[Raion]

For something a little different I wanted to outline the procedure that I used to obtain a valid title in Virginia (I might live in North Carolina but I continue to retain a registry in Virginia to reduce my insurance cost.) For a vehicle that had none. 

The first thing you do is go on to the DMV website and perform an abandoned vehicle search. This costs $40 and requires the VIN number, year, make, and model. 

In my case it did not find a registry because Virginia destroys title information after something like 20 years of no active registration. So if it did it would send a notice to the last registered owner basically saying that the vehicle is at such and such address and if you want it to come get it within 14 days. 

As none of that happened, I simply waited 14 days and then posted the intent to auction on the DMV website. You then wait for 21 days. 

Then I went into the DMV closest to me which was across the Virginia border with a copy of the abandoned vehicle search receipt. They charged me $90 to get a title after making me fill out two forms which basically confirmed everything. 

So total it takes about 35 days to get a title for an abandoned vehicle in Virginia and the total cost was $130. They also did not send anybody to check up on the vehicle so it's not out of the question that you could use this process to get a title in another state although that is not something that I can endorse, for obvious reasons. 

The Vermont loophole would have cost about $200 more to do so it wasn't necessary here.

[Raion]

The primary reason why I decided to write this out is that there's not a lot of information out there on doing this and people assume that just because you have a vehicle with no title you can't do anything with it. That's not true and there probably exists similar processes all across the US.

[vishnu]

The primary reason why I decided to write this out is that there's not a lot of information out there on doing this and people assume that just because you have a vehicle with no title you can't do anything with it. That's not true and there probably exists similar processes all across the US.

Good to know; it's been on my todo list to figure out this process since the stupid mom 'n pop credit union who financed my last car purchase have seemingly no ability to award me with the title card since I paid off my loan. But as I mentioned in my other post, in Minnesota we don't have to provide registration proof to the police when we are pulled over, only proof of insurance. In the last few years I've had three citations for not wearing a seat belt, but in Minnesota, the motorcycle helmet law was overturned decades ago. The fucking stupidity of the Minnesota legal system knows no bounds.