Episode: The $4,000 insurance policy designed to never pay out
Pub date: 2025-11-13
Get Podcast Transcript →
powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarization
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his essay on title insurance, a service designed to never be performed with a "laughably low" 5% loss ratio compared to 50-80% for almost all types of insurance. The typical American moves every seven to eight years, paying a $500 annual tax for basically no good or service. This is due to a quirk about how America records real estate ownership: it mostly doesn’t. Confused? Welcome to the joyous anarchy that is American real estate.
–
Full transcript available here: www.complexsystemspodcast.com/the-4-000-insurance-policy-designed-to-never-pay-out/
–
Sponsor: Framer is a design and publishing platform that collapses the toolchain between wireframes and production-ready websites. Design, iterate, and publish in one workspace. Start free at framer.com/design with code COMPLEXSYSTEMS for a free month of Framer Pro.
–
Links:
- Bits about Money, Working title (insurance) https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/working-title-insurance/
–
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(01:59) What is "title," anyway?
(02:48) Distributed versus centralized database design in property rights
(04:50) A quick digression for privacy-minded buyers
(08:21) High confidence and complete confidence are different
(11:28) Title insurance and title searches
(14:33) One very quirky risk transfer and a statistical artifact
(19:14) How title insurance is sold
(20:03) Sponsor: Framer
(21:34) How title insurance is sold (cont’d)
(23:36) Is there anything to be done here?
(25:47) Potential innovations in title insurance
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Patrick McKenzie, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.