Selling Bike Question

[checho323]

Not sure if it goes here........

Has anyone sold or transfer a bike while still owing it? unfortunately I need to sell and still paying for it.

[Alex]

There are a number of challenges. Primarily, you don't own the bike, so you can't legally sell it. In order to get the title to show ownership, you need to have it paid off, so you can transfer the title to the new owner.

What you can do, is have the buyer agree to pay off the bike, and you can promise to get them the title. Even better, some banks have arrangements where the buyer can pay the bank directly, and then the buyer can be sent the title directly. If the bank holding the title has a local branch, going in there together with the buyer can make the process less cumbersome.

But either way, you need to find a buyer that's willing to go through a whole bunch of crap, when it's pretty easy to find a used 250 without going through any of this trouble. To make it attractive enough to find a buyer like this, you might have to lower the price quite a bit.

Bottom line, it's not a great way to go. If I were in that situation, I'd do everything I could to find a way to pay off the bike before putting it up for sale. It's a ninja 250 that's partially paid off; it seems that amount could be found worst case via a credit card advance. Yes - the interest on that would be 20% or more, but if it allows you to get even $200 or $300 more on the sale, and you pay it off within a month, the interest charges would only be a couple bucks and you'd likely still come out ahead.

[checho323]

Originally Posted by Alex

There are a number of challenges. Primarily, you don't own the bike, so you can't legally sell it. In order to get the title to show ownership, you need to have it paid off, so you can transfer the title to the new owner.

What you can do, is have the buyer agree to pay off the bike, and you can promise to get them the title. Even better, some banks have arrangements where the buyer can pay the bank directly, and then the buyer can be sent the title directly. If the bank holding the title has a local branch, going in there together with the buyer can make the process less cumbersome.

But either way, you need to find a buyer that's willing to go through a whole bunch of crap, when it's pretty easy to find a used 250 without going through any of this trouble. To make it attractive enough to find a buyer like this, you might have to lower the price quite a bit.

Bottom line, it's not a great way to go. If I were in that situation, I'd do everything I could to find a way to pay off the bike before putting it up for sale. It's a ninja 250 that's partially paid off; it seems that amount could be found worst case via a credit card advance. Yes - the interest on that would be 20% or more, but if it allows you to get even $200 or $300 more on the sale, and you pay it off within a month, the interest charges would only be a couple bucks and you'd likely still come out ahead.

Yes, everything you said makes a ton of sense. Thank You