Selling a dead or junk car in Walnut Creek

When the engine is dead, the smog rule changes

When the car runs, the Bureau of Automotive Repair has the seller do the smog inspection first and hand over the report. Walnut Creek sellers of electric cars or motorcycles need no test. Walnut Creek sellers can also skip it when the car runs on gas and dates from 1975 or earlier, runs on diesel and dates from 1997 or earlier, or is a gas or hybrid within its first four model years. Those last ones pay an $8 smog transfer fee instead.

A car bought for its parts skips the Smog Check. DMV's junking manual exempts a car headed for wrecking or dismantling from the inspection. Vehicle Code 24007 is similar for cars that miss California Air Resources Board standards. Walnut Creek sellers may sell those only to a dealer or legal wrecker, giving a "certificate of compliance or noncompliance" on delivery. If the car failed its last test, see failed inspection or rust.

What Walnut Creek's own code says

Walnut Creek's Chapter 5-2, Inoperable vehicles, covers "abandoned, wrecked, dismantled or inoperative vehicles or parts thereof" on private property or public property, not including highways, as Vehicle Code 22660 allows. It is unlawful to leave such a car there "for a period in excess of seventy-two hours," unless an exception in the code applies.

The Walnut Creek letter tells the property owner to take the car away "within ten (10) days from the date of mailing of this notice." If that doesn't happen, the city tows it, and its costs, "together with administrative costs," are "assessed to you as owner of the land." Either the property owner or the car's owner may ask the Chief of Police for a public hearing, also within ten (10) days of the mailing.

Walnut Creek can send the car "to a scrapyard or automobile dismantler's yard" five (5) days after an order. If Walnut Creek code calls for mailing the decision notice, the five days run from the mailing date. With an appeal, it's fifteen (15) days. So a dead car in a Walnut Creek driveway has 72 hours, not weeks.

Signing over the title

There are no county title offices in California; state-run DMV field offices do this work, and the paperwork can also be mailed in. In order:

• Walnut Creek sellers sign the California Certificate of Title. A listed lienholder signs as well. A private sale in Walnut Creek needs no notary under the DMV's steps.
• Your Walnut Creek buyer brings the title and the $15 transfer fee to DMV (VC 9255).
• Title lost? REG 227 replaces it, for a $28 fee (VC 9265). Junk car with no title explains.

Five days to cut the cord

REG 138, the "Notice of Transfer and Release of Liability," is due five days after the sale. Filing at dmv.ca.gov/nrl is fastest, but paper is fine. With it on record, Vehicle Code 5602 shifts tickets, traffic violations and lawsuits from after the sale date onto the buyer.

In Walnut Creek, standard California plates usually stay with the car. Walnut Creek owners with personalized or special plates can pay a fee and move them to another car. After you sell covers the remaining steps.

A car that sat in the garage too long

Lapsed registration has a cost. A Planned Non-Operation filing, REG 102, would have stopped the fees. Without one on file, a Walnut Creek owner gets a DMV bill for fees and penalties covering each unregistered year. Know that figure before comparing a repair bill against a sale.

Close to Walnut Creek

Measured as the crow flies, Pleasant Hill is 4.0 miles away, Lafayette 4.4 and Concord 5.3. Danville is 7.3. For rules that apply statewide, see California.

Getting an offer

Call (877) 421-6008 or use the site about your Walnut Creek car. A garage, shop lot or condo space all work for pickup.