Selling a dead or junk car in Fate

The 48-hour street rule

The text of Sec. 14-133 covers any car, truck or trailer left standing on public property "for a period in excess of 48 hours when such vehicle or trailer is without one or more wheels or is apparently inoperative for any reason." Once towed, it stays at the pound until someone shows "proof of ownership and payment of the towing fee and costs of storage." The code names no dollar amounts for those fees.

Fate's definitions add one more 48-hour test. Past five years of age, a car that won't run and is left by itself on public ground for two days is abandoned, in Fate's words. So does any car that has stayed illegally on public property that long.

Junked cars on a Fate lot

Off the street, the clock is longer. Sec. 14-42 starts with a self-propelled vehicle that displays no unexpired plate. Add damage (wrecked, dismantled, discarded) or a long dead spell, 30 consecutive days on private property, and Fate calls it junked. On public property that clock is 72 consecutive hours. Then Sec. 14-98 makes it a public nuisance if the car, or even part of it, is "visible at any time of the year from a public place or public right-of-way."

The steps from there:

1. Notice. The letter goes to three people at minimum: the registered owner, every lienholder, plus whoever owns or occupies that Fate lot. Fate may hand it over or mail it, certified or with signature confirmation. It allows ten days or more, and day ten is the removal deadline.
2. Hearing. Ask the municipal court in writing within those ten days and you get a public hearing, held no sooner than day eleven. At that hearing the burden sits with you: the car is assumed not to run until you prove it does.
3. Order. The court can order the car removed, cancel the notice and let it stay, or let city crews take it.
4. Fine. Keeping the nuisance is a misdemeanor. Sec. 14-108 caps the fine at $200 and counts each day it goes on as a new offense.

Ten days after notice with no hearing request, or ten days after a removal order, the city can come for it. Sec. 14-103 says Fate's removed car "shall be stored in such storage area for a period of not less than ten days," and an owner can claim it by paying "the actual cost of the city in abating such nuisance." Unclaimed, Fate sends it off to be processed as scrap, at a scrap yard or a demolisher. It is barred from ever being rebuilt. Within five days Fate files word of the removal with the state.

Short of selling, a garage is the one clean exemption in Sec. 14-106: the junked-vehicle division does not reach a car shut in a garage or shed that neither passers-by nor neighbors can see.

Parking it in the yard is its own problem

Sec. 14-266 applies in every zoning district. Vehicles must sit on a minimum improved parking surface, and "Motor vehicles may be parked on a driveway or minimum improved parking surface." A dead car pushed onto the grass breaks that rule even before any junked-vehicle clock runs out.

Fate takes anonymous complaints if the location is given, and says the reporter's details stay confidential. Property Standards works out of City Hall, 1900 CD Boren Parkway, 972-771-4601 ext. 101. City Hall is open 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with Friday hours of 8 a.m. to noon. The police and fire non-emergency line is 972-204-7001, option 5.

Rockwall County paperwork

All of Fate is in Rockwall County. Its tax office sits on E Yellowjacket in Rockwall (1101, Suite 110), roughly 5 miles southwest of Fate, straight-line. Texas titles are filed with county tax offices like that one; there is no state DMV counter to visit. The buyer does the filing, and the old owner's name stays on the state record until a new title is issued.

That gap is why Texas gives sellers a transfer notice. Send it to TxDMV, online or on paper Form VTR-346, no later than 30 days after the sale. Done on time, it shields you from the new owner's parking tickets and toll bills. It is a notice only, though. Ownership changes when the buyer's title application goes through.

Your plates are yours to keep. Put them on your next car for free at a county tax office, which hands you a new registration sticker, because the old sticker does not travel with kept plates.

A very old car with no title has one narrow route in state law. State law lets a used automotive parts recycler take a car with no title if three things line up: it is 13 or more years old, nobody has registered it for seven years or longer, and the recycler is buying it only for parts, dismantling or scrap. Other cases start with selling with no title.

Getting an offer

Reach us at (877) 421-6008 or online. Describe the car and the miles on it, say whether it starts, and name the title holder. The tow truck can come to a driveway in a Fate subdivision, a spot off Main Place, or wherever the car quit. Nearby pages: Rockwall, Royse City, Rowlett and Wylie. Statewide rules are on Texas.