How is title insurance different from homeowners insurance?

The two are easy to confuse but cover opposite directions in time. Homeowners (hazard) insurance protects the physical property against future damage and liability: fire, weather, theft, injury. You pay it for as long as you own the home. Title insurance protects your legal ownership against defects that already existed in the property’s history, such as liens, errors, or fraud, and you pay it once at closing. A homeowner generally carries both: one guards the structure going forward, the other guards your right to own it.