The loan process
Title insurance
In short
Title insurance protects against defects in a property's ownership history — liens, errors, or competing claims. In Florida it's a standard part of closing costs.
Title insurance protects against problems in a property's chain of ownership: an undiscovered lien, a recording error, a forged signature, or a competing claim that surfaces after you buy. A title search aims to catch these; the policy covers what the search misses.
There are two policies — a lender's policy protecting the loan, which lenders require, and an optional owner's policy protecting your equity. Unlike most insurance, it's a one-time premium paid at closing covering past events, not future ones.
In Florida, title insurance and the related search are a standard, and regulated, part of a real-estate closing, so they appear on essentially every purchase's closing costs.
Related
Current as of August 2026.