About this San Francisco car seller's guide
Sell My Car San Francisco is a set of guides for people in the city who want to sell a car and need the exact California and San Francisco rules first. Each guide quotes the agency that sets the rule and links to it, so you can read the original yourself.
Who the guides are written for
The reader we have in mind lives in San Francisco and has a car to sell. Often it is old, will not start, has failed a smog check, sits in a tow yard, or has a title problem. Those are the cases where a wrong step costs money or leaves your name tied to a car you no longer own.
So the pages stick to what a seller has to do: what to sign, what to file with the DMV and by when, and what the city's parking and towing rules mean for a car you are about to let go. Start with the seller paperwork or the home page.
How this site earns money
The offer button on this site's home page opens an instant online offer from a partner buyer. If you accept that offer and the sale completes, the partner buyer pays this site a referral fee. If you do not sell, or you sell some other way, the site earns nothing from you.
The offer belongs to the buyer. The buyer sets the amount, the terms and the pickup, and this site cannot change any of them. How the offer works walks through the buyer's steps. For some cars a private sale or the state's retirement program can pay more, and Where to sell compares them.
What this site is not
- Not a dealer. It does not buy, sell or hold cars, and it never owns yours.
- Not an auto broker or auto buying service. It does not shop your car around or bargain on your behalf.
- Not the DMV. It cannot file forms, take fees or look up your records. DMV business goes to the California DMV itself.
Nothing here is legal advice. When your case is unusual, the agency page each guide links to has the final word.
Source: California DMV.
How each guide is researched and re-checked
Every rule, deadline, fee and form number on a guide comes from a page published by the agency in charge, such as the California DMV, the Bureau of Automotive Repair or the SFMTA. Quoted passages are copied word for word, and a script checks each quote against the live source page before a guide goes up. What a guide says about the partner buyer's offer and pickup comes only from the buyer's own published pages.
Agencies change their rules and fees, so the sources are checked again over time. Each guide shows the date its sources were last re-checked. If that date is old and the stakes are high, open the linked agency page before you act.
Found a mistake?
If a guide states something the agency page does not say, or a link has stopped working, write to help@sellmycarsanfrancisco.org. Name the page and the sentence. A guide is fixed when the agency page supports the change. The phone number is on the contact page.