and alleys.
- Utility, access, drainage, or other easements.
- Survey monuments.
- Tracts reserved for common, open-space, or stormwater purposes.
- Dedications to public use.
- Notes, restrictions, or conditions affecting the subdivision.
Washington land records may include long plats, short plats, amended plats, condominium surveys or maps, binding site plans, and other recorded land-division documents. The applicable form depends on the nature of the development and the governmental process through which it was approved.
A plat map should not be viewed in isolation. Later easements, vacations, boundary adjustments, corrective instruments, or re-plats may change or clarify matters shown in the original document.
- The Legal Description: The Property’s Written Identity.
The legal description is the written identification of the land affected by an instrument. It may use the PLSS, metes and bounds, a recorded plat, or a combination of methods.
Common Washington legal-description formats include:
- Government-survey descriptions. These identify land by section, township, range, and subdivision.
- Metes-and-bounds descriptions. These trace a parcel through courses, distances, monuments, curves, and calls.
- Lot-and-block descriptions. These identify a lot or tract by reference to a recorded plat.
- Condominium descriptions. These identify a unit and often refer to a recorded declaration and survey map or plan.
- Descriptions by reference. These incorporate another recorded instrument, survey, plat, or exhibit containing the full description.
- Combined descriptions. These use more than one method, such as a lot-and-block description followed by an exception described by metes and bounds.
A street address is ordinarily a practical location tool, not a substitute for the legal description.
Street names and address numbers can change, and some parcels have no conventional address. The legal description is designed to connect the document to the land itself.
A deed may also contain an abbreviated description on its first page and attach the complete legal description as an exhibit. When that format is used, the exhibit is part of the recorded instrument and must be read together with the deed.
- County Auditors and the Public Recording System.
Washington’s land-recording system is organized primarily at the county level. Documents affecting real property are presented for recording to the county auditor in the county where the land is located. The auditor accepts qualifying documents, assigns recording information, and places the documents into the county’s public record and indexing system.
Commonly recorded real-property documents include:
- Deeds.
- Deeds of trust and releases or reconveyances.
- Mortgages and satisfactions.
- Easements.
- Covenants, conditions, and restrictions.
- Plats and surveys.
- Assignments.
- Liens and lien releases.
- Boundary-line agreements.
- Leases or memoranda of lease.
- Court orders affecting title.
- Notices concerning claimed interests in land.
Recording does not necessarily establish that every statement in a document is correct or that the person signing it owned the interest being conveyed. The recording office’s role is principally to receive, preserve, index, and make documents available. Questions about ownership, priority, boundary location, or the legal effect of an instrument may require examination of the complete chain of title and other evidence.
Older county records were maintained in bound volumes and searchable through grantor-grantee indexes. A grantor index identifies persons transferring or burdening interests; a grantee index identifies persons receiving interests. Many counties later transferred these records to microfilm and electronic imaging systems.
Modern databases make searching faster, but historical research may still require moving among electronic indexes, scanned images, microfilm, plat books, survey records, and archived paper documents. Variations in names, indexing conventions, and legal descriptions can complicate a search.
- Parcel Numbers: Useful Identifiers, but Not Legal Descriptions.
The assessor’s parcel number—often called an APN, parcel number, or tax parcel number—is a comparatively modern administrative tool. County assessors assign parcel numbers to organize land for appraisal and property-tax administration. Other county departments and private users rely on the same numbers because they provide a convenient way to locate information.
A parcel number may encode geographic or administrative information, such as a plat, block, lot, section, tax area, or subdivision of a larger parcel. The format differs among Washington counties, and the meaning of each digit depends on the local numbering system.
Parcel numbers are valuable because they can connect users to:
- Assessor maps.
- Tax and valuation records.
- Situs or street addresses.
- Ownership information maintained for assessment purposes.
- Recorded-document references.
- Building and land characteristics.
- Geographic information system maps.
Even so, a parcel number is not ordinarily the legal description of the property. Numbers can be changed when land is divided, combined, replatted, or adjusted. A single legal parcel may also be associated with more than one tax account, and a tax parcel may not resolve every question about legal-lot status or boundary location.
This distinction explains why recorded instruments commonly display both a parcel number and a legal description. The parcel number assists with indexing and administration; the legal description identifies the land affected by the instrument.
- Surveys, Monuments, and What Exists on the Ground.
A legal description is written language, but boundaries ultimately concern locations on the ground. Licensed land surveyors interpret deeds, plats, prior surveys, field evidence, and physical monuments to evaluate or establish boundary locations.
Survey monuments may include marked stones, pipes, rebar, concrete posts, brass caps, or other durable markers. Some monuments establish government-survey corners; others identify plat corners, lot corners, or points used in a particular survey.
A record of survey can document the surveyor’s measurements, monuments found or set, controlling references, and conclusions. Other survey-related documents may include corner records, boundary-line-adjustment maps, and subdivision surveys.
Surveying and recording perform related but distinct functions. Recording a deed places the conveyance in the public records. Recording a survey preserves information about measured or interpreted boundary locations. Neither process automatically resolves every inconsistency among deed language, monuments, occupation lines, neighboring claims, and prior surveys.
Modern surveying technology can produce extremely precise measurements, but new precision does not erase the history reflected in older monuments and documents. Boundary analysis often requires reconciling contemporary measurements with the evidence used to create the original parcel.
- One Property, Several Layers of Information.
A Washington property may have several different “identities” at the same time:
- A street address used for mail and emergency response.
- A parcel number used for assessment and taxation.
- A legal description used in deeds and other instruments.
- A lot or tract number shown on a recorded plat.
- A section-township-range location derived from the PLSS.
- A physical boundary represented by monuments and occupation on the ground.
- A chain of recorded documents showing transfers and encumbrances over time.
These layers usually point to the same place, but they are not interchangeable. A county mapping website may provide an excellent overview without determining the exact boundary. An assessor’s ownership entry may help locate records without serving as a complete title history. A deed may identify the land while omitting later easements or other recorded interests.
- The Continuing Evolution of Washington Land Records.
Washington’s current recording system is both historical and digital. Electronic databases have made records far more accessible, but they have not replaced the underlying documents. The most reliable understanding of a property still comes from recognizing what each record was created to do—and what it was not created to do. That is a central lesson of Washington’s recording history: no single number, map, or document tells the entire story. The public record is a layered account of how land was surveyed, divided, described, conveyed, burdened, taxed, and mapped over time. And since there is no sign that concepts of land ownership will change, the transfer of property between people continues, and development of land remains, the story of property descriptions is bound to continue to develop as well.
The Real Estate Lawyers at Beresford Booth have experience in all areas of land use. Please contact us at info@beresfordlaw.com or call (425) 776-4100 to see how we can help you.