New York State Title Insurance Claims – The Most Common Are…

By | February 21, 2020

Whenever you buy an insurance policy you may or may not be expecting to ever have to submit a claim!

If it’s health insurance you know that at some point during the year you will need to go to a doctor or specialist and will utilize whatever insurance you may have. Whether or not you will get reimbursed depends on certain factors (i.e. deductible, or an in or out of network provider). But that’s a story for another time.

Homeowners insurance or auto insurance you buy, hoping you will never have to submit a claim!

When you buy life insurance for yourself while you won’t be making a claim, a claim at some point in time is unfortunately inevitable.

If you notice these and many other types of insurance are forward-looking, anticipating some potential event in the future.

Title Insurance: Backward Looking And, If Prepared Correctly, With An EXTREMELY Low Probability For A Claim Ever Having To Be Submitted! However…

At Hallmark Abstract Service, our lack of valid title claims is due to the expertise and care that the firm takes on each and every deal we are entrusted with.

But what if information unknowable to the title company appears at some point in the future, or the title company that was being used for a transaction did not initially do a perfect job?

Thank goodness you bought an Owners Policy!

Common Types of Title Insurance Claims…

For the purposes of title insurance, New York State is broken into 2 Zones, obviously named Zone 1 and Zone 2 (any relation to a Dr. Seuss book is purely coincidental).

New York City, Long Island and Westchester are Zone 2, with Zone 1 predominately upstate.

The two Zones typically experience different types of most common title insurance claims (other than the first), listed below.

  • The most common type of claim for both Zone 1 and Zone 2, is unpaid property taxes,
  • The second most common claim in Zone 1 are unpaid prior mortgages,
  • For Zone 2, the second most common claim are improper vesting/recording,
  • In Zone 1 the third most often submitted claim are for unpaid judgements and tax liens,
  • In Zone 2, third are unpaid prior mortgages,
  • Fourth in Zone 2 are unpaid judgements

The categories of property taxes, unpaid prior mortgages and unpaid judgements account for 62% of claims in Zone 1, and 42% of claims in Zone 2.

Other types of claims that homeowners may at some point be facing include easements, access, description error, vesting, recording and fraud. (Source: FNTG)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.