Reader,
The Importance of the Legal Description
A signed contract arrives at the closing attorney's office. Both parties signed it and everyone involved thinks the deal is buttoned up. It gets opened by the pre-closer just like every other file. What property are they selling / buying? Nothing is attached. The email that came with the file asks: can you pull a deed and add it?
This is not rare, and the flippant way it happens almost daily misses what's at stake. It puts both the buyer and the seller at risk, and it can turn into agent liability when someone hires an attorney to get out of the deal or the contract ends up in an earnest money dispute. A "to be attached" rather than "is attached and incorporated herein by reference" is not a legal description.
Here is the key fact. A real legal description is what identifies the land. Addresses change. Subdivision are renamed. It happens. There are real court cases where people find out too late to prevent real damage that they did not buy what they thought they bought.
What actually counts as a legal description
A legal description does one of a few things: it walks the boundary by course and distance (metes and bounds), it points to a lot and block number on a specific recorded plat, in a specific plat book and page, or it references a full recorded deed description that already does one of those things. Any of those, done correctly, lets someone who has never seen the property locate its exact boundaries from the public record alone.
What also doesn't count: a separate document emailed over with the contract but never referenced and incorporated into the contract.
Why this is a major issue
Georgia's Statute of Frauds requires a real estate sales contract to describe the property with enough certainty that the land can be identified without relying on facts outside the written agreement. This is a real requirement, not a technicality.
A contract that fails that test is not a contract with a flaw. It may be void and unenforceable, because a court cannot order specific performance or damages for a default on a transfer of land nobody can precisely identify. .
What this actually puts at risk. A buyer or seller who wants out has a clean argument to walk from an insufficient-description contract at any point.
It was the weekend and this was the best we can do does not make the paperwork a contract.
What good looks like
Before the offer is made, the actual legal description must be part of that offer. If it is not and the side receiving the offer adds it, this is not acceptance. That is an offer back which still requires acceptance from the other side acknowledging the legal description.
Shouldn't the closing attorney catch a problem like this before it gets this far?
No, and expecting that misunderstands the role. The file is opened and processed by the pre-closer, not an attorney. The closing attorney does not represent either party to the sale, and deciding whether a contract is enforceable is not part of the job, only closing the transaction the parties already signed. A large number of the contracts that come through contain some kind of error or ambiguity. If analyzing every one of them for problems were part of the job, there would be no time left to do anything else.
Grab the resource. I put together a quick reference for pulling and checking a legal description before a contract goes out, the two places to compare it against, and when it's worth a call to the closing attorney instead of a guess. Reach out at cherylking@realsmartonline.com and I'll send it your way. Have a contract question you want a read on? Send that along too, and I'll keep your name out of it.
How to Pull a Deed on GSCCCA
GSCCCA, the Georgia Superior Court Clerks' Cooperative Authority, is the state's online index of recorded real estate documents: deeds, security deeds, liens, and more, covering every Georgia county back to 1990 for most searches. It is the fastest way to find and view an actual recorded deed without waiting on the closing attorney.
Before you start
An account. A free "limited use" account lets you search the index and see summary information, but document images cannot be viewed or printed. That takes a paid account: Regular is $14.95 a month, Premium is $29.95 a month and adds more search options including address search, both with unlimited image viewing plus $0.50 a page to print. A Single-Use account is a one-time $5 fee for a four-hour window, for a one-off search that does not justify a monthly subscription. Pricing as of July 2025, confirm current rates on the site before subscribing. Many brokerages already carry a subscription, and against what is riding on confirming a legal description before closing, the monthly cost is small.
A name to search. The grantor (seller) or the grantee (buyer). If the name is common, having the county and an approximate date ready will save time.
Know the county where the property sits, if you can, since narrowing to a county cuts the results down fast. Do not assume the county from the city name: some Georgia cities sit in more than one county, so the city alone will not tell you which one applies to this address. When you are not sure, look the address up on USPS's ZIP Code by Address tool (tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm), then click the arrow on the matching result to expand it. The expanded panel includes a County field.
An address by itself will not get you far, since GSCCCA searches by name, not by address. A deed is written and indexed by legal description, not street address, so the address usually will not appear on the deed itself. The PT-61, the real estate transfer tax form filed alongside the deed, is what confirms the address: it shows up as one of the document images available once you pull up the deed.
Step by step
- Go to search.gsccca.org and create an account, or log in if you already have one.
- Go to Search, then Real Estate Index.
- Pick a search method. Name Search is the most common: search by grantor or grantee name. Book Page Search works if a title commitment, a prior deed, or a tax record already gave you the book and page number. Property Search is available in some counties and searches by subdivision, unit, block, and lot.
- Narrow the search before running it: county, party type (Grantor or Grantee), and instrument type (Warranty Deed, Security Deed, and so on).
- Enter the name. For individuals, enter it as Last, First.
- Review the results. Each row shows the parties, the instrument type, the county, and the book and page number, plus the subdivision name and the land lot when they apply. Both are useful for ruling out other properties the same person owns, if more than one result comes up under the same name.
- Click through to the document to view or print the actual recorded image, along with any other document images filed with it, such as the PT-61.
Once you have the deed
Check that the legal description in the deed actually matches the property you are working on before relying on it. If more than one deed comes up for the same property, the most recent recorded conveyance is the one that usually reflects current ownership unless it conveys only a partial interest.
When to call the closing attorney instead
If the chain of title looks unclear, if two deeds show different legal descriptions for what should be the same property, or if anything on file does not match what the parties believe they are buying or selling, that is a closing attorney question. GSCCCA gets you the document. It does not tell you what to do if the document raises a problem.
If the deed isn't on GSCCCA
If the property is older than GSCCCA's coverage and nothing turns up, the closing attorney can run a title exam, though that comes at a cost and takes time. Going straight to the county, the clerk of superior court's office in the county where the property sits, is often quicker and skips that cost, since older records not yet digitized are still on file there. It is also the fallback when the current owner does not have a copy of the deed to provide instead.
⚠️ REALsmart Reminder
Pulling a deed on GSCCCA takes about five minutes and a search. There is no reason to guess at a legal description, or ask someone else to guess at it, when the actual recorded language is a search away.
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Stay Smart,
Cheryl Conner King
Founder & Instructor
REALsmart Real Estate School
Attorney | REALTOR® | CE Instructor
📍 Based in Georgia | Teaching Statewide
