re: Real estate attorneys: is title insurance needed?

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if he continued to push I would completely understand.

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This.

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Did his office provide good service otherwise?

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For the most part, yes, for which I will be paying him for those services. I say for the most part because he has waited until there was only one business day before the scheduled closing to get the HUD settlement form to me. (His office is also closed on Monday.) The closing date was scheduled between Christmas & New Year's so it was not a rushed closing.

And the first HUD his office emailed to me around 2PM today, they had lender's title insurance costs on the settlement when there is no lender. I called the attorney but he was out.

When I told the operator what I was calling about she transferred me to the person who prepared the closing documents. She told me she would take off the lender's title insurance. The attorney had forgotten to tell her it was a cash sale. So she emailed a corrected HUD to me. It had only the owner's title insurance but the cost was almost double the first form's amount for owner's title insurance.

Before I could digest that, the attorney called me and explained the "discount" for title insurance when both the lender & owner get it. So after removing the lender's t.i. the total only went down about $150.

I told the attorney I didn't want the owner's t.i. either but he said he was going to leave it on there so I could think about it. He said they could delete it at the closing on Tuesday and he would just refund the amount to me if I didn't want it. He also went through all the bad things that could happen if I didn't get the insurance.

IMO, most of those "bad things" would be his fault if they happened so I felt like he was selling me insurance to protect me from him. And the settlement form disclosed about 75% of the cost of the insurance was being paid to him as the selling agent. Hence my thread tonight.

He exceeded my attention span so I gave up protesting.

Long story, sorry.