Owner's vs. lender's title insurance: what's the difference?

Every financed Georgia purchase involves a lender's title policy. Far fewer buyers understand that it protects the bank, not them -- and that a separate policy is what protects the buyer.

The lender's policy

Required by essentially every mortgage lender, sized to the loan amount, and it protects the lender's security interest if a title defect surfaces. It says nothing about your equity. If a title problem wipes out your ownership, the lender's policy makes the lender whole and you are still exposed.

The owner's policy

Sized to the purchase price, it protects you -- the buyer -- against covered title defects for as long as you or your heirs own the property, one-time premium, no renewal. In much of Georgia the seller customarily pays for it, though the contract controls.

Why a cash buyer still wants one

Without a lender in the transaction, nobody requires a title policy at all -- which means a cash buyer who skips the owner's policy has no title insurance whatsoever. The examination still happens either way; the policy is what stands behind it if the examination missed something.

Why Georgia does not publish one price

Georgia is a file-and-use state: each underwriter files its own rate schedule with the Insurance Commissioner, and agents cannot deviate from the schedule they write under. That is different from a promulgated-rate state, and it is why we quote your premium directly rather than publishing a single number that would be wrong for a chunk of the market.