We publish 50-state studies of car paperwork that nobody else compiles, each one read at the agency that sets the rule. All of it is free to use — the charts too — with credit and a link. The CSVs are below, and so is the email of a person who will answer.
Use any of it, including the charts, in anything you publish — print, broadcast, online, commercial or not. We ask for two things, and they are the whole licence: credit sellmycarhub.com, and link to the page the data came from so your readers can check it. You do not need to ask permission and you do not need to tell us, though we like hearing about it.
If you need a cut of the data we have not published — one state, one region, a different breakdown, the underlying quotes — email tom@mail.sellmycarhub.com and you will get it. There is no embargo and nothing is exclusive.
How much paperwork each state puts on a private car seller · as of August 2026
All 50 states scored on five rules a seller actually has to follow. Louisiana asks the most. The finding under the ranking: 17 states publish no notice-of-sale form at all, but in eight of those the licence plate is the filing — so the protection exists in all fifty states and only 22 of them call it a form.
Read the study Download the CSV Get the chart
The component facts are each state agency’s own and are linked per state. The weighting is ours, it is an editorial judgement, and it is published on the page and shipped in the CSV so you can change it and re-rank.
How long the title actually takes, in each agency’s own words · as of 2026-08-30
The same document takes 24–48 hours in Tennessee and forty to fifty calendar days in New Hampshire. Sixteen states publish no figure on their titling pages at all, and fourteen sell a fast lane most people never hear about.
Read the study Download the CSV Get the chart
Every figure is quoted verbatim with the scope the agency itself gave it — a duplicate-title figure is never presented as a transfer figure. Deadlines to apply are a different fact and are not mixed in.
The damage level at which a car is legally totalled · as of 2026-08-30
28 states set a number — 60% to 100% of the car’s value. The other 22 set no percentage at all and leave it to the insurer’s determination.
Read the study Download the CSV Get the chart
Each threshold is quoted from the statute or the titling agency that sets it. Useful after a flood or a hailstorm, which is when the question is actually asked.
Any of these is fine:
“The Red Tape Index, sellmycarhub.com, as of August 2026.”
“According to an analysis of all fifty state motor-vehicle agencies by sellmycarhub.com …”
Every study page carries a visible “last updated” date that is
the page’s own dateModified, never today’s. When a
state changes a rule, the row changes and that date moves with it — so
the date you cite is a real one.
Every figure is read from the agency that sets it — the state motor-vehicle department, the department of revenue, the county office or the statute — and quoted with the scope that agency gave it. Nothing is taken from a summary site, an aggregator, or another comparison page, because those are where the transplanted errors come from.
Where a state publishes nothing, we record that as the finding rather than filling the gap with an estimate. Sixteen states publishing no title timeframe is the result. Where an agency’s site refuses automated requests, the page was read in a browser and the row says so.
We also publish what we could not establish. If a fact is not on any form, we go to the statute; if it is not there either, the row says unresolved.
Tell us and we will fix the page, not argue with you. Email tom@mail.sellmycarhub.com with the state and the source, and if you are right the row changes the same day and the study’s date moves.
This matters more to us than it might sound. We contact people to tell them a link on their site has gone dead, which only works if we are right every single time — one wrong correction and we become the site that sends fake ones. The same standard applies to everything above.
sellmycarhub.com helps people sell their cars. We are not a government agency, we are not affiliated with any state motor-vehicle department, and we are not lawyers — nothing here is legal advice. We make money when someone sells a car through us, which is worth knowing when you read anything we publish. It is also why we built the paperwork library: it is the part of selling a car that nobody had written down properly.
Press contact: Tom White, tom@mail.sellmycarhub.com. Replies are from a person, usually the same day.
