Colorado asks a private seller for one signature, no witness and no seal - and then asks for three things nobody warns you about: the plates off the car, an emissions certificate you paid for if the buyer lives in the testing area, and a price written somewhere a clerk can find it. The certificate itself is unforgiving in exactly one box, and it is not the one people watch. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Colorado Department of Revenue, Division of Motor Vehicles' own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Colorado titleThe Assignment by Owner block on the back, field by field, on the county clerks' own blank specimen.Open the walkthrough →Look at the Assignment by Owner section on the back of a Colorado title and you will find a reading field marked No Tenths and three checkboxes: Actual Mileage, Mileage in excess of Mechanical Limits, and Not Actual - Warning: Odometer Discrepancy. There is no fourth box for a car too old to have to disclose, so people invent one - they write the word exempt across the field, or they tick the third box because the mileage genuinely is not known. Ticking the third box stamps an odometer discrepancy onto the buyer's new certificate and every certificate after it. Writing in a field that should have stayed empty is an alteration, and an altered odometer reading in this block voids the document outright - the county clerks' own dealer packet says so in capitals, and the only way back is a duplicate title.
Whether a Colorado vehicle discloses is settled by its model year and nothing else. A 2011 or newer vehicle discloses for the first twenty years of its life. A 2010 or older vehicle does not, and the Douglas County Clerk and Recorder's dealer packet adds the part that catches people out: once a vehicle has been exempted it stays exempt on every transfer afterwards, even if somebody later fills the reading in properly.
Model year 2011 or newer: The reading goes in, in whole miles, and one of the three boxes gets ticked. This is the ordinary case and will be for years.
Model year 2010 or older: Nothing goes in the block at all. The reading may be carried across only where the face of the title already shows one from the previous transfer.
A gross weight rating over 16,000 lbs: Exempt by what the vehicle is rather than by its age, on the department's own three-item exemption list.
A trailer: Exempt, because it is not self-propelled - which is the wording the exemption actually uses.
Colorado Department of Revenue, how to properly endorse a title
You, the seller: Print your name in the Seller's Hand Printed Name field on the back of the certificate, spelled exactly the way the front of the title spells it, and sign underneath. Fill in the odometer reading and tick one indicator, write the date of sale and the purchase price, and hand the certificate over. Every owner the front names has to print and sign; there is no witness, no seal and nowhere on the document to put one.
The buyer: Prints their name, signs once to acknowledge the mileage you certified, and writes their physical address - the address of the county they will register in, not a post-office box. They then have sixty days to take the certificate to their own county motor vehicle office and apply for a new one.
First initial and last name will fail. The department's instruction is that the seller must print their name as it appears on the title, and that first initial/last name is not acceptable for the seller or the seller's agent. If the title says JONATHAN and your licence says JON, the transfer needs a DR 2421 Statement of One and the Same going in with it - which is a free form and a nuisance, and far easier to spot before the buyer is standing in your driveway.
The same test runs on the buyer's side. Their printed name has to match their secure and verifiable identification exactly, or the DR 2421 is needed from them instead.
Colorado once did notarise a title - the department still publishes a form, the DR 2445, whose whole purpose is to exempt a seller from that requirement - and what replaced it is printed on the document. The sentence sits in capitals directly above the Assignment by Owner block, and it is what your signature is agreeing to: the seller certifies, under penalty of perjury in the second degree, that the seller's signature releases and transfers interest in the vehicle and the odometer reading and declaration are true and correct to the best of their knowledge. The statute behind it asks for the same thing in the same words - an affirmation accompanied by a written declaration that the statement is made under the penalties of perjury in the second degree.
Colorado Department of Revenue, Division of Motor Vehicles, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
One certificate, one perjury declaration, and the four supporting forms a county clerk actually asks a private seller for.
The title is missing, the record has been purged, or there never was a document. Which route you take depends on how old the vehicle is and whether Colorado has ever heard of it.
Signing through somebody else, and proving that two spellings are one person. One of these needs a notary and the other does not.
An owner who named a beneficiary in advance, and an owner who did not. Colorado publishes a form for each.
A vehicle written off, and the declaration that turns a certificate of title into a salvage certificate.
The plates are yours, they have already expired, and the only paperwork left is for the ones that never came back.
Two sentences from the department, and the second one is the surprise. License plates are tied to the registered owner, NOT the vehicle - so they come off before the buyer drives away, and leaving them on puts your name behind whatever the car does next. But an ordinary green-and-white passenger plate cannot then go onto your next car. Under the section printed on the back of your own title, the number plates issued to the owner for the vehicle expire and shall not be transferred by the department to any other motor vehicle the moment you assign the title.
What you do with the metal is spelled out too: regular plates should be returned to the nearest county motor vehicle office or recycled with a recycling service that will take metal. There is no fee, no form and no receipt - you are handing back a piece of aluminium that has already expired.
Personalised plates are the exception and they are worth money. A personalised, distinctive-special, group-special or alumni plate survives the transfer and moves to your next vehicle through the county office. If you liked an ordinary combination enough to want it back, the statute keeps a priority right to that combination for you - surrender the expired plates and apply for it as a personalised plate when you register the next car.
One date to keep an eye on. The expire-on-transfer rule is repealed on 1 January 2028 and replaced with a plain permission for the department to move a plate between two vehicles the owner is named on. Until then, budget for new plates on whatever you buy next.
Colorado runs a voluntary programme rather than a mandatory notice. The statute that created it says in as many words that it does not require the owner who transfers a motor vehicle to another person to report the sale. What the department asks for, if you choose to file, is a report within five business days of the transfer carrying the date and time of sale, your full name as the owner before the transfer, the vehicle identification number, and an affidavit signed under penalty of perjury that the transfer requirements have been met.
File it anyway, and file it the same evening. A report of a bona fide transfer takes you out of any civil or criminal action brought afterwards against the operator of the vehicle or against the vehicle itself. It is done through myDMV under Report Release of Liability, or at the county office; you need the plate number and either the vehicle identification number or the verification code off your registration card. There is no paper form for it anywhere in the department's index - and no DR number to ask for.
The protection has five holes in it, and they are printed.
Filing does not cover you for negligence in permitting the purchaser to drive at the time of sale, for failure to comply with any law governing the sale, for negligence in selling, for a material misstatement or omission about the condition, or for failure to make any disclosure required by law - which is where an unmentioned brand or a missing emissions certificate lands. And keep the insurance running until the plates are physically off the car: Colorado's Motorist Insurance Identification Database exists to identify uninsured vehicles, and a registration that has not yet expired is still a vehicle it can find. C.R.S. 42-6-109(3), report of transfer of ownership.
Colorado Department of Revenue, private sale: buying or selling a vehicle in Colorado
Register at their own county motor vehicle office within 60 days of the date of sale - after that the late fee runs at $25 a month or part of a month, capped at $100. Sales tax is entirely the buyer's and the county clerk collects it at the counter. State sales tax is 2.9 per cent, and on top of that come the state-administered local taxes for the address they register at. Home-rule cities such as Denver and Boulder collect their own and are not administered by the department, so a total cannot be worked out from the state's tables alone. The title fee is $7.20. Registration, specific ownership tax and the county's own fees are separate and are theirs.
What they need to bring:
In most states a failed or missing test is the buyer's problem. Not here. Where the buyer lives in the programme area - the Denver metropolitan area and the North Front Range - the department's instruction is that at the time of sale the seller is required to provide the buyer with a passing emissions test that has not been used previously to register a vehicle or renew a vehicle registration. A certificate that was already spent on your own renewal does not count, which is the detail that turns a completed sale into a second trip.
The programme has run in parts of Colorado since 1981 and in its current form since 1995; the statute behind the seller's obligation is C.R.S. 42-4-310. Colorado Department of Revenue, emissions.
Colorado Department of Revenue, Division of Motor Vehicles · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Colorado and the rest of the guides.