It covers problems with the ownership of the property, not the state of the building. If you are financing, your lender will almost certainly require its own policy either way.
A one-time policy bought at closing and arranged through your lawyer. It protects against problems with the ownership of the property, not the condition of it. That distinction is where the confusion starts.
The premium varies with price and property type — ask your lawyer for the number on your file. What your lawyer does →
Broadly, title risk: fraud or forgery against your title, undisclosed liens or contractors’ claims, unregistered work orders, and certain survey problems a title search alone would not surface.
It does not touch anything physical. It is not a home inspection or a new home warranty — a dying furnace, a wet basement, Poly-B plumbing, none of that is a title matter.
Title insurance is a risk-transfer tool, not a fact-finding one. It does not tell you where your fence sits. It promises to respond if that fence later becomes a legal problem.
When a seller cannot produce a current Real Property Report with a compliance stamp, title insurance gets floated as the workaround. Sometimes it is accepted. It is never automatic — buyer, lawyer and lender all have to agree, and any of the three can decline.
An RPR also does what a policy cannot: it shows where your structures actually sit, which is what you need the day you want a permit for a garage or a suite. Why the stamp matters →
Whether to take an owner policy is a legal question for your lawyer, not for us — we are REALTORS®. Ask what it costs and what it would actually respond to on this property.