Easting Deeds

The work this replaces

A metes-and-bounds deed describes a parcel in prose: a point of beginning, then a run of courses with bearings and distances, sometimes curves, sometimes a “save and except” carve-out. Turning one into geometry means reading it carefully, keying every call, computing the traverse, and checking whether it closes. Thirty to sixty minutes for a clean deed. Longer for a 1975 photostat.

The accuracy bar is not cosmetic. Acreage sets tax assessments. Buffers determine who gets legal notice. A digitized parcel that is quietly wrong is worse than no parcel at all.

How it works

Extraction. A vision model reads the document and returns every boundary call as structured data: quadrant, degrees, minutes, seconds, distance, and the verbatim text it read them from. Uncertain digits get flagged rather than guessed.

Deterministic validation. Nothing is trusted on the model’s word. Software recomputes the traverse from the extracted calls, closes the figure, and compares the computed area against the acreage the deed states. Curve calls are handled, not skipped.

A verdict, with reasons. Every tract comes back PASS, REVIEW, or FAIL from GroundTruth, the verification layer. PASS means the traverse closes and the acreage corroborates. REVIEW means something disagrees, and the reason is spelled out: a misclosure of 2.21 feet over an 1140-foot perimeter, an acreage 4.7% off what the deed claims. FAIL means the description cannot be traversed as written, which happens more often than you would like: deeds contain bearing-less calls, and old surveys sometimes do not close in their own source text.

Placement. A deed defines shape, not location. Click the point of beginning on your map, adjust rotation if the deed’s bearing basis differs from your grid north, and the parcel lands as a polygon plus a line layer carrying one feature per call, each with its bearing, distance, confidence, and source text.

How you get it

The plugin ships through the QGIS plugin repository (listing pending review), so installing it is Plugins → Manage and Install inside QGIS. It needs an Easting API key to run: subscribe through checkout and the key is shown once on the claim page, ready to paste into the plugin’s settings. Questions first? sales@easting.ai answers.

What it does not do

Lot-and-block and PLSS aliquot descriptions (“the SE 1/4 of the SW 1/4 of Section 9”) are detected and reported, not parsed. Placement is manual, not snapped to a parcel layer. Plats and utility as-builts are on the roadmap, and the research behind that sequencing is candid about which ones are ready: post-1990 as-built drawing sets extract well with mandatory review, while plat linework is limited by the resolution counties publish, not by the model.

Pricing

Introductory, and honest about being early:

• $10 per seat per month — the QGIS plugin and the hosted API, with 50 documents a month included per seat, then $0.40 per document.
• $49 per seat per month — zero-retention tier, same 50 documents and overage: documents are not stored by Easting after extraction.
• Government and on-premises — annual, talk to us. Air-gapped deployment is possible because the validation engine has no external dependencies.

Per-document metering can be added for API volume if that fits you better than seats.