Getting your player ready...
So, in an internet age when you can’t buy a single thing without seeing competing offers popping-up alongside – air fares or hotel rates or rental car fees – why wouldn’t you be able to shop title insurance fees and other closing costs when you buy, sell or refinance a house?
That’s a question former title rep Garry Wolff asks at his web site, myTitleIns.com. Differences in title premiums and closing fees, Wolff says, can easily add up to $300 to $700 on an average priced home transaction; and can be well over $1,500 on a luxury buy. Wolff notes that disparities in title costs aren’t wrapped into a mortgage payment over 30 years, as are home improvements or add-ons included in a sale. Rather, they’re paid up front by the buyer, or more likely the seller – either a cost or savings, depending how you look at it – that can total much more than a discount on an air fare. That difference is recognized now by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which requires new consumer mortgage loan disclosures designed to encourage consumers to become better shoppers of mortgage loans, including title and closing services. Might the larger fees some companies charge be reflected in some greater protection, or in better service? “The difference in prices we see seem more likely to relate to a company’s infrastructure, not what benefit the consumer is getting,” Wolff said, over coffee last week. “Subjective service and title policy coverages are basically the same; it’s the costs and protections that make a difference.” At myTitleIns.com, buyers, sellers and borrowers can plug in the fundamentals of a forthcoming sale or refinance, get a comparison of fees by a few dozen companies, as well as how those firms rate in what Wolff calls a ‘CPR’ – consumer protection rating – weighing whether they carry crime and other “sleep insurance” features that protect their money and identity. “Title companies only need $10,000 in net worth to practice,” Wolff adds. “There’s no real legal requirement to carry any form of business insurance.” Wolff notes that new Colorado contracts require buyers and sellers be given a choice of title provider; however, the reliance consumers have on real estate agents, who may have an ongoing relationship with a particular title company, may work to keep the choice out of consumers’ hands. “With a title company, service should be more than a pleasant voice on the phone,” said Wolff, who served 30 years as a title rep before starting myTitleIns.com in 2007. “It should be about protecting the transaction.” How much money flows through title deposits every year? Around $50 billion now, Wolff adds, in Colorado alone.
