Lot and block
Lot and block is the legal description system used for platted land. A description reads: lot 7, block 3, Oakwood Addition, Ramsey County, Minnesota.
Why it is the easiest system#
Because the description does not carry the dimensions. The plat does.
A lot and block description only has to point at the right lot on the right recorded plat, and everything about where the boundaries run is on that document.
That makes descriptions short, hard to transcribe wrongly, and impossible to fail to close — which metes and bounds descriptions can and do.
What you still have to do#
Pull the plat.
The description tells you which lot. The plat tells you its dimensions, the easements crossing it, the street dedications, and the monuments a surveyor would work from.
A buyer who reads the description and never looks at the plat has learned the lot's name and nothing about its shape or its encumbrances.
Multiple lots#
Common on older Minnesota housing stock.
A house sitting on two or three narrow platted lots is described by listing them all, and it is generally treated as a single buildable parcel under current zoning rather than as separate developable lots.
Separating them again is usually not permitted, because the individual lots are far below current minimum sizes. That surprises owners who see three lot numbers on their tax statement and assume three parcels.
Partial lots#
Descriptions frequently combine the two systems: "the north 40 feet of lot 7, block 3" — a lot and block reference narrowed by a measurement.
Those hybrids are where transcription errors do occur, because the measurement component behaves like a metes and bounds description and can be copied wrongly.
Where to be careful#
Similar subdivision names. Plats are indexed by name and near-identical names exist across and within counties. The full description including the county is what disambiguates.
Vacated streets and alleys. Where a street has been vacated, adjoining lots frequently gain a strip of it — and whether that addition appears in the description varies. It is a common source of small boundary surprises.
Copy from the prior deed or the title commitment, never from the tax statement, which carries an abbreviated version intended as an identifier rather than as a description.
Registered land plats#
On Torrens property the plat works the same way, with one difference in where it lives.
The plat is filed with the registrar of titles rather than the county recorder, and the lots created appear on certificates of title rather than in a chain of recorded deeds.
That difference follows through to everything filed afterwards. An easement across a platted Torrens lot binds only once it becomes a memorial on the certificate, and filing it with the recorder instead leaves it potentially ineffective against the next purchaser.
For anyone working on platted land, establishing which system the parcel is in comes before anything else — because it determines which office every subsequent document goes to.