What Is a Title Commitment?

A title commitment sets out the conditions under which a title company will insure the property, and everything it will not cover. The exceptions section is the part that matters, because it lists what will still be attached to the property after closing.

What the sections mean

Why Schedule B matters most

Because it is the list of things that survive closing and that insurance will not protect against.

Easements, restrictive covenants, mineral rights reservations, encroachments noted on a survey, and any unusual arrangement affecting the property all appear here. A buyer who never reads it can complete a purchase without knowing there is a utility easement through the garden or a restriction preventing what they intended to do.

What to look for

• Easements crossing the property, particularly ones that affect where a buyer intends to build.
• Restrictions on use, including rentals, home businesses, vehicles, outbuildings and animals.
• Mineral rights reservations, which are extremely common in Texas and frequently surprise buyers.
• Liens that have not been released, which appear as requirements and must be resolved before closing.
• Anything worded in language you do not understand. This is the important category, because the instinct is to assume it is standard.

What should you do the day it arrives?

Read it, then call the escrow officer about anything unclear.

They will explain it in plain language in about four minutes and they are not annoyed by the question. Then tell your client, in the same plain language and in writing, while there is still time to act on it.

An agent who files it unread has skipped one of the few genuinely protective steps in the transaction.

Is there a deadline to object?

Yes, and it is easy to miss because it lacks the drama of the option period.

Your contract sets a window for raising objections to title and survey. It is finite and it passes quietly. Put it in the calendar on day zero with everything else and work to a date a day or two earlier than the real one.

An objection raised on time is a negotiation. The same issue raised after the deadline is a problem your client now owns.

How is it different from a title policy?

The commitment is a promise to insure, subject to conditions. The policy is the insurance itself, issued after closing.

Which is why the commitment arrives during the transaction and the policy arrives afterwards. If something in Schedule B is unacceptable, the time to deal with it is while it is still a commitment.

When does it arrive?

Usually somewhere in weeks one to three, depending on how quickly title was opened.

This is one reason to open title on day zero rather than later in the week. A commitment arriving in week four leaves very little room to resolve anything it reveals, and title issues are among the slowest problems to fix.

What are the slow ones?

A handful of situations that take weeks or months rather than days.

Unreleased liens from older mortgages or contractors. Property in probate or an estate sale, where the authority to sell needs establishing. Heirship situations with multiple owners. Boundary disputes visible on a survey.

None of these are yours to solve. All of them are yours to spot and escalate on the day you see them, because the timeline for resolving them does not compress.

Who pays for the title policy?

Negotiable, and in much of Texas it is customarily the seller for the owner’s policy, with the buyer paying for the lender’s policy where one is required.

Customary is not the same as required. It is a contract term like any other and can be negotiated, and in some markets or situations the allocation differs. Check what the executed contract actually says rather than assuming local custom applied.

The premium appears on the settlement statement, so any surprise here surfaces in closing week, which is the worst time to discover an assumption was wrong.

Should the client read it?

They should read Schedule B, and you should tell them which parts to focus on.

Handing over a long document with no guidance produces either an unread file or an anxious phone call. Point them at the exceptions, explain the ones that affect what they plan to do with the property, and offer to go through it together.

The title, survey and HOA phase step by step alongside the other five, plus a deadline tracker that includes the title objection window, which is the one most often missed because nothing about it feels urgent.

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