Working with landmen and title companies in Texas has taught me that even the best kept computer GIS records are probably wrong. This goes for regular property as well as mineral leasing. The amount of records for one sublease are simply staggering. We are currently doing a digitizing and OCR of historical well records from 1980 to current and the amount of paperwork fills a 40x30 storage building ceiling to floor. This is only for a few thousand wells. I've seen title searches for large families where there wasn't a will set up end up with a sack of near 1000 printed pages. Detangling property rights in areas with a lot of history, and mineral rights separated from land rights is a damned nightmare.
Comments
Working with landmen and title companies in Texas has taught me that even the best kept computer GIS records are probably wrong. This goes for regular property as well as mineral leasing. The amount of records for one sublease are simply staggering. We are currently doing a digitizing and OCR of historical well records from 1980 to current and the amount of paperwork fills a 40x30 storage building ceiling to floor. This is only for a few thousand wells. I've seen title searches for large families where there wasn't a will set up end up with a sack of near 1000 printed pages. Detangling property rights in areas with a lot of history, and mineral rights separated from land rights is a damned nightmare.