Title Insurance Archives

February 7, 2024April 25, 2024

Behind the Scenes of a Home Purchase: What’s Your Title Company Doing?

You joyfully pick up the keys on closing day, and leave the office triumphant, a thick folder from the title company under your arm.

The title company played a starring role in your day. At least it did if a mortgage is involved! Cash buyers need not hire experts to run a search on the home title, because there’s no lender to protect. But even where buyers pay cash, most people don’t have the time to handle their own title searches.

Thus, most purchases typically involve title companies. A title company provides security and confidence. No new homeowner wants to worry about potential issues or discrepancies in the property’s ownership history.

December 13, 2023April 25, 2024

Fannie Mae Was Going to Save Mortgage Borrowers Thousands by Dropping Its Title Insurance Requirement. Never Mind.

The Biden administration was working with loan backers to delete title insurance charges from closing costs. The move would have saved quite a few home buyers hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Noting that the plan had been silently scuttled, the Wall Street Journal said pressure against it came from “an obscure industry.”

The obscure industry is the real estate title insurance sector. It’s hardly obscure in our book. But the Wall Street Journal pointed to the industry’s small population. Only some 155,000 people reportedly work in the title and settlement sector.

In 2023, Fannie Mae was getting ready to test its planned phase-out of the title insurance requirement for mortgage borrowers. Evidently, the aforementioned industry wanted to save itself from further obscurity!

The title insurers pushed back. And Fannie Mae abandoned its test run.

August 19, 2022April 25, 2024

Buying a Home? Should You Pick Your Own Title Insurance Policy?

The closing process is hectic. Especially for first-timers. Many questions may go unasked, simply because the home buyer isn’t aware they are issues. Here are three such questions:

What is title insurance? Should I have it? If so, how do I buy it?

Closing day for a home purchase is precisely when the buyer has a chance to buy an owner’s title policy. Given how frenzied life can get when it’s time to close on a home, it’s worth knowing about this in advance.

December 11, 2020April 25, 2024

Home Buyers, Cover Your Assets: Choosing Between Standard and Extended Title Insurance

Image of a nice newer house with a fantastic stone chimney . Captioned: Choosing Between Standard and Extended Title Insurance

People have a chance to buy title insurance when they buy homes. Homeowners might give these policies little thought until they need them. And yet, lenders focus pointedly on the matter. Get a mortgage, and you get a lender’s title insurance policy. Some people assume the lender’s coverage is enough. As we’ll explain here, it’s probably not.

But there’s a further question. If an owner’s title policy is so important to add, what level of coverage should the buyer consider? Is extended coverage better than the standard policy?

We’ll go through these questions in order.

November 25, 2020April 25, 2024

An Opinion of Title: What Home Buyers Should Know

We all need to know if anything could compromise our ownership of property we buy. We rely on title companies to affirm that the seller has the rights to sell. To affirm this, the title company in turn relies on a legal expert’s opinion of the integrity of the deed — an opinion of title. This document offers clarity and confidence that the seller has full rights in the property, and the ability to transfer it. Then, the title company can back that guarantee with title insurance.

In this article, we look at these two sets of assurances: the opinion of title and title insurance — and their differences.

November 5, 2019April 25, 2024

Unexpected Real Estate Title Defects: How to File a Claim With the Insurance Company

Image of a dirt path through the woods leading to a greenhouse.

Much is said on the role of title insurance in protecting protect the buyer from unknown liens, easement holders, or a prior owners’ heirs who claim an interest in the buyer’s new home.

Title insurance covers the policy holder against loss related to these various defects in title. Other examples of title defects include undisclosed restrictive covenants on the property, documents recorded with mistakes, and fraudulent or otherwise invalid transactions in the chain of title. A good title insurance policy protects the policy holder against property devaluation stemming from such problems if they arose during a previous ownership, unbeknownst to the buyer. The role of the title insurer is to defend the policy holder against legal challenges to the title, and to pay the policy holder for covered losses in value.

So far, so good.

But what happens if there is a title defect, and the owner actually has to use the title insurance?

July 8, 2019April 25, 2024

Real Estate Title Insurance: A Brief Explanation

Title insurance emerged more than a century ago. It had a purpose: to stop swindlers from cheating buyers, by ascertaining that land was, in fact, owned by the person selling it.

Since then, it has grown into a multi-billion-dollar business.

And while today’s title insurance industry ostensibly protects homeowners from defects in their deeds, some believe it has been rendered practically obsolete in the digital age. Today, a record search can be done for less than a tenth of the prevailing rate of title insurance—which can exceed $2000, depending on the home’s price and the state in which the property sale occurs.

March 12, 2014April 25, 2024

Quitclaim Deeds and Continuation of Title Insurance

Provided by Matthew A. Quick, Esq., an attorney licensed in the state of Illinois.

Title insurance coverage is dictated by the terms of the policy issued by the title insurance company. In most, if not all, policies for title insurance there is a provision for “Continuation of Coverage” or “Continuation of Insurance.” Typically, this provision provides that the insurance will continue only so long as the insured holds an interest in the land or has liability by reason of warranties given in any transfer of the title.