I received the following in an email from a reader:<\/p>\n
In August I found a brand new townhouse in a great location that is selling at about 5 or 10% below recent comps (and 15 to 25% off of what it would have gone for at peak). I still think I am going to end up underwater at some point in the next few years, but I can take the equity hit if I have to, and I don’t plan on selling (maybe not ever).<\/p>\n
At the end of all of this, the builder can’t get title insurance. We were supposed to close last week, but the builder has been firmly rejected for title insurance twice—apparently this is happening to lots of builders. The rationale for rejecting him has been consistently that “title insurance companies have lost too much insuring builders already.”<\/p>\n
In addition to being an example of the current aversion to risk everywhere, it is also another drag on actually getting the transactions closed. We want to buy, they want to sell, we’re one of the few with sufficient income and credit scores for the bank to want to lend to us, and the transaction is in peril because of title insurance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Has anyone else experienced this problem? I haven’t heard anything in the major news outlets about a wave of title insurance problems killing closings.<\/p>\n
If this is a widespread issue, it could certainly be yet another factor dragging the market down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I received the following in an email from a reader: In August I found a brand new townhouse in a great location that is selling at about 5 or 10% below recent comps (and 15 to 25% off of what it would have gone for at peak). I still think I am going to end…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[198],"tags":[176,442],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-builders","tag-title-insurance"],"yoast_head":"\n
Are Reluctant Title Insurers Hampering the Market? \u2022 Seattle Bubble<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/18\/are-reluctant-title-insurers-hampering-the-market\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Are Reluctant Title Insurers Hampering the Market? \u2022 Seattle Bubble\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"I received the following in an email from a reader: In August I found a brand new townhouse in a great location that is selling at about 5 or 10% below recent comps (and 15 to 25% off of what it would have gone for at peak). 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