The Expert Podcast

…So how do you get a title for a vehicle in 2023? For over 20 years there have been options for you to use to get titles And some of them have been good Some have been bad There's been a lot of scam kind of sketchy companies that claim to do things with titles that maybe were not legal. There may have been. Being a fly by night guy with a body shop that says look you know I'll put a fake mechanics lien and it gets you a title. But nowadays, because of the fact there've been so many scams for decades. There's only legitimate ways to get a title Now the sad thing is all these methods existed. Four. Forever. But nobody ever used the people felt like they had to do as a loophole or some type of, you know, borderline gray area type process.

One of the most common was the Vermont title loophole. And what people were doing for many years. As you would apply by mail to the state of Vermont to get a registration, not a title So if you bought a car on Craigslist or Facebook or offer up or somewhere and you didn't get the title…
Like you were supposed to. You would just do this Vermont thing you filed for Vermont get a registration then take it to your state to switch for a title Well, you know even for the last five or six years, The different states knew about this It wasn't any big secret Nobody was fooling anybody. The states. All the other 50 states Didn't like it because you were evading…their taxes evading their inspection evading there. jumping through hoops now granted it might've been. You know maybe. Bureaucratic It might've been a lot of red tape You might've got the run-around from your DMV I'm getting a title but if you bought a car without a title… That's what you have to do to jump through the hoops. The Vermont process. Made some of those hoops less difficult. But now it's gone. The state of Vermont finally canceled this process.

We've been talking about this for many years that it's not the best way to go You should look at another process but people still want it to do. but now you can't it's probably the best thing that could happen for this Remont process to go away Because now the only methods that exist are legitimate proper ways. They might be a little bit more work but they're probably not Once you look at them, these other methods are probably less work They take less time than doing the Remont process and they're cheaper because here's the thing about Vermont. Vermont would charge you sales tax…in order to give you a license plate and registration. That sales tax was based on the full blue book value of the vehicle not what you paid for it not what your bill of sale said not what you think it's worth. The full blue book value So if you had a car that let's say you paid $800 for, but the book value said $8,000 for you we're going to pay five or 600 in tax, not $50 in tax. Right. So. Now that's gone So what do you do well?

The best way to go. And you can look at our website CarTitles.com is to do what's called a court clerk title sometimes call the magistrate title or a court order title. If you don't have proper documents to walk into DMV my proper documents I mean this this is a title for vehicle right? Every vehicle has one. This is a legal certificate of ownership. If you didn't get one of those when you bought the vehicle. You can't just walk into your DMV and say give me a title because the title is the proof of ownership. You really didn't buy the vehicle You don't own it until you have a title with your name printed on it. So think about that Even if you give somebody $10,000 for a vehicle you have the keys you have the car you have possession, you are not the legal owner. Until you get you one of these. And to get one of those, you're supposed to have the last title from the last owner.

There's a lot of reasons why you don't have that Maybe the last owner lost it Maybe the last owner isn't who you bought it from Maybe it was flipped Maybe it's a barn find. Right. Maybe the title was damaged There's a lot of reasons legitimate reasons why you wouldn't have a title now you're not supposed to buy it. Most states have a law that says you're not supposed to buy or sell a vehicle without getting a title. But people do it all the time It's not the end of the world the SWAT Team's not going to swoop in and pick you up for buying cars without titles, but you still need to get the title.

The DMV is not allowed by law to hand out one of these. To people who don't have the proper paperwork they're not allowed to it's in there It's It's in their statutes It's in their regulations. They can't just say yeah Okay We take your word for it. You're probably the owner It's probably legitimate. Cause if they did that anybody could get a title for any car They want it. Your car would not be safe. If you could just walk in and say yeah I have a bill of sale Just give me a title Okay Trust me. Well guess what? Now as soon as you turn your back on that vehicle you'd go on vacation for two weeks You come back and somebody has a title for it. And you can't report it stolen because when the police look up who's the owner. If somebody else has it in their name, They're not going to put a stolen car on it because. You're not the owner. They are legally. You have to go to court.

So. The court order title. the way to go What you're doing is you're going over the head of the DMV, the DMV can't do it fine I'm going to go to your boss. The boss of the DMV is the court. And you can do it in the county where you reside You don't have to go out of state You don't have to go to Vermont You don't have to go to the commissioner of the DMV. You go right to the court clerk where you reside, you file a petition to have that clerk or the magistrate or judge sign the petition to make you the legal owner of the vehicle. Now you take that petition slap it on the counter at DMV and they have to give you a title. So you go from they can't give you a title to they have to. Right. So…

There's a big difference. If the DMV could maybe kind of might do it, but they don't want to. That's better than they can't. But they could still turn you away They could still give you the runaround. You come in with the court paper signed. They don't have a choice They have to give you a title. Because the court is their boss. And you might think I don't want to go to court You hear the word court and you start to panic. It's not like law and order where you have this big court case and you have to, you know stand in front of like Jack McCoy and do all this testimony and introduce evidence That's not how it is. Most of the time you don't even have to go there. You filed the documents… You maybe provide some information They sometimes want a copy of…your driver's license or picture of the VIN number to prove your possession. You have to make sure that you have the vehicles not stolen doesn't have any liens and they give you a court order. Pretty simple. Most of the time you don't even have to go occasionally They might make you walk in and raise your right hand in front of the clerk and swear that everything you said is true.

it's a long process but It's going to take shorter than Vermont did. It's going to cost you less money than Vermont did. In most counties. Remember there's 3,611 counties around the country. Every county does it a little bit different, but there's some good guidelines on our website. About how to do it We give you all the instructions you can do it all yourself for free You don't need an attorney. You don't need to pay anybody. You could do it yourself for free Yeah we have title services If he wants some help with it. But you don't have to pay anybody for this. Just like you didn't have to pay anybody for Vermont either…

Right. Now. There's another option too It's not as good. But some people prefer it You can do a bonded title in some states There's about 40 states that allow you to do a bond the title maybe 38. And what that does is instead of going to court, you get a surety bond which is a guarantee from a bonding company that backs up your story If you say Hey I bought this car and Craigslist the guy gave me a bill of sale. Yeah I didn't get a title… The bonding company will give you a backup document a surety bond that says look, go to DMV tell them your story. They have to believe you because we're backing it up with a bond. Right That's basically what it is. There's pros and cons to that. The bonding company First of all I have to pay them.

Usually it's about a hundred bucks for a surety bond No you don't have to pay 1.5 times the value of the vehicle That's a common misconception. You have to pay usually about a hundred dollars for a bond If the vehicles were 10,000 or less… And do you have to sign some form saying that you know you think you the owner you don't know anybody looking for it that kind of stuff… But your title is going to say bonded on it and big red letters. For maybe three or five years you may not want that. That's why we recommend just through the court order title. It's a clean title… It doesn't really take that much work, but people get hung up on when they hear court They think it's some big drawn out process Now if you've got warrants out for you that where you can't show up in court because you're a criminal well then guess what You might have to do something different, but if you're just a normal legitimate everyday person, Then this is the way to go.

In fact, even our clients who are licensed automotive facilities that could do a mechanics lien or could do a storage lane. Many of them just do a court order title. because most storage liens and mechanics liens get rejected. Because now you're again you're dealing with the DMV The DMV is looking for reasons to not approve your package. They're looking for reasons to reject it. That's why everybody that calls us up says I got the run around from the DMV… The court's looking to help you. If you try to file a mechanics lien they're going to say well you waited too long your repair orders from two years ago you can't do it Or you didn't get this proper thing signed by the customer or you didn't send the right notice to the customer or something. They're going to find reasons to reject your mechanics liens Why. Because 50% of them are fraud. 50% of them are as a body shop that sells mechanics lien fake packages to their buddies that bought a car on Craigslist that didn't get a title. So they file a fake mechanics lien. The DMV knows this they're not stupid. So they look for reasons to reject them even if it's right they'll still reject it half the time just to try to, to scare away the, the scammers. So even our clients that are banks. we have contracts with many major automotive lenders that have title problems.

They could go through mechanics lien or storage lien or abandoned or any of these other things. And after looking at it they always do court order because it's much… more powerful. It doesn't have the risks. That you're going to get rejected by the DMV. As long as you have a legitimate story and everything's on the up and up. You can get a title.

Now if you're…trying to get titles for some kind of sketchy vehicle that maybe you shouldn't be getting a title for then really then, you know don't, don't even really try. But that's how you get a title in 2023 Don't try to use any of these little. Gray area fake mechanics lane fake storage lean abandoned vehicle, Vermont any of these things because it just kind of in the long run not kind of work out. And you can do it yourself for free our website. car titles.com gives you all the instructions.

We even have a help desk help@cartitles.com. We even have consultation if you want to do it yourself but wants some help you can get consultation. Or you can just pay us to do it. Right We're glad to help either way. But make sure that you're not overlooking things just because when you hear the word court order you get scared or you hear the word bonded you get scared It means nothing.

It's the way that the government. Gives you. Methods it gives you instructions on how to do it. So you don't have to be rejected by the clerk at the DMV that says get out of here with your bill of sale. Right How many times have you heard that?

Probably quite a bit. Glad to help We know harder this to get titles, use our website as a free consumer resource. And we're glad to be of assist.