Texas is a promulgated-rate state. The Department of Insurance sets title insurance premiums, and every title company in Texas charges exactly the same amount for the same policy. Not similar. The same.
So when someone tells you they can get you a better deal on title insurance, one of two things is happening. Either they do not know how this works, or they are talking about their escrow fee and calling it title.
The rates changed in March, and a lot of calculators did not
On the first of March 2026, TDI cut basic premium rates by 6.2 percent. The old 2019 schedule is still sitting on TDI's own website with nothing on it saying it has been replaced, which is why a lot of Texas title calculators you will find online are still quoting the old, higher numbers.
Ours uses the current schedule. On a two hundred thousand dollar policy that is the difference between being right and being about eighty dollars high, which is not enormous money but is a decent test of whether the person showing you a number has checked it recently.
The hundred dollar loan policy
If there is a mortgage, the lender requires its own policy. Issued at the same time as the owner's policy, under Rate Rule R-5, that loan policy is a flat one hundred dollars. It does not scale with the loan amount.
Buyers get quoted a lot of confusing numbers around title. That one is simple and it is worth knowing.
What is actually negotiable
The escrow fee, sometimes called the closing fee. Texas does not set it. Every title company picks its own, and they vary by hundreds of dollars on the same transaction. It gets split fifty-fifty between buyer and seller by default on the TREC contract, so both of you are paying for whatever it is.
Nobody shops it, because everyone is busy shopping the thing that cannot be shopped.
One more thing about the owner's policy
Who pays for it is a blank checkbox on the TREC contract. There is no Texas law saying the seller pays. It is a habit, and habits are negotiable.
In a slow market, buyers ask sellers to pay it. In a fast one, sellers push it the other way. Either is normal. Anyone telling you it is fixed has not read the form.