OPINION:
The title insurance premium — required every time a home is purchased, sold, financed or refinanced — is a not an insignificant housing cost (“Trump’s Emergency Housing Declaration Could Reduce Costs,” Web, Sep. 18).
Although it was not mentioned in Rep. Flood’s op-ed, it is overdue for scrutiny. Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, as overseer of Fannie Mae, has continued the reformative title acceptance pilot, which former President Joe Biden resurrected in his 2024 State of the Union.
The pilot’s process may resemble one of casualty insurance more than it resembles the title industry’s purported process of intensive land-record research. However, the industry’s decades-long de facto process has demonstrated that a casualty approach — based on insurers’ confidence that homebuilders’ legal teams customarily resolve all major title issues before deeding to individual homeowners — is sufficient for residential resale and refinancing transactions.
Previous reform attempts, complicated by questions of state versus federal jurisdiction and fiercely opposed by the real-estate agent and mortgage lobbies that rake off much of the premium, have been woefully ineffective. But now there’s a housing director who has a builder’s familiarity with title insurance, Mr. Pulte being a Pulte Homes scion.
And Fannie Mae has the clout, Jack Kent Cooke’s golden rule (“He who has the gold makes the rules”) never having been repealed.
Presently, the acceptance pilot is limited to certain qualifying refinance transactions. It merits expansion, and a Trump appointee and Joseph Biden could share the accolades. That would be a breath of fresh air in Washington.
STEVE ADKINS
Fairfax, Virginia
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