Sorry for the silly question, but what is exactly the purpose of title insurance?
My basic understanding is the 2 main purposes/protections:
A) Check there are no liens or issues from the previous owner - that the title is ‘free and clear’. If they don’t find anything after digging around, they’ll insure you to protect from such issues. Knowing they could get left holding the bag means they are motivated to do their due diligence.
B) Make sure the title is correct - what exactly you are buying, who is buying, how, etc. It’s their responsibility to make sure everything is right because if it is not, they are on the hook for costs to fix it as long as the error was not yours.
We had a property that was sold to my family without knowledge of a public easement. The title insurance paid out quite a large sum compared to what the policy cost. They had to cover the difference in appraisal value before and after, which was about 30% of the purchase price. I’m not sure how they missed it? This is part of what they’re getting paid to do. To stay in business they must not get this kind of stuff wrong often.
With
DVC direct though, I’m thinking in order for my contract to end up with some big headache down the line, I took the gamble that it would not just impact me individually. Which means I’d likely not be going the fight alone. I own VGF direct - in 2025 Florida valued the DVC portion over $1 billion. Anything that could possibly cut into my ownership would do the same for at least the others in my unit, and possibly even all of us. Whatever super strange event that may cause that to happen, good luck to the title insurance. It’s not lost on me they’d have motivation to wriggle out of it any way they could.
I don’t think
anybody has needed to use their title insurance yet regarding what they actually bought direct - the deeded real estate interest direct from DVD. There have been reports about using it to correct for accuracy, like the title did not precisely list names as given, typos, ownership structure… something like that. Proofread those documents before signing! Make sure it is the right resort, points desired, names are exact, how you want it deeded, terms of payment, etc. Because even if you have TI, they’ll only pay to fix if you can prove somebody else messed up and wan’t due to error/oversight on your part.
At this point in time the only direct WDW property I’d consider buying title insurance is OKW, because of the weird 2042/57. Who knows how that plays out and even if/where TI can help. I feel like $187 is worth not being left out in the cold on that one. And I think that is how most people think about any DVC direct purchase:
For $187 do you want to be in or out - should
something come up and
possibly TI covers it or pays lawyers to recover it for you. It’s a small amount of money for peace of mind considering the tens of thousands spent. Easiest is to pay it knowing you did what you could to protect yourself.
My advice is it’s likely easier to pay for it than to feel confident you won’t ever need it lol. I like living in the wild side though
