Title insurance is optional - get it anyway!!
Title insurance is important to protect the equity of your home when you buy. In South Carolina, the closing attorney will offer a policy to you. You real estate agent does not earn any commission from this.
What does it do for you? It protects your ownership right to your home both from errors in recording and fraudulent claims against your ownership such as:
False impersonation of the true owner of the property
Forged deeds, releases or wills
Inaccurate property description
Name spellings errors
Mistakes from earlier sales
Undisclosed or missing heirs
Instruments executed under invalid or expired power of attorney
Mistakes in recording legal documents
Misinterpretations of wills
Deeds by persons of unsound mind
Deeds by minors
Deeds by persons supposedly single, but in fact married
Liens for unpaid estate, inheritance, income or gift taxesFraud
In South Carolina, there was a recent case involving Native American Catawba land where 61,767 property owners on 144,000 acres could have lost their entire equity had the Federal, state and local governments not agreed to pay $50 million to the tribe. Only those with title insurance would have been spared had the government not been so generous.
It’s a one-time cost usually based on the price of the property and it’s usually paid for by the buyers in South Carolina.
There are both lender title policies, which protect the lender and owner title policies, which protect you. The lender will require a lender policy. Discounts on premiums are sometimes available if the home has been bought within only a few years since not as much work is required to check the title.
Title insurance will pay for defending against any lawsuit attacking the title as insured, and will either clear up title problems or pay the insured's losses.
Chris DeLoach, ABR, BIC
843-654-4578