Clean title

A clean title is a certificate of title that carries no brand. A brand is a label a state adds to record serious damage or another event in the car’s history, such as salvage, junk, flood or lemon law buyback. “Clean” says nothing about mechanical condition. A worn-out car with a blown engine can still have a clean title.

For sellers, a clean title usually means a simpler sale. For buyers of used cars, it is worth checking that the title really is clean, because a brand from one state can be lost when a car is retitled in another.

The federal National Motor Vehicle Title Information System (NMVTIS) defines a brand as a descriptive label that states assign to identify a vehicle’s current or prior condition, such as “junk,” “salvage,” or “flood.”¹ An NMVTIS report shows whether any state has recorded one.