Out of state purchase with Financing question

Guys,
First off long time no see! Secondly I have a stupid question and trying to figure out how to handle it. Figure you guys do alot of out of state purchases and might have some input.


Found a boat I want in Knoxville, TN. We came to a pretty good agreement on price based on the disclosed/assumed condition. I'm good with the number and so is he. I would however like to look at the boat/test it before I make a 15k mistake.


Basically its a 6hour ride for me. My bank is saying they won't cut me a check until they have a copy of the title, power of attorney, vin, etc. Overall basically they won't just send a check with me b/c his bank still has the title.

So they want me to go up there, check the boat, come back, wait and go up again with the check, and then deal with the title. Sounds like bs to me and there has got to be a simple solution where I can go up there, ok the boat, and leave with it.

Anybody have any suggestions or is my bank 100% correct on this one?

PS, TN doesnt title boats. Its bill of sale only so I had the bill of sale notorized when we both signed it and you will need to get a copy of the last registration the PO had on the boat.

In that case, I would want a copy of the letter stating that the loan was satisfied as well.

The way we did it was meet up for test drive, decide on final price and then we both went down to his bank. He payed off the note and gave me the bill of sale at the same time, (I kept the cash until we got to the bank) plus a copy of the letter saying the loan was payed in full. The lady at the bank notarized everything for us and I headed home. She also made copies of everything for us so we both had the same info.

Thanks for the help man. This is making my head spin like crazy

Cory,
Unfortunately I have some experience in this. I live in Ohio and found my boat on this site in South Carolina. I needed to have it financed also. I started working with my bank weeks in advance, and he told me the same thing, that they would not cut a check without a title. I was in exactly the same position as you, I wanted to test-drive/test-ski it before I bought it, but there was no way for me to work it out with my bank to do it in one trip.

I ended up driving down to SC one weekend, met the current owner, went out on the boat, made a couple passes, agreed on the price and then started working on paperwork. I had printed up two copies of a bill of sale, a power of attorney, and a seller dispersement form my bank had given me. He and I filled all of it out, and I returned to my bank with signed copies of each.

Unfortunately, they still wouldn't cut him a check without the title, which had to be overnighted. Lee sent that directly to the bank, and as soon as they received it, they cut him a check.

In the meantime, I had taken a copy of the trailer title to the OH BMV to get plates for the trailer. They didn't like that. He had to fax the title directly to them while I waited before they would issue me plates. The faxed copy was completely illegible, unlike the scanned copy I had printed out in color for them. They took all the info off of my copy, but insisted that they needed to receive something from him, even if it was unusable.

The next weekend I drove back to SC to pick it up and bring it home. Once I did, I talked my bank into cutting me a check for the taxes on the purchase to take to the title bureau (which they really didn't want to do...) Then, of course, the Ohio title bureau doesn't title a lot of boats, so it took every person in there to get the title squared away and the taxes paid. Hopefully being in North Carolina you won't have that problem.

I guess the moral of the story is, because the bank was involved for financing I was unable to find a better way to complete the sale without two trips. Unless your bank has a branch in TN, or you choose to go with a bank around there, in which case the two of you can just take a drive over there after your ride. Might not be a bad option. If the two of you are in the building together it will certainly expediate the process.

The one thing I would say to keep in mind is no matter how painful the process was, I forgot all about it the first time I put it in the water. TOTALLY worth every minute of it.

Sorry this post got a little long, hopefully it helps.