Documents Needed To Sell A Car

There are many customers in the world that prefer getting a car through a private sale in which the current owner of the vehicle agrees to sell his car to another. Through these private sales, the buyers are able to negotiate a reasonable price, while the seller has the possibility to screen his customers and close the deal under his terms. Although it sounds pretty easy, there are a couple of documents needed to sell a car and both the seller and the buyer need to be cognizant when doing the deal.

After you have established all of the details regarding the sale, you must transfer the vehicle’s title to the buyer. You will need to give the customer the documents he needs to file an application for a title transfer through your local DMV. In some states in the US, you will need to submit the car’s VIN – vehicle identification number, odometer recording as well as a receipt for the car’s sale.

Due to the fact that you are a private seller, you will have the possibility to choose what types of payment you will or will not take from the customer. The least risky for you would be to take cash, but there are many buyers that do not have all the funds on hand, especially if the car is worth a lot of money. Another popular option would be through cashier’s checks. It is advisable to avoid personal checks unless you can have full confidence in the person that will buy the car.

In the US, every state has different requirements when it comes down to maintaining, registering and selling a car. All of the paperwork, and here we include the past performance evaluations as well as repair and maintenance slips, should be handed over to the new owner of the car. This paperwork could include oil change documents and latest smog certification.

In most of the areas in the United States, the buyer of the vehicle must register the car in his name within 10 days of the final sale. This rule is applied to anyone who buys or gets a car from another person, including friends or family members. If the buyer of the car is from another state, he must register it in his name in his state of residence within 20 days. In the vast majority of the states, the Department of Motor Vehicles will send a registration slip when he applies for a transfer.

Before finishing off the sale, you need to make sure that both of the license plates are affixed to the car, because the new owner of the vehicle will need to place his registration sticker on the car once it will be registered under his own name. It would be highly advisable to give him a receipt that includes the car’s make, model, year and color, along with both yours and his full names. Do not forget to make sure if the price and the type of payment along with other special conditions are noted down on that receipt.  It is recommended to use the seller’s notepads which contain three copies that are colored differently, which will permit for an original receipt, a buyer’s receipt and a seller’s receipt.

All things considered, there aren’t that many documents needed to sell a car, but each one of them will be vital to the entire transaction so make sure that you keep them in a safe place because if you lose them, you’ll spend a lot of time and money getting others and you will have to postpone the transaction.

Post tags: Tags: documents, paperwork, sell a car