In the common case a person and their cars are all located at the same location. Their cars are all registered with the state of their residency. If they move to a different state, they take their cars with them and get a new driver’s license and register their cars in that state. But what happens when a person lives in one state but has cars permanently located in other states? For example, a person lives in state A, but has a car at a vacation house in state B. If their vacation house is far away and they are there for a significant amount of time, they may not want to drive their own car that distance or have to rent a car after flying. They may want to just leave a car at the vacation house for their use when they are on vacation. In cases like that, can they leave the other car in the registration of their home state? Or do they need to register it in the other state where the car is located even though they aren’t a resident of that state?
This is just something I’ve wondered about in general rather than a specific situation for specific states. I don’t doubt that different states would handle it differently. If anyone has any experience with this for any state, that would be interesting to hear.
OldGuy is right. I’m not aware of any state that requires a person to be a resident to register a car there. They all require registering the car in the state if it is operated there regularly.
It probably varies widely. My kids have moved states and been slow to change their registration and experienced no problem. But as mentioned upthread, you want to make sure your insurance company is aware of how you’re using your vehicle. You certainly don’t want coverage denied when you need it because they thought your car was garaged in a different state.
I had a coworker who moved here from another state but kept her car registration in the other state. Nothing happened for a few months, but eventually she was stopped for speeding or something, and was cited for failing to register her car in this state.
IOW, cops probably aren’t pulling over cars with out-of-state plates and demanding proof of residence, but they’ll enforce the law if you give them a resaon to.
I haven’t done it myself but I’ve known people who live in NYC and have NY driver’s licenses and vehicles registered in NY and also had another vehicle that they kept at their winter house in Florida or Georgia or wherever. Part of the reason they are doing this is because it would be just plain stupid to register and pay NYC insurance rates for vehicles that are actually in Georgia/Florida and the reason they don’t just register them all in the other state has to do with
They actually live in NYC and may need proof of that address for some reason ( a job, a condition of a lease that the NY apartment is their primary residence) so they keep their NY license.
People in certain neighborhoods get fed up with people who live in NY and register cars elsewhere * so they put pressure on the police to crack down and a NY license with a Georgia registration and insurance on a car normally parked in NY doesn’t look so good if the insurance company gets wind of it. I’m not saying anything necessarily happens, just that he people I know don’t want to chance it.
* Some of it has to do with parking- there are people who think that the people with their cars registered out of state would get rid of at least some of them if they had to pay NYC insurance rates. I don’t believe that, but some people do.
Are there any extra requirements when registering a car if a person has an out-of-state driver’s license? For the person living in NY and registering a car in GA, is the process the same regardless of whether they have a GA license or not? Does the DMV not care that they have a NY license?
They would care if your license doesn’t match your presumed state of domicile. In other words, if you primarily live in another state, that’s where your license is from, and the other state’s DMV doesn’t have a say in it. (IME, the state laws I’ve seen try to force a change to that state’s diver’s license if you move to the state and remain there for a few consecutive months.)
But owning and registering a car doesn’t have any direct thing to do with your legal domicile or the state that issued your driver’s license.
You don’t need to have an in-state license to register a car in CT. You would tend to show an out-of-state license, but some other forms are acceptable so I;m pretty sure you don’t even need to have a license to register a car.
This happens quite often for military folks that claim residency in State “A,” but are stationed in State “B”. No vacation homes or anything, but the cars are ‘permanently’ located in the other states. There’s no one “magic bullet” solution, but things can evolve strangely. . .
Case in point, I was a New Jersey resident for tax purposes, with, for a period, an Arizona drivers’ license and tags (thanks to college), while stationed in North Dakota. After I bought my first truck, I retained the Arizona drivers’ license, but the truck was registered ‘n’ tagged in North Dakota. IIRC, my insurance company, nor any of the states cared, so long as they got their dollar and everything was current.
Tripler
It all got sorted out after Montana, by the time I got to Georgia.
For over 20 years, a friend has his car, truck, and RV trailer registered in South Dakota. He does own property there, a vacant lot, but there are financial reasons for the SD registration. Or so I’m told.
I was on a tanker that mainly ran from Matinez Ca. Portland, then to Seattle and back to Martinez. He had a home back east somewhere and kept his car registered in that state. But basically he lived in the SF bay area. He kept his legal resistance as his home state.
South Dakota registration is apparently very popular for US residents who move (with their vehicles) to Mexico and for people who have no fixed address. Apparently, in some parts of Mexico you can drive indefinitely with US plates without actually going through the process of importing the vehicle into Mexico. South Dakota makes it very easy - you can register a car with an out of state license, you don’t need to have a South Dakota address, you don’t need proof of insurance to register a vehicle and the vehicle doesn’t need to be inspected. And everything can be done by mail.
Sometimes. There is a town called Anthony, that straddles the New Mexico/Texas state line.
Officially, it is two towns:
the town of Anthony, Dona Ana County, New Mexico
and
the town of Anthony, El Paso County, Texas.
There are a number of houses that straddle the state line, and the tax collectors get very touchy about them. For property taxes, the county assessors will survey your property to determine exactly how many square micrometers are on each side of the border. New Mexico’s vehicle registration fees are higher than Texas, so many houses are built with the garage on the Texas side of the border. The New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division keeps an eye on the town.