Sometimes two or more owners will have “undivided interest” in the property.

This means that each owner holds a partial interest in the property as a whole (as opposed to dividing ownership by physically breaking the property in two through subdivision).

In this scenario, each owner has an equal right to use the property.

In addition, each owner can sell their undivided interest in the land separate and apart from the other owners.

When this happens, it can sometimes create confusing public records.

For example, we were recently looking at a property in Texas.

When we input the APN into the assessor’s database, the public records indicated that the property was six acres in size.

However, there was a note under the legal description that said “undivided interest in 1/2 of 12 acres.”

When we pulled up the assessor’s GIS map and measured the acreage of the parcel, the calculated size came out to 12 acres.

As it turned out, our seller only owned 50% interest in a 12 acre parcel.

When one of the original owners sold their share in the property, the assessor created two APNs for the same lot (one for each of the owners holding 50% undivided interest in the lot).

Thus, be sure to check for the line “undivided interest” in assessor records (sometimes abbreviated to “und int”) as part of your land due diligence.

Also, be on the lookout for a discrepancy between the calculated acreage in GIS maps and the listed size in the assessor database.