Replacing a lost car title in Massachusetts
Massachusetts replaces a title for $25 and quotes about ten business days — quick, provided no old lien is sitting on the record.
What Massachusetts charges
The replacement title fee is $25. Ordered online through the RMV portal or by mail to the Title Division in Boston; allow up to 10 business days. A paid-off lien still on the record requires an original signed lien-release letter on lienholder letterhead.
That figure comes from Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV), read from its own page and current as of August 2026. The hub compares all fifty states if you want to see where Massachusetts sits — the spread runs from $5 to $101, which is wider than most people expect for the same piece of paper.
The part that catches people out
Applications go through the RMV portal or by post to the Title Division in Boston, and the RMV asks for up to ten business days. That is among the shorter waits in the country, and it makes Massachusetts one of the states where replacing first and selling second is a realistic plan rather than a month lost.
Massachusetts TTL117: Duplicate Title Application, with every box filled in
That is the document Massachusetts wants, and we publish a worked example of it: Massachusetts TTL117: Duplicate Title Application.
The exception is a paid-off lien that was never cleared from the record. Massachusetts wants an original signed lien-release letter on the lienholder’s own letterhead — not a photocopy, not a screenshot of a payoff statement. Obtaining that from a bank that has since been absorbed by another is the part that turns ten business days into two months.
Related: what a replacement title costs in every state, and why the wait matters more than the fee · every Massachusetts form a seller meets · selling a car in Massachusetts.
Sources
- Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) — replacement title fee — Where the Massachusetts figure of $25 was read, current as of August 2026
- Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) — agency home — The agency that issues Massachusetts titles