Title insurance vs title theft insurance
Attorney Tom Olsen: Christy, here's a text, and the text is really short and simple and says, "Do I need title insurance?" I'm going to interpret this question for what they might really be asking, but let's start with the beginning. What is title insurance? Title insurance is what you get when you buy a home or you buy a piece of property. Title insurance is usually paid for by the seller. It's to protect you, the buyers, going to guarantee that you have good, clear title, that piece of property free and clear of all liens and [unintelligible 00:00:27] and mortgages, forgeries, and titles, et cetera.
Title insurance, when you buy a piece of property, absolutely essential, 99% of the times, it's used and it's needed. I think what our text is getting at is, "Do they need title theft insurance?" Because, boy, you see that being promoted so heavily on the TV. If you look at one of those commercials on TV, you think there's no way you should be able to live without this title theft insurance and we know better.
Attorney Chris Merrill: Exactly.
Attorney Tom Olsen: Folks, people out there, they are not going to steal the title to the home that you live in. You are not going to wake up one morning and find out that your home is gone. What we have found that there's only one type of property that the title is being stolen and that is for vacant residential building lots. When I say vacant, I mean it's a vacant piece of land. There's no home on it.
Residential, I mean, it's in a residential neighborhood and it's a buildable lot. Somebody could build a home and if they wanted to. That's a very small, tiny percentages of properties out there, but if you own a vacant residential building lot, then, yes, you might want to get title theft insurance because that's what we see being stolen, but anything else, whether it's your condo or your ordinary house, or whether it's acreage or commercial property, no, you don't need title theft insurance.
Attorney Chris Merrill: Very, very unlikely on any of those, but we also encourage people to, wherever you own in the real estate, contact the county where that real estate is located. Now, we are finding that most counties in Florida are offering also their own versions of free services to be able to alert you and many of these are as simple as signing up, talking to them, giving them a little bit of information, and then they would also alert you. If you, again, have additional concern and without purchasing this title theft insurance, there are many free services now that are offered per each county for any real estate that is located within their county.
Attorney Tom Olsen: That's correct and thank you for reminding me about that because in the county that your property is located in, you can sign up with the county and they will notify you if anybody has done a deed affecting your piece of property. I think the thing to learn there is that if somebody's trying to steal the title to your property, very, very rare, but you're going to be better off knowing about it a week later than two or three years later.
Attorney Chris Merrill: Correct. Correct.
Attorney Tom Olsen: Because what we found with the title theft is that person A steals your title, they immediately convey it to B, B immediately conveys it to C, C immediately conveys it to D, and by the time you find out about that, if it does happen to you, very rare, it just gets harder and harder to unwind the whole thing.
Attorney Chris Merrill: Correct. The part where, like you said, Tom, that the one week later is very beneficial versus months later is because if, in fact, a fraud is being committed on that particular piece of property, it means that the thief, if you will, the thief understands enough to know that they need to convey again.