Learn me being a used car dealer.

Flight Service wrote:

Duke wrote: You can sell them or buy them. You just can't register them. Besides, I'm not arguing the justice or injustice of the law. The justness of the law is, frankly, irrelevant. It's still the law. By my estimation, 78% of federal laws are unjust, idiotic, or unnecessary. Does that mean I get to unilaterally decide they don't apply to me?!

That is the problem. In SC, you have to change the title to your name to be able to say you own it and therefor sell it. Yeah, my property, I paid the taxes they require on every single one. It is against the states own interests to for me not to title it. They had no legal ground to seize the vehicle (the law does not state a penalty for going over the limit. Little hint: BS laws are set to pander are the ones with no penalty) They had no legal ground to refuse anything. I am a car guy. There are people on here who buy more than X number of cars a year because they like cars. The level of E36 M3 seizing that vehicle would have caused is beyond anything any DMV ever wants to deal with. And berkeley all you all that thought them seizing the car was the right thing to do.

I didn't say they had the right to seize it. As far as I read, nobody said that your car should have been seized. I said they had the right to remove it from State property if you refused to do so yourself. That's not a penalty for "going over the limit"; that "penalty" is nothing more than the DMV declining to register the vehicle. If they towed it, it would merely be dealing with an abandoned vehicle on state property. You had every opportunity to take your car home with you - it just wouldn't be registered, which means legally, you would have to get it towed, or risk a ticket for driving an unregistered vehicle.

Again, I'm not arguing the justness of the law itself. I'm arguing that you were being a dick for deciding that the law didn't apply to you because it was inconvenient.

You basically browbeat a conscientious civil servant into breaking the law for you in order to avoid having her day ruined even further than it already was just by clocking in at the DMV that morning.

Forgive me for not recognizing that as a moral victory through civil disobedience. From this side of the internet, it just sounds like you were being a dick.

How to become a used car dealer: First you need to sacrifice two goats, use their blood to draw a pentagram on the ground...

Datsun1500 wrote:

Duke wrote: In reply to Flight Service: Actually, Legal Option 4 could have always been, "No, sir, you cannot be exempt from the law. I cannot register this car to you as a private citizen and you refuse to meet the requirements of a dealership. Therefore, kindly have your unregistered vehicle towed from State property, or we will have it removed for you." Although you were polite about it, you were still kind of being a dick.

But why does the State have the right to say I can't sell my own property? If I put a car in my name in MD I need to pay 6% tax on it, so they get their money. What if I buy a car, don't want it, and sell at a loss? Do that 4 times a year and I'm now I'm a dealer? I currently have 9 cars titled to me I can't sell all 9 and buy 9 more? Why not, it's my stuff?

Look at it this way. Vehicles are expensive, complex, highly mobile things that can be put together out of other vehicles. It's pretty easy for someone knowledgable to take advantage of others by fixing them up just enough to get through a test drive, or to build one with stolen parts. There are also potential advertising and bait-and-switch scams. So it's probably a reasonable plan to try to at least hold those who sell vehicles accountable by ensuring that they're bonded, that they have an actual place of business, that they can be reached, that they know the laws and that they actually have the cars they're advertising.

In other words, licensed dealers. Not to protect The Dealership Industry, but to protect the buying public.

Individuals, of course, are likely to sell a car or two every year. So there's a line somewhere between "dealer" and "private sale". The easiest way to draw that line is by frequency.

Voila.

Ah nuts, my tinfoil hat isn't fitting properly. My apologies.

Datsun1500 wrote: There are just under 18,000 franchised dealers in the USA and just at 24,000 non franchised stores. No where close to "hundreds of thousands" Most people think there are more than there are.

IBISWorld reports 132,965 used car dealerships in the US.

http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/default.aspx?indid=1004

Don't know where you got your numbers from (though they look like the NADA 2013 report), but it didn't include non-franchised used car dealerships.

Thanks for the info and personal experiences shared so far guys, giving me lots to chew on here. Keep it coming

Keith Tanner wrote:

Datsun1500 wrote:

Duke wrote: In reply to Flight Service: Actually, Legal Option 4 could have always been, "No, sir, you cannot be exempt from the law. I cannot register this car to you as a private citizen and you refuse to meet the requirements of a dealership. Therefore, kindly have your unregistered vehicle towed from State property, or we will have it removed for you." Although you were polite about it, you were still kind of being a dick.

But why does the State have the right to say I can't sell my own property? If I put a car in my name in MD I need to pay 6% tax on it, so they get their money. What if I buy a car, don't want it, and sell at a loss? Do that 4 times a year and I'm now I'm a dealer? I currently have 9 cars titled to me I can't sell all 9 and buy 9 more? Why not, it's my stuff?

Look at it this way. Vehicles are expensive, complex, highly mobile things that can be put together out of other vehicles. It's pretty easy for someone knowledgable to take advantage of others by fixing them up just enough to get through a test drive, or to build one with stolen parts. There are also potential advertising and bait-and-switch scams. So it's probably a reasonable plan to try to at least hold those who sell vehicles accountable by ensuring that they're bonded, that they have an actual place of business, that they can be reached, that they know the laws and that they actually have the cars they're advertising. In other words, licensed dealers. Not to protect The Dealership Industry, but to protect the buying public. Individuals, of course, are likely to sell a car or two every year. So there's a line somewhere between "dealer" and "private sale". The easiest way to draw that line is by frequency. Voila. Ah nuts, my tinfoil hat isn't fitting properly. My apologies.

Nope. Goverment regulation is only there to screw us! /sarcasm

Datsun1500 wrote: In reply to foxtrapper: IBIBWorld counts wholesalers as dealers for some reason. According to them they are dealers since they sell used vehicles.

I don't think so. They list the 5,615 wholesalers (by their count) in the supply chain, which is a different category and different report.

Datsun1500 wrote:

calteg wrote: They probably don't. There are literally hundreds of thousands of dealerships across the U.S. I can't think of a more highly fragmented industry. Nevermind the fact that any private party selling a car is technically "competition."

There are just under 18,000 franchised dealers in the USA and just at 24,000 non franchised stores. No where close to "hundreds of thousands" Most people think there are more than there are.

Depends on your source and how they're aggregating dealerships. Autonation has ~280 stores, CarMax has ~150. Sounds like your source is counting those as two dealerships, instead of the 430 physical locations that actually exist.

Keith Tanner wrote:

Datsun1500 wrote:

Duke wrote: In reply to Flight Service: Actually, Legal Option 4 could have always been, "No, sir, you cannot be exempt from the law. I cannot register this car to you as a private citizen and you refuse to meet the requirements of a dealership. Therefore, kindly have your unregistered vehicle towed from State property, or we will have it removed for you." Although you were polite about it, you were still kind of being a dick.

But why does the State have the right to say I can't sell my own property? If I put a car in my name in MD I need to pay 6% tax on it, so they get their money. What if I buy a car, don't want it, and sell at a loss? Do that 4 times a year and I'm now I'm a dealer? I currently have 9 cars titled to me I can't sell all 9 and buy 9 more? Why not, it's my stuff?

Look at it this way. Vehicles are expensive, complex, highly mobile things that can be put together out of other vehicles. It's pretty easy for someone knowledgable to take advantage of others by fixing them up just enough to get through a test drive, or to build one with stolen parts. There are also potential advertising and bait-and-switch scams. So it's probably a reasonable plan to try to at least hold those who sell vehicles accountable by ensuring that they're bonded, that they have an actual place of business, that they can be reached, that they know the laws and that they actually have the cars they're advertising. In other words, licensed dealers. Not to protect The Dealership Industry, but to protect the buying public. Individuals, of course, are likely to sell a car or two every year. So there's a line somewhere between "dealer" and "private sale". The easiest way to draw that line is by frequency. Voila. Ah nuts, my tinfoil hat isn't fitting properly. My apologies.

I agree with that, to a point. But let's not pretend that businesses don't do everything they can to give themselves an advantage. And that larger, more powerful businesses or groups of businesses do influence government policy through donations and lobbying. It's just a fact. Ask Tesla about selling cars straight to consumers in Texas and Michigan.

This was touched on earlier, but overlooked...

I am pretty sure there are no quantities of purchases that define that you must be a licensed dealer. You don't get a free pass to sell up to a certain limit before needing a license.

Technically, if you purchase a car with intent to resell it, you are in the business of selling cars.

The state isn't trying to nanny you, they are trying to collect taxes. Dealers are the vehicle through which they do this most successfully.

As far as I am aware, the state laws generally say hitting a limit can be used as evidence that you ARE in the business of selling cars, but it doesn't limit the state from using other methods to prove it.

It's just a thought. I know- pretty unlikely you'd get caught. But if you want to protect your business activities, I think it is important that you understand the differences.

YMMV.

Datsun1500 wrote: Either those 3 sites have horrible salespeople, or there are not as many stores as you think.

It's the former. Autotrader and carfax are the easiest to see this with. Zoom in on your own neighborhood and notice how few of the car dealerships in the area are on either site. Notice how many are in one, but not both (in my case, no local dealership lists in both).