Nearly every American home purchase includes a title search and a title insurance policy. Both exist because ownership of land is a chain of recorded documents rather than a single certificate.
Ownership is assembled from records
Property rights in the United States are evidenced by documents recorded at the county level, and the current owner's claim depends on every earlier transfer being valid.
A title examiner traces that chain backward through deeds, checking that each transfer was properly executed and that the person conveying the property had the right to do so.
Gaps appear more often than buyers expect, through inheritance without probate, divorce decrees, name changes or a deed signed by only one of two owners.
Liens attach to the property, not the person
Mortgages, tax liens, judgments and contractor liens are recorded against the property, and many of them survive a sale unless they are cleared at closing.
The search identifies them so the settlement can pay them off from the sale proceeds, which is a routine part of a closing statement.
Unrecorded claims are the harder problem, and mechanics liens are the common example, since work performed before a sale may be recorded afterward.
Easements limit what the buyer controls
An easement gives someone else a right to use part of the land, typically a utility running lines or a neighbor with a right of access.
These do not prevent a sale but they constrain the buyer, and a driveway easement or a utility corridor can rule out an addition or a pool.
Restrictions recorded by a subdivision developer or an association operate similarly, binding the property regardless of who owns it.
Survey questions are separate from records
A title search reads documents; it does not measure land, so it cannot detect a fence, shed or driveway that crosses a boundary.
A survey addresses that, and encroachments discovered this way are resolved before closing through agreements, corrections or adjustments to price.
Buyers who skip a survey rely on records alone, and lenders in some areas require one precisely because the two checks answer different questions.
Insurance covers the search's blind spots
Title insurance is unusual because it protects against past events rather than future ones, and it is generally paid once at closing.
A lender's policy protects the lender's interest, while an owner's policy protects the buyer's equity, and they are not the same coverage despite arriving together.
Coverage, exclusions and who customarily pays vary by state and by transaction, so the commitment document issued before closing is the item to read.