How to sell a car in Colorado with an expired California registration?
January 15, 2012 3:23 PM   Subscribe

I recently moved from California to Colorado, then acquired a new car. Meanwhile, my California registration on the old car expired. I want to sell the old car in Colorado, but it has no current registration and was never registered in this state. How can I take people on test drives? Just risk it? Is signing over the California title sufficient, then it's their job to get the car registered? Headache city, any advice is much appreciated.
posted by rzperllian to Law & Government (7 answers total)
 
I can't tell you much about the logistics, but I can tell you that if I was trying to buy your used car and you had expired, out-of-state registration on it, I would run away so fast it would make your head spin, because I would assume that at best it would be a giant hassle for me and at worse, you were a scammer.

You'll probably lose a lot of buyers the same way, so unless changing the registration is massively expensive, you'll probably be better off changing the registration.
posted by jacquilynne at 3:35 PM on January 15, 2012


Response by poster: It's not the cost that's the biggest issue with the registration; it's that registering the car in Colorado would require taking a day off work. Seems like a big commitment I've been trying to avoid.
posted by rzperllian at 3:38 PM on January 15, 2012


If you're not in an emissions testing county, it doesn't look like it's terribly difficult or expensive, depending on how old the old car is, of course.

If you ask around at some dealers, you may find one willing to take the old car off you at a reasonable price. My sister got a fair price for her 4 year old Honda at one of the Honda dealers around here when she sold it before moving out of the country. It would be a lot more reasonable to risk a single drive to a dealer's lot than take people on test drives and whatnot, and you'd side step the looking shady to potential buyers part.
posted by wierdo at 3:41 PM on January 15, 2012


Actually, worse, expect other people to drive the car when it has an expired registration, when they're the ones who will be ticketed for driving it.
posted by wierdo at 3:42 PM on January 15, 2012


You are probably violating some regulation for not getting the car registered in your state after X days after becoming a resident, so you might not even legally be able to sell the car in CO.

You might try going to a currency exchange, they often do title transfers and have better hours. But you will probably have to pay an added fee. You might also be able to mail in the title, forms and fee to the CO motor vehicle people.
posted by gjc at 3:48 PM on January 15, 2012


(Also, did you get your driver's license changed over? That is likely under the same kind of regulation, and something you really need to get done. Having to do both might make taking that day off of work easier.)
posted by gjc at 3:49 PM on January 15, 2012


Usually you can get a temporary registration for a car (10 days or so?) with paper plates. It will cost you some time at the DMV though. Go first thing in the morning on a tuesday at the beginning of the month?
posted by defcom1 at 4:12 PM on January 15, 2012


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