Carvana Title Problems Indicator Of Larger Problems?

Look, we promised to try not to keep beating this dead horse with Carvana, but there are some interesting developments. Even though we’ve been touching on it every week or so and we think that’s the last you’re going to hear of it, there’s more.

Stock Performance and Decline
Here’s the thing: Carvana, even though it had fallen from 300 plus down to 50, then to 30, then hovered around 20 for a while, took an even bigger nosedive last week. It went down from the mid-teens (15, 16) down to eight point something. You can see their chart here. This is a one-year chart. It was up 300; now it’s down, you know, in the eights.

Reasons Behind the Decline
Why is this? What’s going on with Carvana? We’ve talked about before what some of the risks might be. What’s the automotive industry component of this? What is the automotive structural documentation part of this? Well, every aspect of their business is in decline: their top-line sales, their net profit, their profit per vehicle, their expenses are up, and now they have some debt obligations to take into account. Their gross profit is off more than a third, and there are a few aspects in play.

Title and Registration Issues
We’re going to talk mostly about the documentation part of it—the title and registration part of it. When you have a major automotive company like Carvana, or any large dealership, that has chronic documentation problems, that in itself is a canary in a coal mine. Look, every dealership can run into a title problem. We deal with this all the time with vehicle titles. We do titles for dealerships, auctions, lenders, financial institutions—all the time. Anybody can run into a title problem. It’s not that nobody’s immune to it, but normally it’s an exception to the rule. A dealership might have one or two title problems a year; a bank might have a few title problems a week if it’s a large financial institution. For a public company the size of Carvana to have ongoing title issues and chronic title problems, that means something.

Nature of Title Problems
It doesn’t necessarily have to be nefarious, like they’re selling stolen vehicles or they’re not getting titles from lien holders or they’re not paying off cars. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that, but it does mean that one area of their business—managing title paperwork—is not being executed properly. That’s just one small area. There is marketing, sales, finance, and then you have title paperwork. Title paperwork is not the most complicated part of a dealership. It’s not the hardest to do. It doesn’t require the most people. It’s actually pretty straightforward. The rules and the processes for doing car titles are established. You can read the requirements at the DMV checklist. You can get instruction from the titling division in the state. There’s no mystery to it.

Complexity of Other Areas
Sales, on the other hand, has some mystery to it. Marketing has a lot of gray area; in marketing, there’s a lot of art versus science. So, if a company is not doing well in sales and not doing well in marketing, you can kind of say, “Well, they’re at least trying. They may not be great at it, but there’s some gray area.” If the one part of retailing motor vehicles, which is car titles—something very specific and very etched in stone—is not being executed, that’s a management question. How do you not have the ability to execute something that is very clearly defined within a company, a small part of that company, and something that every dealership gets right for the most part? Even dealerships that fail financially usually get their titles right.

Speculations and Hypotheses
Now, there’s been a lot of speculation about why that’s the case. Maybe they didn’t hire enough people. Well, Carvana has a lot of employees. Maybe they’re just unorganized. Well, that’s a problem. If you’re unorganized in that area, that kind of indicates that you might not be organized somewhere else. Maybe it’s something more nefarious. Maybe there are problems with these titles. Maybe there are problems with liens. Maybe there are floor plan loans that are not being paid off fast enough. Again, we’re not accusing of anything, but we’re just speculating on what could be the reasons without conspicuous or transparent reasons from Carvana why these title paperwork problems are still happening. You can only speculate, right? You don’t have a reason to know what the actual fault is inside the company.

History of Title Problems
And it’s not something that just started. This has been going on for several years. The first complaints about Carvana’s car title paperwork problems were at least as far back as 2020. Sometimes you can go back and find some in 2019. That’s two or three years ago. If you can’t solve a title problem in two or three years, maybe it’s not solvable. Maybe it’s something chronic within your business that you cannot solve. It’s probably not just a numbers game because bigger companies obviously have more problems, but it’s happening in all of their operating areas. All the states that they operate in have had some title problems—some minor, some major. Some of the states have shut them down. In fact, this week another state shut down Carvana’s license because they didn’t get titles out fast enough. There are some people still waiting more than a year for titles for vehicles.

Market Sentiments
Again, not to beat a dead horse or kick somebody when they’re down. We’re not trying to disparage Carvana. We don’t know if they’re a good company or bad company. We do know that a lot of people in the financial side are betting against them because their stock has gone down. People that put their money where their mouth is with their opinions say that their opinion is, “We don’t like Carvana. We’re selling the stock down to eight dollars and below.” One of the large financial research companies put a one-dollar stock estimate on the price of their shares. They say their stock could be worth a dollar. Basically, it’s nothing.

Concluding Thoughts
Some of it has to do with the headwinds in the economy: inflation, interest rates, car prices, many other things. But when you have a part of your operation that’s relatively straightforward—it’s not simple, you know, car titles is hard to do, but it’s straightforward, it’s easy to define and understand—you can put people in a room, tell them exactly what to do, there’s no question about it, and that’s not getting done, that might indicate that they’re not running a tight ship, right? That there are other parts of it that are loose. And in an environment like we’re in, with inflation and interest rates and vehicle market upheaval, if you’re not running a tight ship, you’re probably not going to survive. Even if you are running a tight ship, it’s going to be a struggle. If you’re not running a tight ship, it might make it even harder or impossible to dig yourself out of such a hole. Allegedly.

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Are Court Ordered Car Titles Easy?

Here we are once again with another in our series about vehicle court order titles. This is a very popular subject for our Channel and for our title division where if you have a vehicle that was purchased without a title, what are your options? Well, in some states you can do a bonded title, but there’s a downside to that. You have to purchase a shitty bond which sometimes is one and a half times the value of the vehicle. You may be able to do some other types of contacting prior owners and getting lean releases, but in most cases, a court order title is the most direct, powerful way to go.

Lack of Set Procedures
Now the problem is, in most counties, they don’t have a set procedure for this. They don’t have a set set of forms. However, in about 15 counties in the country, there is a package of documents that are provided with instructions, and we like to show you those so even if you’re not in one of those counties, you can see how the process works.

Example from Kansas
So here is a perfect example of a set of documents. It happens to be in a county in the state of Kansas about what they call a quiet title. That’s what they call their court order title. They call it quiet title, and The Quiet Title statute talks about determining title or interest in property and they’re talking about title with the Department of Motor Vehicles, so there you go, title to a motor vehicle. How does it work if you are a person who purchased a vehicle without a title and the last owner isn’t available? That is a reason. So it says often because the initial owner of the vehicle did not sign the title when handing it over, and the new owner can’t find the title to fix the problem. From time to time, it’s because the vehicle is wrecked or abandoned.

Abandoned Vehicles and Other Issues
Here’s an example of abandoned vehicles, just possible reasons. So anything that has a title problem, and here’s where they talk about the basics of it. A quiet title action can be used to clear up ownership on any vehicle which title is given by the state of Kansas. It can include a car, motorcycle, travel trailer, manufactured home, so it’s important to see that it could also be a mobile home.

Steps Before Filing
The first step before filing any action is to make sure the vehicle is not stolen. This is very important. You want to make sure it’s not a stolen vehicle. This is another example of something we’ve talked about before. You can check if it’s stolen on NICB, gives you the link right there. For NICB, it tells you a very important disclaimer. It says you can do this by checking on this free website provided by the National Insurance Crime Bureau and NICB VIN. This doesn’t guarantee the car isn’t stolen, but it’s a good start. We talk about this all the time. If you are looking on any of these online VIN checks, Carfax, NICB VIN Checker, VIN audit, whatever it is, they have some information, but it’s not 100%, especially when it comes to liens. If the vehicle is reported stolen, you won’t be able to file a quiet title action and obtain ownership. That’s obvious. It’s one of the reasons we tell you to do this because, Norm, if you file for a court order title, in this case called Quiet Title, you’ll get a title as long as the vehicle is not stolen.

Checking for Title
If you don’t have a current title, you should look up whether a Kansas title has been issued. That helps you know which direction to go. It’ll also tell you who other parties are. The person filing the case is the plaintiff, that’s you, that’s the person who ultimately wants to have their name on the card. That’s the plaintiff. Here is the Civil Information Sheet that you fill out for this process, a bunch of check boxes. You put in the plaintiff’s name, defendant’s name, and they already have this filled in for you. The defendant is the Kansas Department of Revenue. That’s who issues titles. They already have it filled in, so that’s helpful. If there are any other defendants like lien holders or prior owners, you put them here. I have a lot of places for that, and it tells you what you’re trying to do here is the Civil Petition. The plaintiff is you, plaintiff blank, claims against defendants involving a car motorcycle VIN number. Plaintiff U. Joe is a resident of County Kansas residing at it tells you the wording for the court order title. Plaintiff requests judgment as follows: to issue a new certificate of title for property in the name of the plaintiff. That’s what you’re asking for.

Documentation Requirements
Normally they’re going to require you to provide some documentation about how you purchased the vehicle, also some documentation that you tried to contact the prior owner. You put an ad in the newspaper, you did an Affidavit of Service that you did these certain things. This is the affidavit to obtain service. The reason for showing you this is because most counties don’t have these pre-made documents. There are 3,611 counties in the country. There’s only about 15 that have any kind of pre-done paperwork for a court order title. In fact, most counties, if you walk in and say, “I want to do a court order title or a Quiet Title,” they’re not going to know what you’re talking about because it’s not a predefined type of case for them like a small claims case or a divorce case. So you have to do all the work. However, you can use these templates. You can cut and paste from this to make up your own documents.

County Variations and Assistance
Now every County’s a little different. Some counties might want the wording different, some counties might want the plaintiff different, but at least if you have something you can file, they can tell you what to fix. If you go in empty-handed with nothing and say, “Hey, what do I fill out?” they can’t help you. They’re not allowed to do this because they consider it legal advice by a government agency. But if you go in at least with some paperwork filled out, prepared, and it’s wrong, they can tell you, “No, this is wrong. You have to fix it.” And a lot of times it’s trial and error anyway because the clerk or the magistrate might want it different every month to month as they develop their procedures.

Conclusion and Takeaways
This is a good example of a court order title. They call it quiet title. A couple of takeaways from this video is, in most cases, your county is not going to have this. They’re not going to have these paperwork examples for you to use. You’re going to have to fill it out on your own. Now our website will have some examples you can use. The other takeaway from it is that it’s enough of a process that some counties are creating this. They give you instructions. We’re on page four right here, four of 16. The instructions are the first five pages. What to do for service, what to do for submitting a case, what the filing fees are, hearing date finalized, it gives you all the details. So the instructions are important. Just having these forms by itself isn’t enough. If you had these forms but didn’t know the instructions, you’d be out of luck. So make sure that you read through some example instructions from some County. This particular County in Kansas has it. There are a few counties in Ohio that have it. Get an idea of what the instructions are. We have videos that will give you some instructions as well. We also have a title service if you want assistance with this. We could do that, but keep in mind that not every County calls it the same thing. Some call it court order title, some call it magistrate title, some call it quiet title, some just call it a petition of ownership, some call it a writ of mandamus. Forget about the language, the wording, just do the process that matches for what your county is. If you have any questions, you can reach us on our website. We’re glad to be of assistance.

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What Is “Title Jumping”? (Is It Illegal)

Title Jumping Explained
What is title jumping and how is it a problem for you if you’ve purchased a vehicle or you’re trying to sell a vehicle? Well, a title jump is when a vehicle title is signed over and left blank on the back of the title or flip from one person to another without the first buyer getting a new title in their name.

Legal Consequences
There’s a really good article from hot cars about how it can be a serious criminal problem—fines, penalties, and imprisonment. There’s actually people that are in jail for doing title jumping. It’s called the jump title or float title, sometimes called a skip title.

The Illegality of Title Jumping
You buy the car and then sell it without putting it into your name. So first you get an open title, meaning that somebody signs the back it doesn’t fill in the buyer in almost every state. It’s actually a crime to sign a title without writing in the buyer’s name and it’s illegal highly legal in all 50 states according to this article.

Exceptions and Legal Framework
There’s a couple states that allow exceptions for it if there are certain conditions met, talks about here extenuating circumstances somebody’s died or there’s some other scenario but in most cases it’s illegal.

Reasons for Prohibition
The reason for it is because the paper trail looks like the original owner just sold it to the last owner and all the people in between didn’t have any documentation the intermediate buyers were not recorded and that’s a problem because it doesn’t keep track of who owned the vehicle and it also evades taxes and fees.

Curb Stoning and Dealer’s Licenses
Another reason is that there’s some people that try to do what’s called curb stoning where they buy and sell vehicles without getting a dealer’s license so if you’re some person who wants to buy cars from auctions and um flip the car real quick before you put in your name that’s a way to be in a legal dealer.

How Titles Work
Let’s take a look how a title works and what a jump title would look like. Here is the back side of a typical vehicle title and how you would fill that in. First of all as a seller you put your name printed here you sign it there and have it notarized as the buyer you sign it saying you’re acknowledging that the vehicle is transferred to you.

Open Titles and Risks
If you do not sign it or put your name as a buyer this now becomes an open title so anybody could put their name there first of all there’s a risk that if somebody finds this title they can just write their name in and now the owner.

Confiscation and Legal Consequences
However if a person wants to just flip a vehicle and have it signed over to them maybe they’re gonna resell it right away and they don’t have anything written here then they could jump the title or skip the title that creates an illegal act that could create title problems later we talked to a client earlier today actually who went to the dmv with a title that was an open title and the dmv confiscated the title and put a flag on the system that means now the owner who was listed on the front of the title has to come forward and sign some forms before the title be transferred and good luck with that if you’re the buyer getting that owner to come forward because they already have your money so let’s take a look at another example of a title reassignment to see how that might work here’s another example of a reverse side of a title that shows places for reassignment so first it says any.

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How To Block A Title Transfer

Preventing Unauthorized Vehicle Transfers
Did you know that you can put a hold on a vehicle title to keep it from being transferred against your wishes or against your will in California? This is called a courtesy stop request. In some states, they have a different name for it like a title hold or hold request, or sometimes it’s called a stop title.

Process for Requesting a Courtesy Stop
There’s a process for it that you need to go through, and it’s designed to prevent unauthorized transfers of your vehicle. Maybe your vehicle’s been impounded, maybe it’s been towed, and you want to make sure no one gets the title for your vehicle.

Filling out Form REG 500
In California, this form, this courtesy stop request, it’s a one-page form, it’s called REG 500. You put in your requester name, address, the license plate VIN number, make and model, and you check the box saying “I request a vehicle license and title courtesy stop be placed on the vehicle for the following reasons,” and you type in whatever the reasons are.

Legal Considerations and Extensions
You may have to involve the courts. It says here, “Copy the complaint or petition for injunctive relief,” and we’ll talk about that here on this other form momentarily has to be attached to it if it applies. You can also request an extension or you can request removal. And then you sign it.

Sending the Form
You do not have to have it notarized, but you do have to swear that what you’re saying is true, put your license number, and you can print it, keep a copy, and send it to this particular address, attention courtesy stops.

Conclusion
This is the process for California. Again, every state has something similar. In other videos, we’ll talk specifically about other states, but the important thing is to understand this is for preventing an unauthorized transfer of your vehicle.

Ensuring Legal Protection
If you’re afraid that somebody might be looking to improperly take the title out of your name or to put in somebody else’s name or maybe add a lien to the vehicle, maybe you’re afraid that somebody is going to forge your signature on a title or to request a title for a vehicle that somehow is not in your possession.

DMV Stop and Duration
This courtesy stop request going to the DMV automatically stops the DMV from transferring title for 60 days. If you don’t have your injunction or a court order by then, you can get an extension as long as you have a file stamped copy. You’ll still need to officially serve the DMV with the complaint once that happens with the court if it’s a court issue, but you can use this as a method to protect your interest in a vehicle when there’s a risk or a threat or it’s vulnerable to being transferred out of your name or somebody slapping a lien on it or somebody selling it outside of your control.

Real-life Example
We had a client last month where the issue was that they were traveling, they were out of town, and their vehicle they left behind. They traveled by air and they got wind that somebody had moved their vehicle and maybe they had taken the title from their desk where they had it stored and they were wondering if somebody can assign forge their name and put the title in somebody else’s name. So that’s the reason they were interested in doing this courtesy stop request or a title hold to make sure that nobody either accidentally or maliciously was going to take their title and switch it over to another name or put a lien on it where they weren’t able to retain ownership of their vehicle.

Source and Legal Advice
This particular information comes from the Sacramento Public Law Library. Again, there may be legal matters involved with this. One thing they do tell you is make sure you keep insurance on the vehicle. You do not want to let your insurance lapse or cancel it even if the vehicle is not in your possession because any damage you’re not going to get paid for if you don’t have insurance. Any liability that happens with the vehicle, you may want to have protection against with an insurance policy. So get good insurance advice, good legal advice, but there is a method if you’re worried about somebody messing with your title or doing something sketchy with your title that you can stop any title changes using this process.

Final Caution
Again, good legal advice and do this properly to ensure that your vehicle doesn’t end up in the wrong hands and that you cannot access your title records for a vehicle that you legally own.

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DMV Converting From Metal To Electronic License Plates

Here’s a new development in the automotive registration profession. California has become the first state to approve for all vehicles digital license plates.

What is a Digital License Plate?
Well, you normally expect to see a license plate being a piece of metal that’s stamped and painted and put on your car. And that metal plate is provided by the government agency in the state which issues registrations, normally called Department of Motor Vehicles or Department of Transportation.

How Digital Plates Work
California is allowing for digital plates. It’s kind of like a um an e-reader. It’s got that ink on it like you’d read like a a tablet and it’s protected by a piece of glass that’s really strong that you know resists chips or breakage. But it can be programmed with an app so you can change the plate number on your vehicle.

Designed for Corporate Fleets
Now originally this is designed for corporate fleets so if you have a registration and you’re changing it from one state to another. But it also allows for different types of tracking of the vehicle. It can also be changed if the vehicle is reported stolen or if it has some type of violations against it that may show up on the screen.

Privacy Concerns
So what are your thoughts on privacy implications of having a digital license plate? Would you put it on your car? Some other states are looking at I believe Michigan Virginia are also looking at this technology.

Additional Information Display
The big proponent of this or the big reason for doing it is the plate can display information other than a car’s license plate number, meaning that you can put notifications about that vehicle or notifications about the cargo maybe if it’s a commercial vehicle or notifications about the driver if it’s in a fleet.

Long-Term Implications
So what are your thoughts on this and is this something that you think is going to be good in the long run or is it going to create more difficulties for registration and titling of a motor vehicle?

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