Relationship of the Property to Adjoining Properties

Merely locating the lines described in a deed on the ground is not adequate for establishing the physical limits of a property owners interests. All parcels of land exist in relation to the parcels surrounding them. Surrounding parcels may include privately or publicly owned lands, rights-of-way, easements, roads, and water bodies. At some point in the past, all adjoining land parcels were held in common by a single grantor. Over time, parcels were partitioned off or subdivided until the current ownership configuration was arrived at. As a general rule, the description in a senior deed or prior conveyance controls over any discrepancy in a later one. If an error was made or an ambiguity was created in describing a parcel being partitioned off from a larger parcel or an error was made later in an attempt to correct or refine an earlier description, the legal descriptions of adjoining parcels may be inconsistent. Their "common" boundary may in fact either overlap or not meet. Failure to discover overlaps may leave the holder of the junior deed owning much less property than his deed on its face would indicate. The presence of gaps or gores also poses problems when attempting to consolidate several adjacent parcels under a single owner for development purposes. When consolidation is attempted, the task of definitively establishing ownership to these leftover land strips must be accomplished. If a gore exists along a street line or right-of-way, it has the potential of creating a landlocked parcel.