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And this is why most (all) sales in the US include both lender and buyer title insurance. So if some court case comes up, the bank / buyer are protected. 99.99

And this is why most (all) sales in the US include both lender and buyer title insurance. So if some court case comes up, the bank / buyer are protected. 99.999% of sales nothing happens, and the title insurance company gets $800 for doing nothing. Quit the good gig if you ask me.

tim333 6y ago
Probably kind of messy if one does go to court for being forged or some such though.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I assume: 1.) There is some cost associated with doing the title search which is probably fairly manual 2.) When something does go wrong, it's expensive 3.) If it really were a license to print money, I would, perhaps naively, expect more competition to drive prices down
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    > If it really were a license to print money, I would, perhaps naively, expect more competition to drive prices down I would think the boringness of working in title insurance suffices to restrict the supply.
  - brianwawok 6y ago
    It's not really like that though. Ask 100 people walking down the street who their preferred title insurance company is. no one will have one. So at closing, usually it's the real estate agent who picks the title insurance company. So they do things like snacks and fancy coffee to real estate agents as you close, nothing to make the product better or cheaper. In my city, the title company steered people closing at their location to a company that they 100% owned and charged inflated prices https://www.housingwire.com/articles/41408-cfpb-slaps-meridian-title-with-enforcement-action-over-respa-violation/ https://www.housingwire.com/articles/41408-cfpb-slaps-meridi... (post lawsuit, the only change as far as I now is a 1 page disclaimer that they own the title insurance company they are sending you to). Many cities have only 1 title insurance options. Bigger might have 2-3. https://archive.curbed.com/2018/2/26/17017142/title-insurance-scam-government-takeover https://archive.curbed.com/2018/2/26/17017142/title-insuranc...
dpierce9 6y ago
Title insurance doesn’t even necessarily cover property border disputes. It can but it depends and some title insurances exclude it.

tim333 6y ago

Probably kind of messy if one does go to court for being forged or some such though.

ghaff 6y ago
I assume: 1.) There is some cost associated with doing the title search which is probably fairly manual 2.) When something does go wrong, it's expensive 3.) If it really were a license to print money, I would, perhaps naively, expect more competition to drive prices down
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  > If it really were a license to print money, I would, perhaps naively, expect more competition to drive prices down I would think the boringness of working in title insurance suffices to restrict the supply.
- brianwawok 6y ago
  It's not really like that though. Ask 100 people walking down the street who their preferred title insurance company is. no one will have one. So at closing, usually it's the real estate agent who picks the title insurance company. So they do things like snacks and fancy coffee to real estate agents as you close, nothing to make the product better or cheaper. In my city, the title company steered people closing at their location to a company that they 100% owned and charged inflated prices https://www.housingwire.com/articles/41408-cfpb-slaps-meridian-title-with-enforcement-action-over-respa-violation/ https://www.housingwire.com/articles/41408-cfpb-slaps-meridi... (post lawsuit, the only change as far as I now is a 1 page disclaimer that they own the title insurance company they are sending you to). Many cities have only 1 title insurance options. Bigger might have 2-3. https://archive.curbed.com/2018/2/26/17017142/title-insurance-scam-government-takeover https://archive.curbed.com/2018/2/26/17017142/title-insuranc...

dpierce9 6y ago

Title insurance doesn’t even necessarily cover property border disputes. It can but it depends and some title insurances exclude it.