Whether you’re a property appraiser, real estate agent or you’re just curious about the neighborhood, you wouldn’t be alone in wondering about property lines and parcel boundaries. Property information (also referred to as parcel data), like property boundaries, has always been a matter of public record but gaining access to that information has typically been time and labor intense.
Property Plot Maps & Plat Maps from the County
You may have heard of property plot maps or plat books, which can still be purchased today, to show property lines and boundaries. And although a physical plat map book may still be useful for some professionals, just as old-fashioned fold-out maps have been mostly replaced with GPS navigation systems, so too have physical plat maps been mostly replaced by online parcel data and property line apps using GIS technology.
In the past, the most common way of finding your property lines was to go to the county office and request a copy of a certain page from their property plat maps. However, with the advancement of GIS technology and ability to store data digitally, there is much less need for physical plat maps – especially when you’re just curious about the general area of some property lines. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technology uses spatial data regarding your property and not only makes it easy to find, see and understand, but can add more data than a plat map – such as square footage, acreage, tax assessed value, school district, market value, transfer date, etc.
Property Line Maps Online
So what is GIS? How is it different from GPS? And how will it help you find property lines online? GIS is a system that allows us to store, manage and analyze data that is based on geography, or spatial data. It encompasses everything from parcel boundaries and their relation to roads, highways, the geography surrounding the parcel and all the characteristics you would want to attribute to that parcel, like school system, property taxes, floodplain, owner’s information, physical address, APN and more. GPS technology, the specific location of any point on the Earth, combined with GIS information, can now allow for a relatively accurate* overlay of property boundaries viewable on your desktop or your mobile phone.
For example, a property owner, buyer, real estate agent or property appraiser can now use a mobile application, like LandGlide, walk to an area of a property, and using the satellite information provided by the GPS location on their phone, coupled with the GIS data available from ReportAll’s data store, see approximately* the property boundary, who owns the adjacent properties and additional important property attributes associated with each parcel.
Free Trial of Property Line App
If you’re viewing properties in areas with cell phone coverage, take advantage of a 7-Day free trial of LandGlide, a property line map app that combines GIS technology and GPS to view on-site property lines and ownership information, by installing it from the Apple App Store or Google Play.
Map with Property Lines: Find Property Lines Online Now
If you’re looking for a map with property lines online using a desktop, either doing research or want to print your property boundaries, you can view and print unlimited property line maps for 24 hours with a ReportAll Online Day Pass for only $2.99. Instant access. View property lines for parcels across the US with coverage in over 97% of the nation.
If you’re a regional or national company developing your own application and you want to learn more about obtaining the property line and parcel data used to create this mobile app, go to our parcel data solutions page to learn more about the many ways our parcel data is available – shapefile downloads, as a Google Earth layer, on your smartphone and tablet, embedded in your app or website with our API (now with ArcGIS compatibility), and more.
* parcel boundaries should be considered an approximation and not a legal representation of the boundary. In legal disputes over property lines it is important to get a professional property surveyor involved.