The Expert Podcast

In this episode of car titles, we're going to talk about how vehicle titles are more important than actually taking possession of the vehicle. We get hundreds of calls a day, sometimes over a thousand calls a day, and many of the time that people call in, it's because they're considering purchasing a vehicle without a title and they want to know how they can get a title if they buy it. In our sales department, we always have the advice to never buy a vehicle without a title; we never recommend doing it. A title is a legal government document, you see, like this, and it's something where if you buy a vehicle and even if you get a bill of sale, even if you get the keys, even if you get possession, if you don't get that certified title document, you have nothing. You've purchased nothing. The title of the of the document is the most important thing.

So, can you buy a car without a title? Well, let's talk about what happens if you do. In many states, it's actually against the law to buy or sell a car without a title. Here's the statute from Texas: "The owner of a motor vehicle that is required to be titled must obtain the title before selling or disposing of the vehicle. That's a crime if you don't." In Oregon, violating title requirements: "A person commits the offense of violating vehicle title requirements if the person owns or operates a vehicle without having been issued a title." So, in most states, buying or selling a vehicle is actually a crime.

Now, that doesn't mean the SWAT team is going to come in and swoop down and pick you up. People buy and sell cars without titles all the time. Why do they have these laws? Well, it's to protect you from the risks involved. If you purchase a vehicle without a title, in most cases, you could probably get a title 70–80% of the time; it'll all work out. But 20 or 30% of the time, you'll never get a title, ever, and you won't know that until you actually try to get a title. There's no amount of searching for VIN checks, car checks, or background checks on a vehicle you could ever do to find out 100% if you will get a title. Forget about Carfax, VIN search, and VinAudit; none of those places are going to tell you everything you need to know about getting a title. Even if it looks like it's a clean vehicle with a clean title, that doesn't necessarily mean you get to be the owner of it.

Right. I could find any car in the parking lot of a shopping mall; run the VIN number; it's a clean title. That doesn't mean I get to own it, right? Sometimes vehicles are not eligible for you to get a title because of something in the background. Maybe it's a salvage title, maybe it's a parts-only title, or maybe it's been reported stolen. Some of that you can find out on Vin or Carfax, but if there's a lien on the vehicle, you will never find that out on Carfax. It might say "no lien found," but if you read the small print, they don't search for liens everywhere. As a matter of fact, Carfax has about 10% of all liens in their system, so you're not going to find it. You can't get that information from the DMV either because they're not allowed to give it out, and you have to know what state the lien was filed in.

If there's a lien on the vehicle, all title transfers are blocked. You cannot transfer title with a lien on the vehicle, even if it's paid off, until the lien holder clears it. You won't get a title if there's any ownership dispute on the title. If the last owner maybe doesn't agree or doesn't want to cooperate with you to do a transfer, you're going to have a problem. So, unless you're willing to take the money that you're looking to spend on that vehicle and completely make it speculative, put it at risk, and don't buy a car without a title—end of story.

Now, if you have already purchased a vehicle without a title, you have to at least try something. It doesn't hurt to try. You can try a bonded title, a court order title, or prior contact. There are many methods you could try to get a title. Our website has them all listed below. But if you're considering purchasing a vehicle without a title, ask the seller, "Why don't you have a legal title to give me like you're supposed to under the law?" If they can't give you a straight answer, then just walk away. It's a scam. Even if they have an answer that sounds good, look, I can't tell you how many times our sales staff comes to us and says, "Look, I talked to this person; the seller seemed legitimate; they seemed like honest people; they were a middle-class couple; everything seemed legit, but I can't get a title."

Even if the sellers have good faith when they're talking to you about buying the vehicle, it doesn't mean later they're going to change their mind once they have the money in their hands. They're not going to do anything to help you. The seller might be required to sign documents, appear in court, show up at DMV, and get things notarized in order for you to get a title. If they're not willing to do that, which most people aren't, you're out of luck. So, don't rely on the good faith or good wishes of the seller promising you a title because once they have the money in their hand, who wants to deal with DMV? Who wants to deal with, you know, the records office? Nobody does, and they already have your money.

So, they're not going to drop everything and go wait in line for two hours at DMV to sign paperwork for you to get a title. The number of times where something comes up that is more problematic than that is greater than you think. Many times there's a lien on the vehicle, many times there's a title pawn on the vehicle, and many times it was sold at an auction like Copart or IAA and it has salvage or it has parts-only. Those are things that sometimes can never be solved. Even a salvage title requires a very thorough and detailed inspection; sometimes the inspection has to go to the state where the last title was from.
So, if you buy a car from out of state and it's salvage, you would have to bring it back to that state, have it inspected, and have it approved. I can tell you this: The states don't want salvaged vehicles back on the road. The DMVs look for any reason they can to fail a salvage inspection because their official position is that salvage vehicles don't belong on the road; they're for parts. Technically, if you jump through a bunch of hoops, you can get it back on the road, and when it happens, 50% of the time it'll work. But again, do you want to take your money and give it a 50/50 chance of being thrown away? Would you go into the casino and bet $7,000 on black on the blackjack and CH on the roulette wheel? Because that's what you're doing by buying a car without a title.

Look, if it's worth it to take a shot because it's a rare vehicle and they're super cheap, that's fine. Just remember, whatever money you're giving for that vehicle, until you get it in your hands, all of that money is completely at risk; it's completely speculative. And you can try to get a title. Here on the screen, you'll see the Texas bonded title process. You bought a vehicle without a title. If you receive incorrect or incomplete information or lose it, remember that that can happen too. If you buy a car and lose it, you may have the option of using a bonded title. Here are the steps, and it goes through all the steps: purchase a bond, apply for a bond.

But remember, the vehicle must be in your possession; it cannot be junked, non-repairable, or otherwise ineligible; it has to be complete; it cannot be abandoned; that's another thing that you can't do. So, remember, purchasing a vehicle without a title is a risk. Make that decision wisely. If you decide to go through with it or if you've already purchased a vehicle and now you're stuck and you have to do something, then you can look at these methods: bonded title, court order title, prior contact, and there's other things you can do. And we get into that in other videos; that's not what this video is about. This video is about keeping you safe because most of the people who call us and have already bought a vehicle without a title wish that they could go back and not do it because it's not worth the hassle.
It's going to take your time, even if you do it all yourself for free. You know, you don't have to pay anybody to get you a title; if it's your vehicle, you can do it yourself. But it may take you 10 to 15 hours of time to research, get documents back and forth, then get the runaround from DMV, then wait for them and hope, cross your fingers, that nothing comes up that prevents that title from being issued. Sometimes there's another title that's already been issued that blocks your title; sometimes there's a prior owner claim; sometimes it's a deceased owner where that vehicle has to go into probate; there's a lot of things that can come up.

You know, we could never even get into them all in a video. But that's why the states have these laws: it's illegal to buy and sell a vehicle without a title. They just want to keep it simple; they don't want to say only if this case, here's a scenario, or this might work or might not work; they just say flat-out boom, no sales without a title, end of story. They don't want people to be in these scenarios. Investigate your state, you can do research, here's the statutes, you know, every state has their statutes online, um, you know, Transportation code, this one is um, vehicle title and registration code, this is for Oregon but every state has these documents. And look, it's a lot of pages. Right, this one is 71 pages. Um, this one, well, it's all one page, but you can see how long it is. But you can do searches within the text for things that might be of interest. So, research your state to see if it's legal. But even if it is legal, you probably don't want to do it anyways because you could be out of luck and all your money's gone, and now you have to worry about trying to resell it to somebody else without a title, cross your fingers, and hope that you find a buyer or sell it for parts.