Virginia puts the entire private sale in one block on the face of the certificate, and hands you the pen first. Five lines, a mileage figure, a price and two signatures - then the plates come off the car and go back to Richmond, because in this state they were never the car's to keep. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles' own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Virginia titleSection A sits on the FRONT of a Virginia title, along the bottom edge - and every line in it is the seller's.Open the walkthrough →Look down the mileage line on a Virginia certificate and there is nothing to tick that means old enough to skip this. Only two exceptions are printed there, and both of them are admissions: mileage in excess of mechanical limits, and not the actual mileage. The way out that other states print - a car past a certain age needs no reading - is on none of Virginia's paperwork, so a seller who leaves the figure blank because the car is twenty years old has simply left a required box empty.
Section 46.2-629(D) is why. It carries the same 10-year and 20-year ages as the federal rule, but each one is written with a second condition attached: the vehicle must also have been previously exempt from recording an odometer reading on the certificate of title in another state. A car that has always been titled in Virginia never met that condition, so it never becomes exempt here. The one exemption that does stand on its own is weight - vehicles having gross vehicle weight ratings of more than 16,000 pounds.
Any car that has only ever carried a Virginia title: No exemption, whatever its age. Write the reading in whole miles every time it changes hands.
A car arriving with an out-of-state title already branded exempt: This is the only door. The VSA 17A box reads 'Vehicle was exempt from disclosure in prior state of title' and adds that the applicant must present the out-of-state title showing exemption.
16,000 lb gross vehicle weight rating or more: Exempt on its own terms under 46.2-629(D)(1), no prior title required.
You, the seller: Print and sign your name as seller in Section A on the front of the certificate - and every owner named on the face of it has to sign, not just the one holding the pen. You also write the buyer's name and address on the top line of that block, enter the odometer reading, the date of sale and the sale price.
The buyer: The buyer signs and prints their full name as buyer in the same Section A, then completes the personal property tax relief, lien and registration blocks and the certification of buyer on the reverse before taking the whole certificate to DMV.
Nobody watches you sign this one. Virginia asks for no witness and no notary on the transfer. Section 46.2-628 wants the owner to fully and correctly endorse the assignment and warranty of title on the certificate and to deliver the certificate to the purchaser at the time of delivering the vehicle - that is the whole ceremony. Willfully failing to endorse it fully and correctly is a Class 3 misdemeanour.
Two forms in the whole seller's set do want a notary, and neither is part of an ordinary sale: the VSA 12 affidavit you file when the certificate cannot be found, and the SUT 1A price affidavit for a vehicle five years old or less.
That sentence is printed on the face of every Virginia certificate, directly under the words CERTIFICATE OF TITLE FOR A VEHICLE, and the margins repeat it - VOID IF ALTERED runs down both sides of the sheet. There is no correcting fluid answer and no initialled-in-the-margin answer. A spoiled Section A means applying for a replacement certificate and starting the block again.
Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
One block on the front of the certificate, one application, and a tax that has a floor under it rather than a ceiling.
Virginia holds most titles electronically for the lender, so the first job is finding out whether a piece of paper exists at all.
Lost, mutilated, illegible or simply wrong - Virginia sorts these into replacements and substitutes, and picks a different half of the same form for each.
One page, four blocks, no notary - and it stops being valid the moment the person who signed it does not own the car.
Whether the family needs a court appointment or a single signed certification comes down to one question about the estate.
Water at $3,500, repairs at three-quarters of the value, and a certificate that ends the vehicle's life as a vehicle.
They come off the car, and what you do with them in the next hour decides whether you get money back or a suspension letter.
DMV's instruction is unambiguous: the seller should remove the license plates from the vehicle before allowing the buyer to take possession of the vehicle. There is no version of this where they stay screwed to the bumper for the drive home.
Then one of two things. Move them onto a replacement vehicle you own, using a License Plate Application with the transfer box ticked - or give them up. DMV's plate page opens with the demand: if you have sold, traded or no longer operate your vehicle, Virginia law requires you to immediately surrender your license plates and/or vehicle registration to DMV.
The buyer is not stranded by this. Virginia titles and registers in the same transaction, and a buyer who completes the registration blocks on the back of the certificate walks out of a customer service center with plates of their own. Passenger registration on the DMV 201 fee chart is $30.75 up to 4,000 lbs and $35.75 from 4,001 to 6,500 lbs.
Three ways to give them up, and they are not equivalent. Online Plate Surrender is the fastest and gives up any refund. Handing them in at a customer service center or posting them with an FMS 210 keeps the refund alive - but only where six full months or more are left on the registration, because no refunds are made if less than 6 full months remain in the registration period.
Virginia does want to hear from you, and the duty sits in an unexpected place. Section 46.2-604 is the section describing what a registration card contains, and buried in it is the seller's obligation: whenever a Virginia-registered motor vehicle is sold or its ownership otherwise transferred, the seller or transferor shall notify the Department of the sale or transfer by completing the appropriate portion of the registration card. DMV also takes it online, by telephone or at a counter, and states plainly that notifying DMV is required by law.
What that section does next is the part nobody mentions. It ends with the sentence Section 46.2-113 shall not apply to failures to provide such notification - and 46.2-113 is the general penalty for breaking Title 46.2, a traffic infraction carrying a Class 4 misdemeanour fine. Virginia has written a duty and then switched the punishment off. No deadline in days appears anywhere in the chapter either. That makes this the one piece of a Virginia sale nobody will chase you for, and the one piece that decides whether DMV's record still says the car is yours.
Take the plates off the record before you ring the insurer, not after.
DMV spells out the failure mode itself: insurance companies notify DMV when they cancel coverage, so if your insurer drops a vehicle that is still registered in your name, the department's records show a registered, uninsured vehicle and DMV may suspend your driver's license and vehicle registration privileges. Section 46.2-707 sets the price of getting that wrong at a noncompliance fee of $600 before your licence comes back. Surrender or deactivate first, then cancel. Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, registration cancellation.
Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, private party registration
Register at a DMV customer service center or a DMV Select, the local-government offices that run vehicle transactions on DMV's behalf within 30 days of the purchase. Virginia charges Motor Vehicle Sales and Use Tax rather than ordinary sales tax, and it lands on the buyer at titling. DMV's rate page states it flatly: Virginia is required to collect a 4.15% Sales and Use Tax at the time of titling whenever a vehicle is sold, and the amount due is based on the vehicle's gross sales price, or $75, whichever is greater. On a cheap car the floor bites - anything selling under about eighteen hundred dollars is taxed at the minimum. The certificate itself costs $15.00 on the DMV 201 fee chart, the same figure whether it is an original, a substitute or a replacement. The $2.00 beside it is the registration transfer fee and has nothing to do with the title.
What they need to bring:
Virginia runs an annual safety inspection through the State Police, not through DMV, and the duty attaches to whoever is driving the car. DMV's instruction lands squarely on the buyer: before operating a vehicle in Virginia, it must pass an annual safety inspection and display a valid safety inspection sticker. Nothing in the transfer requires a current sticker, and nothing stops you selling a car whose sticker ran out last winter.
Questions about the safety inspection itself go to the Virginia State Police on (804) 674-2000, because DMV does not run that programme. Virginia DMV, Buying/Selling a Vehicle.
Virginia Department 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 Virginia and the rest of the guides.