how do you find out # of owners?

bell · bell's Garage

how do you find out how many previous owners there are to a car?
seems to be the most popular question i've been getting for my 911.
any thoughts? i hate dealing with the ohio DMV

tmctguer · tmctguer's Garage

this is a difficult issue to solve. if the car was regularly serviced at a porsche dealer, they usually keep records of who owned the car when service was performed. however, in my case, they were unwilling to release names, only the service history.

i did a VIN search on the website that allows you to search for smogs, lemons, salvage titles, etc. (name of the site escapes me at the moment). i did it a few ways -- changing zeroes to the letter O -- and i was able to put together a reasonable history of the state in which the car was registered. i then contacted each DMV and asked for previous ownership information. each state's disclosure laws vary, so you may not be able to obtain info this way.

all told, i was able to reasonably put together a record of ownership for my '89 speedster. good luck !

GSpreeman · GSpreeman's Garage

Carfax should be able to supply details of where the car was registered. Give those offices a ring and see if you can do some social navigation.

bell · bell's Garage

thanks for the info, i'm going to try carfax first to see what i can come up with.
thanks again

chuckw951 · 10-31-2002, 06:41 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by bell
how do you find out how many previous owners there are to a car?
seems to be the most popular question i've been getting for my 911.
any thoughts? i hate dealing with the ohio DMV

I traced the ownership of my 911E and the 914 I had before that.

I both cases I filled out paper work and mailed it to the DMV offices (PA, MD, OR) with a check. After about 2 months I was sent a record of the info they had on file back to the 1980s. I think that paper records before then have been purged.

In your case I think CARFAX should have some info, though I suspect some states keep better records than others.

BTW, going through the DMV can provide more information. Doing it that way you may be able to find out things like how much the car was reportedly sold for (or in my case the sales tax paid, which with some simple math yields the reported sale price), the inspection receipts (required in MD) and other pieces of info. Sometimes you can find out who owned the car before. Most of the time that is blacked out, though in PA the records indicated the previous owners names. I didn't call them though, didn't want to bug anybody...

Samokin · 10-31-2002, 09:52 AM

CarFax should be able to help you out. It will show you every time the title has changed hands regardless of state. You're out of luck if you are importing it from out of the country. One thing to remember when checking their report though... CarFax shows every time the title changes hands... That means bank OR borrower. You might have a two owner car where posession has changed 4 times. For instance, the original owner gets a loan to buy the car. The title is then recorded with a lien in the bank's favor. When that customer pays it off, they will get (can get) a free and clear title. This will show up as two transactions on carfax. If the second owner goes through this same drill it will look like the car has had four owners on the CarFax report. The CarFax report gives a lot of good information but you need to decipher it correctly.

Good Luck!