A title company is an organization that provides title insurance and conducts title searches for transactions of property. When a person or organization decides to buy property, they usually will want a title report and often want title insurance to protect them from the many issues that can arise in the sale of title. For example, the seller may not be the only person with ownership rights to the property, or the seller may have misrepresented the boundaries of the property. A title company will conduct a title search which usually will discover these kinds of issues should they exist. However, sometimes even a title search will not be able to find issues in the title which may later cause the buyer to lose the property. Title insurance provided by a title company protects the buyer should they not find the error. Usually the buyer pays one time for title insurance and a title search as part of the closing costs of a transaction.
[Last updated in November of 2021 by the Wex Definitions Team]