13 Oct What is Title Insurance?
Title insurance insures against losses you face from any defect in title to your home or business property. Prior to the introduction of title insurance in Ontario, a purchaser’s lawyer would have to perform a myriad of title and off-title searches which usually involved numerous requests to various government or administrative bodies that required a lot of time and payment of fees.
Title insurance now covers the majority of the risks that could impact the value of your property, such as zoning issues, property encroachments, outstanding work orders or liens , building permit violations, etc.
The policy is available for a one-time premium that is usually far lower than actual search costs would be to verify all of those items, and it also covers title and mortgage fraud as a bonus – which will be the subject of an upcoming article.
For those with older homes (before the prevalence of title insurance in Ontario) existing homeowner title insurance policies are also available for a one-time fee. Feel free to contact us for a free quote on obtaining an Existing Homeowner policy of title insurance if you didn’t get one with your original purchase.