American Land Title Association

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Choosing a hat: Proposal seeks to ease home closing costs by rewriting rules for IL lawyers who sell title insurance

By Jonathan Bilyk | Friday, Sep 28, 2018 @ 7:00am

A new legislative proposal would force real estate lawyers in Illinois who also serve as title insurance agents to 'choose which hat they will wear' in a home sale transaction, in a bid to reduce the typical closing costs paid by Illinois homeowners, and bring those costs more in line with the national average. But the proposal has drawn fire from lawyers and their associations, accusing supporters of the bill of unfairly 'scapegoating' lawyers for Illinois' relatively more expensive title insurance costs.