Category: Title Insurance
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Home Buyers, Cover Your Assets: 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…
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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.…
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Unexpected Real Estate Title Defects: How to File a Claim With the Insurance Company
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,…
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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…
