Jerry,
I am responding to your original post. As I understand it, you have legal descriptions for land you need to appraise but no easy way to obtain GPS coords for one or more of the property corners.
Another issue that arose in this thread is the 2008 Farm Bill which has now exempted a substantial amount of USDA data from disclosure.
For the last 20+ years I have been a professional real estate investor dealing in vacant Michigan recreation property. Just like you appraisers, I have many years professional experience analyzing legal descriptions and working with maps and aerial photos. I am also a big GPS fan both for business and pleasure.
The technology exists today for most states to produce a pdf file containing:
Aerial photo
Geo-referenced section lines
Section numbers
Road names
Accurate property outline with GPS coords for corners
Doing this requires use of 3-4 programs. The GPS coords for the property corners are generated by software from the legal description. (Only the starting point is hand-snapped.) If the legal description is an actual survey then the methodology includes the concept of ‘rotation’ to account for the fact that most surveys (at least in Michigan) use an ‘assumed north’ instead of true north.
Here is an example for 20 acres we are selling in Michigan.
Link to example.
I am contemplating launching a service to support land professionals including appraisers. No, I do not have any pricing in mind at the moment, partly because my thinking is still in the product development stage.
Jerry - I invite you to send me a few legal descriptions for your upcoming appraisals and tell me what kind of info would help you do your job. If I can provide the info, I will do so at no cost or obligation. The benefit I will get is insight into how the info I can provide meshes with the info actually needed by land professionals.
