How to buy a car for a road trip in the United States?

Tourists can easily buy a car in the US for a road trip – registration and insurance are the tricky parts.

(Full disclosure: my company, visitor.us, helps international visitors buy, register, and insure vehicles as an alternative to renting.)

Each state has its own laws for vehicle registration. For instance, Tennessee requires proof of Tennessee residency to register a car, while Georgia requires a Georgia driver’s license.

To help navigate these laws, we published a Free Guide that explains the process for buying, registering, and insuring a vehicle in 20 of the most-visited US states.

In order to register a car – in any state – you must have an address there.

You can use a friend’s house, but use caution when using an AirBnB address. As of 2019, many insurance companies screen for short-term rentals, asking for electricity bills or other proof of residence for policies that use a known short-term rental address.

DON’T DO THIS! With a ton of effort we did it and now the guy who did the RA with us is in serious trouble! It’s hard to accept but you can’t buy and register a car in the US legal as a tourist. Or at least this way isn’t a legal way. We got a lot of problems because of this description how to do it…

First off, don’t let anyone tell you it’s not worth it: you can find cheap cars that are very likely to keep running for a the duration of your trip. They won’t be in the best shape, but that’s true of buying second hand cars in general. If you are under 25 years of age, car rental will be very expensive and buying is (in my opinion) the better option.

When buying a cheap car, consider the total value as lost: anything you get back when you sell it is nice, but don’t be too disappointed if you can’t get your expected money back.

• 1) Check out the DMV (department of motor vehicles) regulations for the state you want to buy your car in. The requirements are different in every state. Florida and Georgia, for example require that you have a drivers license from that state. You may be eligible for one, but a drivers test or additional information may be required. All requirements per state are listed on http://DMV.org (not a government website but accurate). I personally flew to Virginia as they do not require a local drivers license. As the state is on the East Coast, I’d say it’s a great start for a road trip!

• 2) Find an address. This is where you’ll register the car. I asked my Airbnb host whether I could use hers. There is no risk for the address owner, but you need consent, partly because there will be mail going to this address.

• 3) Get proof of address. For example, Google “rental agreement example” and fill it out for your name and the address you’ve arranged. You need this proof for the DMV.

• 4) Get a means of payment. If you want to pay for your car in cash, you’ll need to withdraw that. I personally opened a local bank account, wired in money, then withdrew it. Just walk into any bank, and use your new US address as the mailing address when signing up. Opening a bank account takes about ten minutes. Note: the bank will not let you withdraw your wire transfer in the first week after receiving it, as the foreign bank is still able to withdraw it. Allow for a week’s margin there (this bit me!).

• 5) Find a car! You can go to any car dealer that you think is trustworthy enough. Try to get someone to refer you to a good one that they’ve dealt with before. The dealer will give you the title to the car. This is the proof of ownership for the car, not the registration with the state.

• 6) The dealership may give you temporary registration, good for 30 days, or if it’s a small dealer, they may not be able to. If they do, the DMV system will ask them for the number of your drivers license (which you may or may not have). The application will go true just fine if you just have them put in your name.

• 7) Insure your car before you drive anywhere. This is a legal requirement! I called an insurance broker that charges a fee to find you the cheapest insurance option (adding the name as requested: “Right Answer Insurance”. They speak English and Spanish, you can sign all paperwork electronically and they know not to connect you to insurance companies that won’t insure foreigners). Through this party (or by directly calling an insurance agency) you can arrange your insurance over the phone. You’ll be emailed a “proof of insurance”: with that, you can legally drive. Note that as you don’t have a driving history in the US, insurance might be more expensive than it is at home. Expect upward of $150/month if you are under 25 (still way cheaper than what a rental company would charge).

• 8) Register your car at a DMV location. Any major city will have multiple. Get in line, tell them you want to register a car, and wait for your turn. In Virginia, you’ll be asked for a social security number or Virginia drivers license, but if you don’t have either, that’s fine. The dealership has given you the title when you bought the car. The DMV will take it and issue you a new one in your name. You’ll also pay sales tax (varies per state) of a couple percent of the sales value (4% in Virginia).

• 9) You’ll receive the new title, two license plates and a proof of registration from the DMV. With that, your drivers license and the proof insurance, you can go on your road trip!

As requested, how to sell your car:

• 1) First, make sure your car can be legally sold in the state you are in. There are state by state differences. For example, if you sell to a private person in California, your car must be smog-tested.

• 2) The new title you’ve received from the DMV must be filled out (by you) when you sell it. Make sure you complete all the fields and the buyer signs it. People that intent to resell the car might try to have you skip fields so they can have the next buyer sign the title (with the intent of skipping sales tax). Don’t be a part of that, it’s not legal. The buyer takes the title, you take your money. If you don’t feel comfortable selling to a private person, try to sell to a dealer. If you’re about to leave the country and need to sell your car at the last minute, you can go to a CarMax (I don’t mean to advertise but this is a practical tip, and they are nation wide): they’ll make you an offer on the car and you can sell it there and then.

• 3) You must remove the license plates off of your car. These identify you as the owner, which you no longer are after you’ve sold it. You don’t want someone driving around pretending to be you.

• 4) Call your insurance company and cancel your insurance.

• 5) Call the DMV in the state where you bought and registered your car to tell them you’ve sold it. If you are (back) in that state, you can go hand in your plates and get a minor refund (all though I’d keep them as a souvenir!).

When to do this:

A bank account is not the only way to get a larger sum of cash. You could get the cash before flying to the US at your local bank, or use a service like Western Union. Neither of those would take for than 30 minutes. Going to a car dealer, checking out and test driving a car took me about two hours. Getting insurance took me 40 minutes on the phone. The DMV wasn’t busy, I spend approximately 20 minutes in there. If you start in the morning, the whole thing can easily be done in a day.

As for minimum trip length, I’d compare to the price of a rental car, including the fees for dropping of in a different location. Consider the budget for the car, the sales tax, and the insurance. I wouldn’t go through the trouble for a two week trip, but if you’re visiting for a month it’s worth it, in my opinion.