Santa Clara's three-day rule and your dead car

How Santa Clara abates a car

Santa Clara's council adopted these rules under Vehicle Code 22660, the state section that lets a city declare broken-down cars a public nuisance. Everything after that runs on mailed letters.

• Two letters go out. The landowner gets one; whoever is on record as the car's last registered owner gets the other. Both say the city has ruled the car a nuisance.
• 10 days to ask for a hearing. In Santa Clara the land owner "may, within 10 (ten) days after the mailing of this notice of intention, request a public hearing." An abandoned vehicle appeals officer hears the case.
• 12 days if nobody asks. The car can be disposed of "twelve (12) days after the City Manager makes his/her determination" that it is a nuisance.
• 10 days after a hearing. If the appeals officer orders removal, the clock is 10 days from that order.

So from the day a letter shows up, a seller in Santa Clara has under two weeks to decide. Our page on a notice to remove a car covers that decision.

If a tow company ends up with it

A Santa Clara tow yard can hold a towed car until its bill is paid. Civil Code 3068.1 calls that a possessory lien. For a car worth no more than $4,000, Civil Code 3072 lets that Santa Clara yard start a sale within 15 days. A letter called Notice of Pending Lien Sale will arrive. Santa Clara's auction comes 31 to 41 days after that mailing. To force a court hearing, return the opposition form inside 10 days. Storage charges grow the whole time, so selling before the tow costs less. See towed or impounded.

The paperwork when you sell

Santa Clara sellers deal with the state DMV directly; California has no county title counters. You sign the Santa Clara car's Certificate of Title. If a loan shows on record, the lienholder signs it as well. The new owner handles the rest. No notary appears in the DMV's list of seller steps. A lost title has to be replaced with REG 227 before anything else.

File REG 138, the release of liability, on the DMV website within five days of a Santa Clara sale. Once the DMV has it on file, any later tickets and civil suits fall to the buyer of the Santa Clara car.

Cars sold for wrecking skip smog. Ordinary plates ride along with the car; a personalized set can follow you to another car if you pay the fee.

Getting an offer

Call (877) 421-6008 or use the form. We load Santa Clara cars at homes, Convention Center lots or shops. Neighbors in Sunnyvale, Cupertino and Campbell are a few miles away, and California has the statewide rules.