Cash for Junk Cars in Virginia | Free Towing Statewide

How Selling Your Junk Car Works in Virginia

What Is Your Virginia Junk Car Worth?

Most junk cars in Virginia sell for $150 to $800. Complete vehicles in decent condition bring $500 to $1,500 or more. Your offer depends on vehicle weight, current scrap metal prices, condition of major components, and parts demand. Virginia’s humid coastal climate in the Tidewater region often causes rust damage that lowers values, while vehicles in the western mountains may hold up better. Popular models like Ford F-150s, Honda Accords, and Toyota Camrys bring higher prices because parts demand stays strong across Virginia’s active used auto market.

Scrap steel prices set the floor for any junk car’s value. A typical sedan weighs 2,500 to 3,500 pounds, while trucks and SUVs range from 4,000 to 6,000 pounds. When scrap prices rise, so does your vehicle’s base value. Catalytic converters, aluminum wheels, and working engines add value above scrap weight. The live tracker below shows current scrap metal rates that affect Virginia junk car prices.

Virginia Junk Car Laws and Title Requirements

Last reviewed 2026-10-05 against Virginia state sources. Fees and forms change; the official links below are authoritative.

Signing a Virginia Title Over to the Buyer

Virginia titles come from the state DMV and nothing in the transfer runs through a county office. The assignment is Section A on the front of the certificate: every owner named signs, and you enter the buyer’s name and address, the odometer reading, the date and the sale price. § 46.2-628 makes a willful failure to endorse that assignment fully and correctly a Class 3 misdemeanor.

Odometer Disclosure Has No Age Cutoff in Virginia

§ 46.2-629 requires the reading at every transfer of ownership of a motor vehicle — subsection G carves out only ATVs, mopeds and off-road motorcycles — and DMV’s exemption list for a Virginia title has one entry: non-passenger vehicles rated over 16,000 pounds GVWR. The 10- and 20-year carve-outs in subsection D follow only an out-of-state exempt brand.

Plates, Insurance and Telling DMV the Car Is Gone

DMV’s word on plates is “immediately”: strip them before the truck leaves, then move them onto another vehicle with a License Plate Application (VSA 10) or surrender them — before you call your insurer, since a cancelled policy against an active registration can suspend your driving privileges. Online surrender is fastest and forfeits the refund; with six months or more left on the registration, return the plates with a Vehicle Registration Refund Application (FMS 210) by mail or at a customer service center or DMV Select. Reporting the sale is a separate step DMV calls required by law. No form and no deadline exist — § 46.2-604 prints the notice on the registration card and disapplies the § 46.2-113 penalty — but DMV takes the report online through Report a Vehicle Sold or Traded, at a customer service center, or by phone.

Selling a Junk Car With No Title

If the title is only lost, replace it first. Virginia charges $15, and you can do it online or at a DMV customer service center — bring your current registration card, a driver’s license or ID card, and Form VSA 67 (07/01/2020). Only one owner has to apply. An unsatisfied lien sends the replacement to the lienholder, and once it issues every earlier title is void.

Where no title exists, § 46.2-1608.2(D) is the one lawful route: a yard with no ownership document may crush a car whose model year trails the current one by a decade or more, after filing the VIN and vehicle description with DMV, remitting the § 46.2-627 fee plus $10, and clearing a national crime and title database check. Newer cars go through the Abandoned Vehicle Process instead, and the 21-day intent-to-auction posting in § 46.2-1202.2 is skipped entirely when the car is bound for a licensed recycler or scrap processor: § 46.2-1202.1 issues the Vehicle Removal Certificate at no fee.

Your City’s Inoperable-Vehicle Rule Is Not the State’s

§ 15.2-904 lets any Virginia locality ban open storage of an inoperable vehicle on residential, commercial or agricultural property. § 15.2-905 is a second, stricter grant reaching a named list only — seven counties, their towns, and thirteen cities, among them Alexandria, Hampton, Newport News and Roanoke. What localities write under § 15.2-904 varies sharply: Norfolk permits an inoperable vehicle only inside a fully enclosed building, while Chesapeake also accepts screening from view and counts a manufactured car cover but not a tarp.

What a Virginia Yard Has to Do After It Buys

§ 46.2-1608.1(B) keeps a licensed recycler from crushing a vehicle for up to 10 days unless it arrives with proper documentation, though that hold does not reach a car damaged beyond use or missing essential parts. A converter detached from an exhaust system is a “proprietary article” under § 59.1-136.1, so § 59.1-136.3(E) makes a scrap metal purchaser — anyone buying over $20,000 of scrap in 12 months — document your lawful possession and keep it two years.

Cities We Buy Junk Cars in Virginia

Virginia is 95 counties and 38 independent cities, 133 local jurisdictions in all, and the independent cities sit inside no county at all — part of why every title question here ends at the state DMV instead of a courthouse. In South Hampton Roads we run Norfolk and Chesapeake, the two cities with their own pages on this site, alongside Virginia Beach, Portsmouth and Suffolk, and across the water on the Peninsula, Newport News and Hampton. Richmond and the Tri-Cities, Alexandria and the I-95 and I-66 corridors in Northern Virginia, Roanoke and the I-81 run down the Shenandoah Valley, the Southside along US-58, and the coalfield counties of far southwest Virginia are all served areas without pages of their own.

The Eastern Shore is the long haul in this state. A pickup there, in Accomack or Northampton County, either crosses the 17.6-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel on Route 13 — tolled, and run by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel Commission rather than VDOT — or detours north through Maryland, and either way the toll is our cost and not a deduction from your offer. One other quirk is worth knowing before a car sits too long: emissions testing covers only ten Northern Virginia jurisdictions, so everywhere else in Virginia it is the annual safety inspection sticker, once it lapses, that can quietly drop a parked car into a local inoperable-vehicle ordinance.

Don’t see your city? We serve all of Virginia—call 1-800-935-8652 to confirm pickup at your location.

Frequently Asked Questions — Selling a Junk Car in Virginia