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.
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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.
Disruptions in the Used Car MarketSo if you’re in the automobile market looking for a new car or used car, you may be finding that there are a lot of pricing disruptions in the used car market. Why is that? Well, even though prices spiked up quite a bit a few years ago, they kind of leveled off. But expect that they’re going to go even higher or maybe even stay high because here’s what happened.
New Car Manufacturing DisruptionsThree years ago, in about 2021, there was a very serious disruption in new car manufacturing, meaning that a lot of automakers had trouble getting inventory for their parts. They had trouble with their supply chains. They had trouble with even COVID disruptions of their factories with employees. So there were a lot of reductions in new car inventories. Remember when you drove by dealerships in 2021 and 2022? There were empty lots. There were maybe five or six cars out front where there used to be oceans of cars.
Impact on the Used Car MarketWell, used car markets come from previously sold new cars. There’s not a used car factory. The used car factory happened three years ago. So all the three-year-old cars you’re looking for today would have had to be manufactured in 2021 or 2022. That didn’t happen. So there will be a lot fewer used cars in the market in the next few years. It’s kind of like those empty lots that happened on the new car side are now going to be empty lots on the used car side. It’s the same inventory, the same cars.
What to Expect in the MarketSo expect that you’ll find older cars with higher mileage. You might find some newer cars with low mileage, but they’re going to be a lot more money. Or sometimes, it’s even better to buy a new car. So if you can find an older vehicle that’s in good condition, maybe 10 years old or 12 years old, that would be usable for the next couple of years to kind of bridge the gap. That might be a way to go until the used car market sorts itself out.
Ensuring a Smart PurchaseAnd again, sometimes those older cars come with title problems, and that’s one of the things we deal with in our vehicle title division. Just make sure you get a good inspection. Make sure you have very good research on the history of the vehicle and that you have any title problems squared away before you move forward. So that even though you’re saving money on a used car, it doesn’t turn into a nightmare for some other reasons.
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