What Is Title Insurance?

Title insurance, unlike car or homeowner’s insurance, protects against past problems, not future incidents. What it does is it insures against legal problems that are already in existence when a seller transfers ownership to a buyer. For example, perhaps a roofer was never paid and put a “lien” on the house for the dollar amount of the work that was done. Or perhaps ownership documents were forged or the house was already sold at a tax sale. During the course of the sale of a home, a title search is done and the title insurance company provides insurance to protect from these kinds of things.