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Category: Property & Real Estate

Buying, maintaining and improving a home and land.

How to Find Your Property Lines

October 22, 2026 /

Before you put up a fence or clear a fencerow, it pays to know where your line actually is.

Quick answer Pull your deed and any survey or plat, then look at your county’s parcel (GIS) map to get oriented. Online maps are approximate, not legal boundaries. Walk the corners looking for iron pins or other monuments. For a fence, a building or a disagreement with a neighbor, hire a licensed land surveyor.
How to Find Your Property Lines
Photo: Bureau of Land Management Derivative Work by TBP25 (Cropped) / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
Tools & materials

  • Your deed and any prior survey or plat
  • Phone or computer for the county assessor’s parcel map
  • Measuring tape and flags or stakes
  • Metal detector (optional, for buried pins)

Steps

  1. Gather your paperwork. Your deed has the legal description. Your closing papers may include a survey. Recorded plats are kept by the county, and the Arkansas Division of Land Surveys has a public plat search.
  2. Look at the county parcel map. Most county assessors have an online parcel or GIS viewer that draws parcel lines over aerial photos. Use it to get oriented. The lines can be off by several feet or more, so don’t build to them.
  3. Compare. Check that the lengths and shape on the parcel map match the distances on your survey or plat.
  4. Call 811 before you probe or dig. In Arkansas, call 811 or start a ticket online. Utilities have two full working days to mark their lines. 811 marks buried utility lines only, not property lines.
  5. Find the corners. Starting from a known point on your survey, measure along the lines toward each corner. Look for iron pins, rebar or pipe. A metal detector helps with buried ones. Flag what you find.
  6. Hire a surveyor when it matters. For a fence, building, sale or dispute, a licensed Arkansas land surveyor can locate or reset the corners and stake the lines. The Division of Land Surveys lists county surveyors, and your title company can suggest names.
Safety: Don’t pull up, move or reset a survey pin you find, even if it’s in the way. Hand-dig anywhere near marked utility lines.

How to Read a Property Survey or Plat

October 22, 2026 /

Whether it’s a house lot or a few acres, it’s worth knowing exactly what you own. The survey tells you, once you can read it.

Quick answer Start with the title block, north arrow, scale and legend. Each boundary line is labeled with a bearing (its direction, like N 35°10’35” E) and a distance in feet. Corners are marked by monuments, usually iron pins, noted as found or set. Dashed or hatched areas are often easements. The legal description ties it all to a lot and block or to a section, township and range.
How to Read a Property Survey or Plat
Photo: Surveyor General of Louisiana / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
What you need

  • A copy of your survey or recorded plat (from your closing papers, the county, or the Arkansas Division of Land Surveys plat search)
  • A ruler or engineer’s scale
  • A highlighter

How to read it

  1. Know which document you have. A plat is the recorded map of how a subdivision or piece of land was divided into lots, streets and easements. A survey of your parcel, done by a licensed surveyor, shows your boundaries and usually the buildings and other improvements on the ground when it was done.
  2. Read the title block. It names the property, owner or client, surveyor, date and the surveyor’s seal. Note the date: an old survey may not show newer fences or buildings.
  3. Orient it. Find the north arrow and the scale (for example, 1 inch = 50 feet). Then check the legend for what each symbol and line type means.
  4. Find the boundary. The heavy solid line is usually the outer boundary of the parcel. Trace it with a highlighter.
  5. Read the bearings. A bearing like N 35°10’35” E means: face north, then turn 35 degrees, 10 minutes, 35 seconds toward east. That’s the direction of that line.
  6. Read the distances. Lengths are in feet, often to the hundredth (125.50′ is 125 and a half feet). Curved lines are labeled with curve data like radius and arc length.
  7. Find the corners. Symbols at the corners show the monuments, such as iron pins, rebar, pipes, concrete or stone. “Found” means it was already there; “set” means the surveyor placed it.
  8. Spot easements and setbacks. Utility, drainage and access easements are often drawn as dashed or hatched strips with their width. Building setback lines show how close you can build to the line.
  9. Read the legal description. In a subdivision it’s usually lot and block. Rural Arkansas land is usually described by section, township and range, often with a metes-and-bounds description that walks the boundary line by line.
Safety: A survey or plat on paper tells you where the line is supposed to be. Before you build a fence or a building close to a line, have a licensed surveyor stake it on the ground.

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