Title Insurance Cost: What You Actually Pay in 2026

What title insurance actually is

Title insurance is unlike any other insurance you own. Homeowners insurance covers future events — fires, storms, theft. Title insurance covers past ones: ownership defects that already existed when you bought the home but had not surfaced yet.

The CFPB’s explainer puts it plainly: it protects you if someone sues claiming a right to the home from before you bought it — unpaid taxes, an unpaid contractor, forged signatures, misspelled names, undisclosed heirs, unrecorded liens. As the American Land Title Association explains, it is “a one-time, upfront cost that protects homeowners for as long as they own their home and lenders for the life of a mortgage.”

The two policies: owner’s vs lender’s

Every financed purchase involves two policies. The lender’s policy protects the bank’s mortgage interest, up to the loan balance — required by virtually every lender, covering your equity for nothing, and shrinking as you pay the loan down. The owner’s policy protects your equity up to the full purchase price — optional only in that no lender demands it.

The trap: when a defect surfaces, the lender’s policy pays the bank and the bank walks away whole — without an owner’s policy, you owe the claimant and your own legal bills. Per ALTA, roughly three-quarters of buyers where the seller does not provide one buy an owner’s policy anyway.

How much it costs: real rates on a $400,000 home

Typical title insurance cost: about 0.5% of the purchase price for the owner’s policy — roughly $2,000 on a $400,000 home. State schedules give the precise numbers:

• Georgia — $4.25 per $1,000 on the first $100,000 ($425) + $3.70 per $1,000 on the next $300,000 ($1,110): $1,535.
• Florida — $5.75 per $1,000 on the first $100,000 ($575) + $5.00 per $1,000 on the next $300,000 ($1,500): $2,075.
• Texas — state-prescribed basic premium (bundles the title exam and closing): $2,413.

That is roughly $3.80 to $6.00 per $1,000 of price.

The simultaneous-issue discount

Buy the owner’s and lender’s policies together and, as ALTA notes, “the title company will provide a significant discount on the premium for the loan policy” — simultaneous issue pricing. In practice the lender’s policy collapses to a flat fee: $25 in Florida, $100 in Texas, roughly $150 in Georgia.

All-in on our $400,000 home, both policies, paid once: about $1,685 in Georgia, $2,100 in Florida, $2,513 in Texas.

Where the government sets the price

In four states the premium is not negotiable: Texas (Department of Insurance prescribes the schedule), Florida (promulgated by statute), New Mexico (the superintendent sets one statewide price), and Pennsylvania (the Title Insurance Rating Bureau’s approved manual). There, shopping the premium is pointless — but settlement, escrow and recording fees still vary, and that is where quotes genuinely differ.

Standard vs enhanced: the ALTA Homeowner’s policy

The standard policy covers about ten named risks — forgery, bad recording, unpaid tax liens. The enhanced ALTA Homeowner’s Policy carries 33, adding boundary disputes a survey would disclose, encroachments, mechanic’s liens, post-policy forgery, unrecorded easements, and permit or zoning violations. Georgia’s filed manual prices it about 20% higher — roughly $1,800 vs $1,535 on our $400,000 home.

Who pays, and how long it lasts

Who pays is local custom, and negotiable. In Texas, California, most of Florida and about twenty other states, the seller customarily pays the buyer’s owner’s policy — though in parts of Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward, Sarasota, Collier) the buyer typically pays. The lender’s policy is always buyer-paid; either way, the buyer is the named insured on the owner’s policy.

The owner’s policy has no expiration — it protects “for as long as you or your heirs own your home.” The lender’s policy dies with the loan, so a refinance needs a new one (usually at a reduced reissue rate).

How to shop for title insurance (where you can)

You can usually choose your own provider, and shopping could save money. Three moves that work: insist on simultaneous issue — the lender’s policy should ride along at the flat add-on rate, never a second full premium; get itemized quotes — in regulated states the fees around the premium are the real shopping field; and compare like with like — same coverage amount, same standard-vs-enhanced form.

And do not confuse it with hazard insurance: that protects the structure against future damage; title insurance protects your ownership against the past.