“A rip off”? Absolutely. And it is ridiculous as well. In fifty years a home may sell 3 times and each time a “title search” is required to determine if the title actually belongs to whomever is on the deed. So the first sale initiates a title search to make sure that the person who bought the land and built the house had a good title and included title insurance is to insure that no mistakes were made. Everything is cleared and the sale goes forward. OK.
Now, ten years later the house is sold to another person and a “title search” is made again to see if the guy who is selling it and whose title was cleared ten years earlier and whose title was insured before he bought it, is still valid today (Why would it not be?). They then “search” the records to make sure the first title search was valid, and finding that it was, still require a new title insurance policy with premium to insure that the first search and the second, with only one owner in the last ten years, is still valid.
Anyway, five years later, owner #2 decides to sell and a third title search is made and a new title insurance policy is required to insure that no mistakes were made in the first and second title searches etc etc. Ridiculous!
Insurance rates are usually based upon actuarial statistics, but in this case the statistical probability for error is so low (search upon search and insurance upon insurance) that the resulting insurance rates would be quite nominal. So, in order to make it more of a profit center for the industry the Insurance rate is not made on the actuarial incidence of claims but a percentage of the sale price! Title insurance is, as Martha might say, “a good thing” but insurance rates that are twenty times the actual claims history is nothing more than a legally sanctioned license to steal or theft by legislative fiat.
What the prisoners of Lancaster County fail to understand is that theft is not the reason they are in prison but only that they did not first procure a license. They can, and should, apply at their local representative’s office.
