Pennsylvania: Trace Vehicle Sales?

What did you get back from carfax...?

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- gpsman

Doesn't Carfax develop precisely this kind of information. Well, they will have the dates of the transfer and the mileage at the time, but not the amount of sale or the participants in the transfer. You will learn the city, perhaps, that the vehicle was taken to for the various DMV transactions.

Per Jeff Strickland:

The amount is the center of interest in this case.

Somebody sent me a link to Penna's "Freedom Of Information Request" form for motor vehicles and it looked promising until I read the instructions, which specifically said that sale amounts were considered confidential and would not be divulged.

I cannot imagine that prior sales prices are anything that anybody thinks somebody else needs to know.

If I bought it for $1000 and sold it for $1500, all you know is that I sold it for $500 more than I paid, but you don't know that I spent $ 750, so I lost $250 on the deal. What difference does a prior sale have on the sale you entered into? The fact that you live in San Diego and the car came from Bangor might be useful to you, or that the mileage on 01/11 was 75,000, but on 01/12 was 72,000 might be important to somebody. But the fact that Bill bought it for a price and sold it for a higher price means nothing to anybody.

Would sale price even be recorded anywhere, other than by the seller and buyer.

I do not believe that dealers report the sale price of a vehicle you buy to anyone.

If I buy a vehicle from a private party, I get a signed off title that I take to the DMV and transfer. If I sell a vehicle to a private party, I sign off on the back of the title and give it to the buyer. I'm supposed to report to the DMV that I sold the vehicle, but that is all. No one tells the DMV (or anyone else) how much money changed hands.

This is, of course, how it happens in Oregon. I suppose other states could have other requirements.

Per David Chamberlain:

Pennsylvania collects a tax on the sale. The tax is a percent of the selling price.

OTOH, I suspect that dealer-to-dealer transactions don't pay the tax and, therefore, might not record the price.

IIRC, at least here in AZ, there is a provision in the law so that you can get at that info IF it's for a lawsuit. You may have to hire a lawyer in order to make it happen.... Don't believe any "instructions" provided by the MVD but go back and look at the actual law, lots of times what they publish is self serving BS to simplify their job.

Insurance agents may be privy to that info... if you are friendly enough with yours... -----

- gpsman

NC also collects a "highway use tax" each time the title transfers.

Going back to your original post, not sure why you need past cost history on the vehicle, I doubt that you're responsible for paying the tax on other people's sales.

The Sales Price is collected in my state because the dollar amount is used to collect a tax. Of course, there is a huge Honor System in effect, nobody knows that the sales price reported and the actual sales price have any relationship to one another.

Insurance agents may be privy to that info... if you are friendly enough with yours... -----

My insurance company only cares that they properly value my vehicle, they don't care how it was valued for somebody else. Even the bank that owns the note -- if there is one -- only cares that the value of the security (the vehicle) is high enough to cover the note should they come take the security back if I don't make the payments they expect.

CarFax knows as much as there is to know, and they only know what everybody bothers to put into the database.

The VIN is reported, and then the reason for listing the VIN again is reported, and this is all compiled and sold to you later if you pay the fee for the report.

A car is sold, the VIN goes in with the date and the transaction, ie;

11/26/2001, San Diego, Registration transfer. There will be a date close by with the smog report. Then after a periood of time, there might be another entry for an accident, then an entry for transfer of title to the auction house, then transfer to a dealer that bought at auction, then another for the inspection that puts the vehicle back on the road, then another for the transfer to the current owner, and so on.

As the vehicle goes through life, service facilities might collect the VIN and report the service done, or not the actual work, but the fact that service of some sort was done, and list the mileage. When the smog check is performed, there is an entry for the service that includes the date and mileage. Some shops will report an oil change with the date and mileage. In a perfect world, the dates and mileage reports go up in at reasnoable increments, and the reports of Auction Sale are minimal, and there should never be a report of Salvage, or equivelent.

I didn't mean to suggest an insurance agent would have any interest, just that they can have liberal access to state records.

If by chance previous owners had the same insurer, their names might be available.

The original dealer definitely has a record of the sale they might be persuaded to dig out, depending, and for all we know it was traded in to and resold by the same dealer.

I think you might be surprised at the information available if one is sufficiently motivated to "investigate". -----

- gpsman.

I didn't mean to suggest an insurance agent would have any interest, just that they can have liberal access to state records.

If by chance previous owners had the same insurer, their names might be available.

The original dealer definitely has a record of the sale they might be persuaded to dig out, depending, and for all we know it was traded in to and resold by the same dealer.

I think you might be surprised at the information available if one is sufficiently motivated to "investigate". -----

Asking what a car sold for is akin to asking how much you make.

Yes, your boss most certainly knows how much you make, but the next guy that walks in the door to do your job has no business knowing what they paid the last guy, and if they hire somebody to help you, neither your nor he (or she) needs to know what the other makes. Your boss might think you are next to worthless and that you have a shitty attitude, so he pays you $10 per hour, but the guy across the table that does exactly the same job is a wonderful human being and he gets paid $15. You have no business knowing what anybody gets paid, or that you get a box of Sees candy for Christmas and the other guy got a trip to Sandals. I don't give a rat's ass that this is not fair, it is life. Get used to it.

There is nobody anywhere that will tell you the sales price of a car that was sold to somebody else. Period. Even if they have the records on a vehicle they sold 10 years ago, and they happen to have taken the vehicle in on trade for each of the successive transfers, they are not going to be pursuaded to tell you what the sales prices was.

But, if the car was sold repeatedly through private party trasnactions, nobody is going to track the sales prices. And if the state bothers to collect the price data so it can charge a sales tax, then you can be almost

100% certain that both parties of the transaction agree to pass far more cash across the table than is written on the transfer documents, so any number you get this way is meaningless for any practical purpose.

That's very imaginative, but nonsensical.

Your life may be ruled by irrelevant non sequitur, that doesn't mean everyone's is.

I sold my 'vette for $55.5K.

When I was a used manager I would have told anyone anything not confidential for $100.

Your degree/s of absolute certainty/s regarding things you could not possibly know are indicative of ignorance and stupidity, not knowledge.

Must be nice... -----

- gpsman

That's very imaginative, but nonsensical.

Your life may be ruled by irrelevant non sequitur, that doesn't mean everyone's is.

I sold my 'vette for $55.5K.

When I was a used manager I would have told anyone anything not confidential for $100.

Your degree/s of absolute certainty/s regarding things you could not possibly know are indicative of ignorance and stupidity, not knowledge.

Must be nice...

++++++++++++++++++ Yeah, it must be nice to apply your personal individual experience to the broader marketplace.

The fact remains that CarFax does not track sales price of the transactions, although it does track the date, place, and mileage, and what kind of transaction initiated the entry.

In conversation, you might tell your beer drinking pals that you bought your car for $30,000 and sold it for $50,000, but when you are selling the car you are not gonna tell the buyer that you got it for free and are selling it to finance your retirement. You are not gonna tell a buyer, 'yeah, we just got this baby in last week from auction for ten grand, and we'll let you have it for twenty.' You are gonna tell them, 'here's a dandy car that you can have for twenty large,' and then negotiate down to fifteen and never tell the buyer you are walking away from the deal 5,000 richer.

The state is not gonna have any role in that. Nobody needs to know, but YOU can take out a full page newspaper ad if you want. What you do and what The System does is seldom the same thing. YOU can tell anybody anything you want, but the system does not track sales amounts. Buy a clue...

For the record, you should not talk to your co-workers what your commission splits are. You might have better splits than they do, and the news that you are getting a better deal than they get can cause disharmony on the sales lot. Just so you know.

The OP is not gonna find a central location to see what the sales prices were for the car he bought, or was considering buying. That's the point here. The pricing data is not collected or tracked. I happen to think there is a privacy issue in this, you don't seem to care. So be it, but this does not change the fact that the OP is not gonna find out what the car sold for as it passed from buyer ot buyer before he got to it. He will only know what he paid, unless he buys from you then he might know what you paid also.