A Strange Discovery
As commercial real estate brokers, when we list a property for sale, the first step is to properly identify the property’s address, legal description and owner’s name.
When we market the property, we may include a location map, aerial photos, copy of the plat showing the recorded information about the site, a legal description, a survey and exhibits from the office of the Property Appraiser.
On the surface, this seems very simple; a property has an address and this tells you where the property is located on a map. But it is not quite this simple. In the process of listing a 3.3 acre site, with industrial zoning located near the Airport Expressway and NW 27th Avenue in Miami-Dade County, we encountered a strange situation.
Usually, the address is confirmed by a review of the legal description and plat. However, in Miami-Dade, because of the 90 year age of some plats, the information on the plat is different from the information at the site. For the property we are selling, the plat shows the west edge of the property being NW 29th Avenue, but maps and other exhibits show the western boundary as being NW 30th Avenue. One of the buildings has a listed address of 2990 NW 40th Street, but according to the original plat, it should be addressed as 2890 SW 40th Street.
We don’t know how this happened, but further investigation found that in this part of Miami-Dade, some avenues on maps are missing. For example, there is NW 27th Avenue with the next avenue to the west being not NW 28th Avenue -which you would expect – but NW 29th Avenue. NW 28th Avenue is missing or skipped.
Another example is found in old plats in the Brickell area of Miami. These old plats show what is now SW 8th Street being listed in the original plat recorded in 1901 as SW 20th Street. An apartment developer friend turned this to his advantage. He built an apartment on what is now known as SW 15th Road in Brickell and when looking for a name, saw that the original name for SW 15th Road was Broadway. So he named his building “One Broadway”.
Another strange artery is “Coral Way”. It starts out as SW 13th Street, then becomes SW 3rd Avenue, then SW 22nd Street, and in Coral Gables, becomes Miracle Mile. After it goes west past Coral Gables, it becomes SW 24th Street.
We don’t always have the correct address but we know how to find the right property for our buyers.
-Tom Dixon
