As a notary who is not a lawyer, I don't give legal advice, so I would suggest the signer contact his/her lawyer, the lender, or the title company.
If I were the signer, I would perceive that the lender and title company want me to sign this to assure them that nothing happened to the property sice the last "house location survey".
First off, I would not be willing to fill in the legal description without suitable advice, since it's just about impossible to guess what the lender and title company want to see. In my case, I know the legal description on the most recent deed is wrong; among other things, a basswood tree mentioned in it is long dead and no traces of it remain.
Also, "house location survey" is a red flag for me. The standard term that's acceptable in virtually every state is "boundary survey", which must be performed by a licensed surveyor in accord with minimum standards of the state board of land surveyors. Some states, but not mine, allow a quick and dirty quasi-survey that's cheaper; the name of this questionable service goes by different names in different states. Usually, this quasi-survey must be prepared by a licensed land surveyor.
The part about personal inspection is usually the easy part. If I'm buying or refinancing a property, of course I've been to the property and looked it over. There's nothing in there that says I have any special skill in reading surveys or that I did extensive investigation, just that I looked at the property and the survey, and as far as I can tell, any of the items a through f that I saw on the property are shown on the survey.
Of course, it's entirely possible that someone gave me this to sign but did not furnish any survey at all, and indeed, I've never seen a survey of the property. In this case I would be unwilling to sign. |
