Wow. Most property metes and bounds are described using compass readings, at least in New England. Often only one point or one side of a large tract is defined

Wow. Most property metes and bounds are described using compass readings, at least in New England. Often only one point or one side of a large tract is defined from a relative fixed point, such as a road, then it's all compass directions with lengths that should match with neighboring properties. The original farms have been sliced up into smaller lots for homes, but they are usually directly based on the property lines described a couple hundred years before. This is telling me that probably most people, at least in New England, have incorrect property lines, larger properties could have very large deviations. The author mentioned a 6.6 degree difference in 250 years, that is a big difference. Surely surveyors must already be aware of this? Or do they just assume that the old records were done shoddily, and fudge their results by looking at the accepted property lines? Fortunately, many states have "squatters rights" which says, if you think you own a piece of property, and act like you own it, and other people act that way to, then after some amount of time (20 years or so), it legally belongs to you. This is not to allow people to steal property, but to clean up mistakes in the land records if things weren't filed properly. Or if what "North" is changes, apparently. Otherwise, by strict definitions, I bet there are lots of houses where technically half the house is in the neighbors yard. Interestingly, the change over time will be different in different places around the world, due to their relative distance from magnetic north. Magnetic north has been hanging out in northern Canada, so Canada and the northern US will be most affected, along with other places in really high latitudes.