Title insurance protects against defects in a property's ownership record: old liens, recording errors, missing heirs, forged documents, and the other ghosts that can live in a deed history. In a town like Townsend, where many properties have been bought, sold, and inherited across generations, those histories are long, and the insurance exists because even a careful title search cannot see everything.
Two Policies, Two Different Jobs
Your lender requires a lender's title policy, which protects the lender's interest up to the loan amount and declines as you pay the loan down. It does not protect you. The owner's policy is a separate, optional purchase that protects your equity for as long as you own the home, for a one time premium paid at closing. Buyers conflate the two constantly, and discover the difference only if a claim ever arises, which is the worst classroom imaginable.
What the Title Search Finds First
Before any policy issues, the title examination traces the chain of ownership and flags problems to be cured before closing: unpaid liens, boundary and easement questions, permit and estate loose ends. Most Townsend transactions close with a clean, insurable title after routine curing. The insurance then covers the residual risk that something existed that the search could not have found, which is a small probability attached to a very large asset: your home and everything you paid for it.
Is the Owner's Policy Worth It
Measured against the purchase price and the decades you may own the home, the one time premium for an owner's policy is modest, and it is the only product in the transaction that insures your ownership itself rather than the structure or the loan. I recommend buyers take it, particularly on older properties, estate sales, and homes with complicated histories, which in Townsend describes a healthy share of the market. Ask your attorney to show you the premium and the coverage side by side and decide with the numbers in front of you.
Title questions feel abstract until they are not: a boundary dispute, an old lien surfacing at your refinance, an heir appearing at your sale. Each is rare. Each is also the kind of problem that costs real money and months of aggravation when it lands on an uninsured owner. The owner's policy is boring, one time, and permanent for your ownership, which is exactly the profile of insurance worth having.
If you want the title process and the owner's policy explained for your Townsend purchase before closing, call Doherty Properties at (978) 746-0124 and ask for me, Chris Doherty.
Chris Doherty is the #1 selling agent in Lowell, ranked #1 in the city again and again, including in 2024 and 2025, and he is one of Greater Lowell's top-producing agents. He personally sells 100+ homes a year, with 3,000+ career transactions, and Doherty Properties, the company he leads, has handled over $1 billion in real estate transactions.
Doherty Properties LLC, 14 Jackson Street, Lowell, MA 01852 | 160 Main Street, Unit 7, Haverhill, MA 01830 | 4 Courthouse Lane, Suite 2, Chelmsford, MA 01824 | (978) 746-0124 | [email protected]
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