Sell your car in Roanoke: running or not, with rust or a salvage title
Get an instant offer online, and free pickup comes to your address anywhere in the Roanoke Valley. One local step comes after the sale. The City of Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem each tax cars on their own, and the office on your last car-tax bill is the one to tell.
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Three steps, with a DMV stop only if the title needs one
- 1. Get the instant offer. Describe the car online. The offer is priced against national demand. Rust still gets a number, though structural rust lowers it more than surface scale, and a salvage or rebuilt title usually still gets an offer, at a discount.
- 2. Fix the title first if it needs it. Roanoke's DMV Select, inside the City Treasurer's Office in the Noel C. Taylor Municipal Building, handles replacement titles weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. It doesn't issue driver's licenses. The DMV customer service center at 5220 Valleypark Drive is open weekdays 8 to 5 and Saturdays 8 to noon, by appointment, reserved spot or walk-in.
- 3. We drive to you. A Raleigh Court driveway or a gravel lane off 220 gets the same service.
Where we pick up around Roanoke
Pickup covers the valley, not just the city limits: downtown (24011), Raleigh Court and Grandin Village (24015), Salem (24153), Vinton, and Roanoke County from Cave Spring to Hollins. Beyond the county it runs up to Daleville, out to Rocky Mount, and down US-460 to Christiansburg and Blacksburg. Distance from downtown doesn't shrink the offer; just give the exact address where the car sits.
A dead car on the street is on a short clock. City Code 20-75 bars leaving a disabled or unlicensed car on a street for more than 24 hours, and under Code 20-101 and 20-102 an inoperable car left on public property for more than 48 hours counts as abandoned, which the city can take into custody. On your own property, the seven-day notice above applies instead. In snow the city asks residents to park in driveways anyway, so plows can clear the street.
Cash for your car in Roanoke
Junk cars in Roanoke fall under City Code Chapter 20, Article VI. A car kept on private property must show a valid license plate and an inspection decal no more than 60 days out of date, and it must be drivable. One car that fails that test may stay outside if a solid fence or evergreen planting hides it from anyone standing outside the property. A tarp over it doesn't count.
Once the city posts a written notice, the property owner has seven calendar days to remove the car, fix it, or appeal to the city manager. After that, the city can have it towed to an impound lot, charge the cost to the car's owner or the property owner, and make that cost a lien on the property. Selling the car and getting it off the property within those seven days satisfies the notice. Pickup comes to you, and our junk car page explains how a sale works when the car won't run.
If the insurer declared it a total loss after an accident, our guide to selling a totaled car walks through buying it back and the salvage title that follows. When the engine or transmission is why it won't run, read selling a car with an overheating engine and selling a car whose transmission slips or shifts hard, which weigh fixing it against selling it as is.
Closing out your City of Roanoke car tax
- •Tell the Commissioner of the Revenue within 30 days of selling. The office is in Room 251 of the Noel C. Taylor Municipal Building, 215 Church Ave. SW, open weekdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., (540) 853-2521 (Personal Property Tax; Commissioner of the Revenue)
- •The tax is prorated by the number of months the car was kept in the city. Bills go out in April and are due May 31 (Buying or Selling a Vehicle)
- •The rate is $3.45 per $100 of assessed value, and the assessment uses the vehicle's loan value in the N.A.D.A. guide (Personal Property Tax)
- •For 2026, Roanoke applies state tax relief of 41.26% to a qualifying personal car, up to its first $20,000 of value (Personal Property Tax; Tax Relief)
- •Unpaid car tax is reported to DMV, which blocks registration renewal until it's paid, and the city adds $25 per vehicle (Personal Property Tax)
Asked by Roanoke sellers
My address says Roanoke, but I live in Cave Spring or Hollins. Who do I tell about the sale?
Roanoke County's Commissioner of the Revenue, not the city's. Cave Spring and Hollins are two of the county's five districts, with Catawba, Windsor Hills and Vinton, and even the county's Administration Center at 5204 Bernard Drive has a Roanoke, VA 24018 address. Report the sale within 30 days at (540) 772-2046 or personalproperty@roanokecountyva.gov. The county says this is your job, not the dealer's or the new owner's. In the Town of Vinton you also pay town taxes, to the Town Treasurer at 311 S. Pollard Street (540-983-0608).
I live in Salem. What does Salem want after I sell?
Salem's Commissioner of the Revenue, at City Hall, 114 N. Broad Street, asks you to fill out its Vehicle Deletion Form when you sell, give away or junk a vehicle (540-375-3019). Update your DMV record as well. Salem says DMV updates its records every January.
What papers does the city want before it adjusts my car-tax bill?
The City of Roanoke Commissioner of the Revenue lists it by case. Traded through a dealership or junked at a junkyard: a bill of sale. Declared a total loss after an accident or theft: the insurance company's letter of loss. If the car had high miles, you can also send proof of the mileage close to January 1, such as an oil change or inspection record. Email it to personal.property@roanokeva.gov.
Will an old car worth under $1,000 still get a city tax bill?
Only for the license tax. For a qualifying personal vehicle assessed at $1,000 or less, the city says the personal property tax has been eliminated, with the state paying its full share. The $28 license tax still applies: City Code 20-28 sets it for each passenger car and truck under 10,000 pounds, and the city says it isn't prorated or transferable to another vehicle.
How to sign the title, what to do with the plates and how to file DMV’s sale notice are on our Virginia page.