What is a legal description of a property? The words on a deed that identify a parcel precisely enough to convey it: lot and block on a recorded plat, metes and bounds, or township, range and section.
A legal description is the wording that identifies a piece of land unambiguously enough for a deed to convey it. There are three forms in ordinary use. Lot and block refers a parcel to a subdivision map recorded with the county, naming the lot, the block, the subdivision and the book and page where the plat is filed, and it is what almost every Las Vegas valley subdivision uses. Metes and bounds walks the boundary in courses and distances from a point of beginning back around to it, and turns up on older, irregular or unplatted land. The rectangular survey identifies land by township, range, section and the fraction of the section, and it covers much of Nevada's rural acreage.
The point people miss is that the assessor's parcel number is not a legal description. The APN is a tax and mapping convenience: it locates the parcel on the assessor's map book so a bill can be sent and a record kept. It can change when parcels are split, combined or renumbered, and the number that identified a piece of land ten years ago may identify nothing today. A document that identifies land only by APN may fail to convey it, which is why Nevada deeds carry the full description and print the parcel number beside it for the recorder and the assessor. When checking a document, read the description, not just the number in the corner.
The authoritative copy is on the recorded deed, repeated on the title commitment's first schedule, and drawn on the recorded plat, all three of which are public and can be pulled from the county. In a platted valley subdivision the description is a single short sentence and the plat is where the easements, setbacks and common areas are actually drawn, so the plat is the document worth looking at. Rural parcels described by metes and bounds or by an aliquot part are the ones where paying for a survey is usually money well spent. A wrong or incomplete description can be fixed by a corrective deed, but only with the cooperation of everyone who signed the original, which is why it is checked before closing rather than after.
A worked example
A valley deed reads, in illustrative form, "Lot 27, Block 4, of Desert Willow Unit 3, as shown by map thereof on file in Book 118 of Plats, Page 42, in the Office of the County Recorder of Clark County, Nevada", with APN 163-22-410-027 printed beside it. Split that half-acre parcel into two 0.24-acre lots and the assessor retires the old APN and issues two new ones, while the recorded plat and the lot and block wording stay exactly where they were.
How to read a county property record
Questions people ask
Is the parcel number the same as the legal description?
No. The assessor's parcel number is a tax and mapping reference that can be retired or reissued when parcels are split or combined. The legal description is the wording that identifies the land itself, and it is what a deed relies on to convey it. Nevada deeds carry the description in full and print the parcel number alongside for the recorder and the assessor.
Where do I find my property's legal description?
On the recorded deed that conveyed it to you, on the first schedule of a title commitment, and on the subdivision plat filed with the county recorder. All three are public records. The county's own property record for the parcel is the quickest starting point, and it will point you to the recorded documents by number.