Title Insurance
A one-time policy bought at closing that covers claims against a property's ownership from before the purchase. Lenders require a lender's policy; the owner's policy protects the buyer. In New York, premiums come from a state-approved rate manual.
Last updated: October 3, 2026Most insurance covers what might go wrong later. Title insurance covers what already went wrong before you bought: a previous owner’s unpaid taxes, a contractor’s lien, someone surfacing with a claim to the property. There are two policies. A lender’s policy is usually required to get a mortgage, and it protects only the lender’s loan. An owner’s policy is optional and protects the buyer’s own stake. Both are paid once, at closing. In NYC the buyer typically pays, and a buyer with a mortgage typically buys both.
New York doesn’t leave pricing to the market. Rates come from a manual maintained by the Title Insurance Rate Service Association (TIRSA), a rate service organization licensed by the NYS Department of Financial Services, and the manual is filed with and approved by the DFS Superintendent. Under its rules, the listed charges are mandatory for each company that uses it and generally can’t be waived, reduced, or increased. All five boroughs are in the manual’s Zone 2, where the premium already includes the title search and one tax-lot search. When the owner’s and lender’s policies are issued on the same day, the lender’s policy is charged at 30% of the normal loan rate (up to the owner’s policy amount). Endorsements, extra tax lots, and municipal searches are billed separately, which is why a real closing statement runs higher than the base premium.
Condo and house buyers are the main audience. Co-op buyers own shares, not real property, so they generally aren’t required to buy title insurance; buyers’ attorneys commonly order a co-op lien search instead, though the TIRSA manual does include co-op endorsements for anyone who wants a policy.
Worked example
Take an $800,000 NYC condo with a $640,000 loan, both policies issued at closing. From the Zone 2 table in the TIRSA manual (Seventh Revision): the owner’s policy is $382 for the first $35,000, plus per-$1,000 rates of $6.34, $5.16, $4.14, and $3.78 across the brackets up to $800,000, for a base premium of about $3,525 (roughly 0.44% of price). The simultaneous lender’s policy is 30% of the $2,445 loan-rate premium on $640,000, about $734. Endorsements and searches come on top, and rates change when the manual is revised, so the title company’s quote is what counts.
For comparison, this site’s Condo Calculator uses illustrative assumptions of 0.45% of price for the owner’s policy ($3,600 here) and 0.10% of the loan for the lender’s policy ($640). You can override both. The buyer closing costs guide shows where title insurance sits among everything else due at closing.