re: In Landmark decision, Jury Finds Realtors Conspired to inflate Commissions|$1.8 B verdict

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The title company thats forcing the title insurance on me has no investment to protect in my home.

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Can't speak to Houston, but in Louisiana, it's optional.

But the Houston firms don't have to agree to do your transaction if you're going to cut out the majority of their profit. Some firms, if they know you don't want title insurance, may just increase their other fees a little to offset removing title insurance. Before you call that sleazy, this is no different than any business raising their prices enough to make sure at the end of the day they make enough to stay in business.

I'm sure if you and 10 friends walk into a restaurant and only order chips and salsa, the restaurant owner is going to ask you to leave if you're wasting their time. So if you tell these Houston firms "I want you to do weeks worth of work, but I want to pay jack-shite for these services," it's not that unreasonable that they tell you "No thanks."

You said in your prior post:

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To be clear, i'm fine paying a title company to do their job. I'm fine with knowing they bake in malpractice insurance. A step to far is charging me for all that, then saying "well i really don't know WTF is going on so you better take out this policy"

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So that sounds like as long as you're unaware that the cost of the insurance is baked into the other fees, then you're fine. But if it's a separate line item, then you're outraged? What's the difference? You're paying for the cost either way.