Does anyone use title theft insurance?

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Does anyone use home title insurance?

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Lenders almost always require title insurance. The borrower/property buyer can purchase an owner's policy as well, but most people don't.

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Are people losing their houses because someone fraudulently changes their title?

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It's not like a car title issued by the DMV.

Your "title" to your home or other real estate is a series of transfer documents recorded in the public records. There can be judgments or other liens that attach to the property from previous owners or mortgages that were not canceled.

Also, it's easy to have situations where previous owners didn't effectively convey all of their interest in the property.

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I’ve seen a few claims over the years particularly on older properties.

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How do I know if my property is older or newer?

It supremely irritated me both times I built a house in Texas, on land owned by a developer building an entire subdivision.

However, the penultimate kick in the dick was when I had to pay title insurance on a house I was refinancing (which I also had built on bare land.)

That’s 100% a scam. Also shame on the company letting those crooks advertise on their platform.

The thing on tv is a complete scam. All they do is check the clerk of court records which you can do yourself.

Title insurance at the time of closing on a house is completely different.

I work at a title company, so I am biased, but I highly recommend owner's title insurance. You receive it at a discount when you purchase a policy simultaneously with lender's (which will always be required). Just recently, we closed a deal on which the seller likely filed a fraudulent deed for his acquisition. It was in authentic form (signed by two witnesses and notarized)--- a basic title examination will never be able to determine such an instrument to be fraudulent.

Instead of being on the hook for return of the property to the rightful owner and trying to chase down a fraudulent scumbag who may have no assets to satisfy a judgment, his owner's policy will reimburse him for the full purchase price. Tell me that peace of mind is not worth a one-time, few hundred dollar expense.

ETA: Yes, Home Title Lock is a scam and a completely different thing than a title insurance policy.

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I declined it on my house when I closed and the closing agents kinda gasped when I told them I did not want it. They then proceeded to encourage me to spend the $800 to get it for the next 15 mins after telling them no multiple times.

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Why did you decline it?

I work in the title world too. One scenario with title insurance I like to mention is this:

Lot of people will say the land they're building on has been in their family for X number of years, so they know the land has no issues and they don't need title insurance. Had a deal where a daughter bought a lot from her parents and went to build. Kooky neighbor tries to stop them from pouring their driveway and claims he owns a strip of their land because he's been cutting the grass there for years, basically asserting squatter's rights (or acquisitive prescription in LA). Long story short, his claim was BS, but if someone is persistent enough to take you to court over it then at best you're out a couple grand in attorneys fees and at worst, you're losing your land. The title insurance stepped in for these folks and resolved it all for free. Point being that there's bizarre scenarios that can present themself no matter how confident you are that you did all your due diligence.

There's a few other comments in this thread I wanted to address too...

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Chad504boy The coverage is somewhat legit but the premium and profit thievery is the true crime

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Aren't you in here defending homeowner's rates all the time?? And you're going to call out what is probably pro-rata the cheapest major insurance one can buy? Average house might cost less than $1k for coverage for your LIFETIME. But people have no problem pissing away $5k+ every year in homeowner's, flood, auto, life insurance, etc. etc.

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Epaminondas Lenders almost always require title insurance. The borrower/property buyer can purchase an owner's policy as well, but most people don't.

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I would say most people DO buy it. Overwhelmingly so, in my experience. Rest of your post was solid info

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LemmyLives It supremely irritated me both times I built a house in Texas, on land owned by a developer building an entire subdivision.

However, the penultimate kick in the dick was when I had to pay title insurance on a house I was refinancing (which I also had built on bare land.)

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Well if you built two different houses, then yeah, you'd need a new policy each time. Not sure what the confusion is there. And you shouldn't have had to buy title insurance a second time when you refinanced. Unless you mean you had bought it once when you purchased the land, then had to increase the policy once you built. If that's the case, your initial policy was priced based on a cheap piece of land...you can't go and build a nice new house and expect the cheap land policy you bought will still cover all of it. This concept would apply to all insurances...

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lesion

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I didn’t know that was an actual thing that gets litigated in the real world. I always thought of it as an arcane concept in the code that was fun to say