Master the complexities of title insurance to mitigate risks, resolve hidden defects, and ensure seamless closings for high-value commercial real estate deals.
Commercial title insurance is often treated as a closing formality, but in reality, it is a core risk allocation tool in sophisticated real estate transactions. In commercial deals, the policy is where hidden defects, unresolved encumbrances, and structural financing risks are either meaningfully addressed—or quietly pushed through to post-closing exposure. Understanding how underwriters think, what they will and will not insure, and how exceptions and endorsements actually operate is critical to protecting client value.
This session takes a practical, underwriter-informed approach to commercial title insurance, focusing on how risk is identified, negotiated, and ultimately transferred in real estate acquisitions and financings. It explores how commitments are reviewed in practice, how common defects are resolved or insured over, and how key endorsements shape coverage in complex transactions involving leasing structures, development sites, and structured finance.
Key Topics Discussed
Legal Consultant and Expert Witness
Mr. Chernin has been a licensed attorney in California for more than 50 years. During his career, he was a transactional commercial real estate counsel for the Prudential Realty Group and Hilton Hotels Corporation. He was also Underwriting Counsel for both First American Title Insurance Company and The Fidelity Group of Title Companies (Chicago Title, Commonwealth Land Title, Fidelity Title and Ticor Title). Mr. Chernin earned a B.A. in International Relations from UCLA and a J.D. from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where he was elected to membership in the St. Thomas More Law Honor Society, and where he placed first in the School’s Scott Moot Court competition. Mr. Chernin has been a speaker at seminars on real estate and title insurance issues presented by the Los Angeles County Bar Association Real Property Section, the Los Angeles Escrow Association and other program sponsors. He has written extensively on these topics in preparing materials for these seminars. Currently, Mr. Chernin limits his practice to acting as a legal consultant to attorneys and as an expert witness on title-related matters.
