What Is a Vehicle Lien Release?What is a vehicle lien release and how do you get one? Well if you’ve paid off your car, paid off the loan, and you need to get the title for it, what happens is the lender, the bank you borrowed the money from, normally will take the title that they were holding. Because when you finance a car, they hold the title, they don’t give it to you because they’re the lien holder. They hold the title and when you pay it off, they take that title out of their drawer, they sign it paid, stamp it, and they mail it to you.
What If the Title Gets Lost?But what if you lose that title? What if they never send it to you? What if it gets lost in the mail? Well, the problem is, even though you paid off that lien, the lien record will still be in the DMV database because the lien holder normally doesn’t remove it from the lien record. They just sign it, stamp it, and give it to you. So then what do you do? Well, the lien holder doesn’t have another title to give you. You can’t call them up and say “Hey, mail me another title.” They only have one title.
Getting a Lien Release DocumentBut what you can get is a lien release and on the screen you see an example of that from the state of Texas and it’s a form that the lien holder can look up. There’s a few other forms that go with it and they can fill it out, sign it, mail it to you. And then once you get this, you bring that to the DMV and they give you a title. Well, how do you get it? Well, a lot of times people will say “I’ll just call up the lien holder, I’ll pick up the phone, I’ll dial my bank and I’ll tell them I need a title or lien release.” And the lender is going to tell you one of two things. They’ll either tell you “Yeah we can’t do it because we already gave you one.” Or they might say “Yeah we’ll send it.” And then they never do. People have been waiting months and they never get it. Sometimes they’ll tell you to go to some website to order online, but the website doesn’t really have anything.
Why the Lenders DelayThe reason for it is because lenders, banks, financial institutions, car loan companies, they don’t have a lien release department. There’s not people just sitting around in an office somewhere waiting to do this work—to pull up this form, find it, look up the records, sign everything. They have to sign a bill of sale, they have to sign a letter of non-interest, they have to do a bunch of work. There’s nobody sitting around with that extra time to do it. So they’re going to just kind of give you the runaround and blow you off. They’re going to say “Get out of here.”
Prepare the Forms YourselfSo what do you do? The best way to do it, even though it doesn’t seem fair, is for you to prepare all the forms. This form you see on the screen, this release of lien, is one example. A letter of non-interest, declaration of facts, the three or four documents that they need. You prepare them all, print them on paper and mail them to the lien holder. What we have found over the years is that’s really the only way.
Making It Easy for the LenderAny chance of getting that lien release, even though you should have it and we think you deserve it, the bank’s not going to do it unless you do all the work. And that’s how we do it. This is an example of a package that we send to lien holders. We prepare all the documents—the lien release, the letter of non-interest, declaration of facts. We also put an envelope in it for them to send it to the client with a stamp on it. That way the bank doesn’t have to do any work, all they have to do is sign it. Then we also prepare the documents that the client needs for a title because once you get the lien release, now you have to go to DMV to get a title or mail it in. We give you an envelope to mail it to the DMV too.
Recommended ProcessSo what we recommend doing is to do it the same way we do—prepare this package of documents, send one half to the lien holder, one half to the DMV, and you’ll get your title. It’s a little bit of a pain in the neck because you have to look up these forms, find out where they are. They’re all available, you know, from the DMV. You can go down to the DMV in person, ask them for these forms, take them, fill them in, mail them to the lien holder, put a return envelope with a stamp. We recommend that because here’s the thing—see this book of stamps? Not many people or companies have stamps laying around anymore because everything is online, bill pay, nobody has stamps. So if you send your document to the lender, they sign it, and now that person at the desk is looking around for a way to send it—they don’t have a stamp, they have to go to the mail room—they’re just going to throw it away. They don’t want to do any work. So do the work for them.
If You Didn’t Pay Off the CarNow what if you didn’t pay off your car? What if it’s a charge off or a write-off? You can do the same thing. You can prepare that package of documents, mail it to the lender. Most times they’ll pull it up on their screen, yep it’s a charge off, and they sign it and mail it to you. There’s a backup with a magistrate title we’ve talked about in other videos, you can look that up. Either way, if you’re going to try to communicate with the lien holder, don’t torture yourself by trying to do it by phone or email or fax or text. Do it all in writing.
Final Tips and RemindersIf you do anything where they have to do any kind of work, that package of forms takes an hour or so to put together, an hour and a half sometimes, sometimes two hours. If you’re asking them to do it, there’s probably not going to be a person there that wants to drop everything else in their job and do this for you. So even though it’s a little extra work, if you want that lien release, put that together. Our website will give you instructions on how to do it. It’ll make it a little bit easier for you. But don’t leave it to chance and let that lien holder drag you around and basically give you the runaround and not give you what you need to get a title for your vehicle.
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What Is Curb Stoning?Many of you have been a victim of this very common used car scam called curb stoning, although you may not have known what the name of it is. Sometimes you’ve heard it called title jumping or title skipping. What it entails is when a person is trying to flip a vehicle, what they’ll do is they’ll find a vehicle that they can buy for cheap—maybe at an auction, maybe from a private seller—and they’ll take that title and on the back it’ll be signed over to them. But what they won’t do is they won’t bring that title down to the DMV.
The DMV and Skip TitlesThey won’t go to the DMV to get a new title in their name, pay the fees, pay the tax, and properly transfer it. They’ll just flip it and skip it over to you and sign the back. The problem with that is it voids the title. The only time you can reassign a title is if you’re a licensed dealer, and many times these curb stoners, as they’re called, will just flip it to you and now it’s your title problem. So you may have received a title that’s signed over to you improperly, and you didn’t know about it until you went to the DMV, which is even worse.
Expert Advice and OptionsWhy do they call it curb stoning? Well, curb stoning is called that because these are dealers that don’t have an official dealership license. They don’t have a repair shop license, they don’t have a business or a building—they just sell cars on the curb. That’s why they call it curb stoning. They’ll put an ad on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or OfferUp. They’ll tell you to meet them at some intersection or in a parking lot, and they take your cash, they give you a title that’s not going to be usable, and now you’re on your own.
How the Scam WorksThis article from Autotopian is a great description of it. You notice the picture says “buyer beware,” right? You really have to be careful of doing this because if you have that title, you could actually have the title revoked. You might even find out there are liens on it. You might find out it’s a salvage title. But either way, you’re going to have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops to get a title.
How To Protect YourselfSo avoid these cars like the plague. Don’t buy a skip title. If the seller is not the same person printed on the front, you have to check their ID—avoid that car because it’s going to be a title problem. Even if it’s really, really cheap, you could run into problems getting a new title with your name on it.
Japanese Mini Trucks and Title ChallengesFor years we’ve been talking about these Japanese mini trucks and how hard they are to get titles for in some states. Many states don’t consider them legitimate vehicles for titling and they consider them to be like a motorcycle or even an ineligible imported vehicle. Some states actually revoke titles for some of these Japanese mini trucks and other vehicles. The confusion came from the fact that there was a 25-year exemption for import documents for some vehicles, which is true. It did exempt them from importing requirements, but it didn’t mean that the states had to title them.
Push for Legalization and New LawsWell, now after some pushback, a few states are trying to put through some laws to allow these on the road specifically because people love these vehicles. Also, the Nissan Skyline, the GTR—all these vehicles people want to put on the road—and some states are trying to pass laws. Now what we’ve been hearing is the federal government is stepping in to try to oppose these laws because they don’t want these vehicles on the road. They consider them unsafe. Whether that’s true or not is a whole different story. But some states want to have these cars on the road. They want to let people drive them. They want to let people use them in their everyday life. But if the state doesn’t allow you to register them, that’s a problem.
Introduction to the Court-Ordered Title ProcessSo you’ve realized that the only or best solution to your vehicle title problem is to do a court-ordered title or a magistrate title, sometimes called a civil lien. How does that work? What do you get? What do you receive if we do the process for you? Well, to give a little insight, this question comes up a lot. When you place an order for a court-ordered title document package, what comes in the mail? We send it priority mail so you get it in two business days. You get this folder and it’s got a package of documents in three categories. You got left side, you got right side, and you have two sections on the right side—one with a paperclip, one loose. We’ll go into these here in a minute.
Confirmation and Quality Check ProcessBut the first thing that happens when you place your order is you will get a confirmation email that says your order has been received, it is in process. That happens within a few minutes. Usually about an hour or two later you’ll get another email that says “Hey, your documents are almost complete. Take a look at the screen to make sure that your name is spelled right, the VIN number is correct.” It’s just quality control to make sure that you look at everything one more time to make sure there’s no typos, make sure that the right address is on there. We want you to look at that because right after you verify that and authorize the printing, we will print this package of paperwork.
Shipping and Tracking InformationThen what’ll happen is usually an hour or two later you’ll get another email that says “Hey, here’s your tracking number.” It’ll be USPS priority mail, two business day shipping that says “Here’s your tracking number, you can track it going out to you.” We also track it. When we see that that package has arrived to you, we have one of our operations department staff contact you by phone. They will call you and say “Hey, did you get the package? Do you have any questions?”
What’s Inside the PackageIt’s pretty straightforward. Basically what happens is each one of these documents—there’s a checklist—starts with a place for you to sign because most of it’s going to already be filled in. All these documents are not blank, they’re filled in with all your information. But the different agencies that need to get these—government agencies—have to have your signature. So we put little arrow stickers where you have to sign and we give you an envelope where to mail it to. We give you the envelope to mail it to the magistrate, to the DMV, to all the different places—maybe lien holders. We provide all that and there’s a checklist of when to send them and when to sign them.
Extra Steps for ConvenienceFor example, as a courtesy we normally will send out a prior owner request to have the prior owner sign over titles to make it easier so you don’t have to go to court. We also do the lien release request. All of the steps of that are located inside the package.
Vehicle History ReportIn addition, we also will run a vehicle history and that vehicle history will have a notification to where if you want to get the official vehicle history from the government agency sent to you directly—because if for some reason it’s requested by the magistrate later—you’ll already have it. So we give you all those documents, all the dates and times, how to check it off.
Timeline EstimateHow long does it normally take? Well, the government agencies that process title documents—they’re not like FedEx or Amazon. When you buy something, they tell you “Here’s your delivery date, it’ll be here on this day.” Government agencies don’t have a timeline that way. They do it pretty much at their discretion. But for most clients we see about 12 to 14 business days is on average what it takes. Now that’s a big wide range to get to that average. Some people get it in a few days, some people get it in a few weeks. But for the most part it’s about 12 to 14 business days to get your title documents.
Law Enforcement Seizing Vehicles in Street TakeoversHere’s an interesting new development from the law enforcement side regarding vehicles: they’re now wanting to seize vehicles that are involved in these street takeovers where crowds of people go to an intersection and do donuts and burnouts and all that kind of stuff. And they want to seize the cars. The problem with that is, what if you’re just an innocent bystander? What if you just pulled up and pulled over to the side because you couldn’t get through? Are they going to try to claim your car?
Challenges of Retrieving Seized or Impounded VehiclesOne of the things we run into a lot with vehicle titles is when a vehicle is seized or impounded—it’s very difficult to get that vehicle back unless you have the physical title in your hand.
Importance of Having Your Vehicle TitleIf you don’t have that title because you lost it or never transferred it, sometimes the towing company can hold that car longer than you would be able to get the title that fast, and then they can sell it at auction. Then you lose your car and they keep the money. So make sure that at any given time you always have the title in hand.
Avoiding Auto Seizure SituationsIf your jurisdiction where you live is looking at some of these auto seizure policies—whether it’s for a street takeover, whether it’s for parking, whether it’s for any other type of scenario—make sure you avoid the situations that could get your car caught up in some type of vehicle seizure where you can’t get it back without its title.
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