By Richard Selzer
Selzer Realty & Associates

If you’ve ever looked at a property tax statement, you’ll notice there’s at least one parcel number listed. This is your assessor’s parcel number (APN), and APNs are used to determine your property tax burden.

When reviewing property, you may see the term “legal parcel” and this is not necessarily the same as your assessor’s parcel. As land is divided and subdivided over time, a legal parcel can be made up of multiple assessor’s parcels. This is important because each assessor’s parcel may be subject to different tax burdens. If the property is in a subdivision full of regular lots, chances are the APN and the legal parcel are one and the same. If, on the other hand, the property is an older home or consists of an acre or two (or more), there’s a decent chance that the property is made up of multiple APNs. Boundary line adjustments, easements, or a merging of adjacent properties can all lead to a patchwork of APNs for a single legal parcel. This is something all some brokers/lenders in more rural areas are aware of, but it could be news to a broker/lender that has only been dealing with properties in subdivisions in urban and suburban settings.

In Mendocino County, for example, things are different. Let’s say the subject property is a 150-acre property in Hopland – one legal parcel. A portion of the property might be in a cemetery district, another part might be in the school district, and to complicate things, the property may include an easement across the neighbor’s property which allows the property owner to access their property. On the tax bill, it’ll indicate three APNs with three separate tax liabilities.

If you’re curious about how property is divided, you can go to a local title company or the County Assessor’s Office and request a plat map. Plat maps show geographic areas overlaid with individual property boundaries. They can include everything from subdivision numbers to legal descriptions to APNs. Sometimes APNs change over time. If there’s a new subdivision or boundary line adjustment, the county will assign a new APN, so the number you’ve always seen may change. This can make it difficult to compare historical records with current records.

Knowing the history of a legal parcel is not only important for tax reasons, but also if you want to divide the property along original boundary lines, which can dramatically increase the market value. If the 150-acre parcel in Hopland was created by merging multiple legal parcels, then the property can be split along the original lines. Let’s say those 150 acres were originally ten legal parcels. If it can be proven to the county, then the owner can sell each parcel individually without going through the legal rigamarole of getting a new subdivision approved by the county. Note, you cannot sell only part of a parcel unless that section is recognized as its own legal parcel. Having the county recognize separate legal parcels within one property is called a certificate of compliance.

Once I learned the hard way that if your title company makes a mistake and doesn’t include all the legal descriptions when the property is acquired, then the owner may not have a legal parcel and they cannot sell the property.

The long and short of it is this: knowing the difference between the legal parcel and your assessor’s parcel(s) can allow an owner to profit from their real estate investment.

Dick Selzer is a real estate broker who has been in the business for more than 45 years.