by Sarah E. Sanuth

Created on: January 12, 2009

When buying a used car, consumers always ask; "Do you have a CarFax for it?" Of course, obtaining a CarFax report for every single vehicle on a dealerships lot can be expensive, so many times it is left up to the consumer to purchase; after all, according to CarFax, any use other than personal use of a report is forbidden.

So you go to CarFax.com, or another history reporting site and pull the report. But do you know that there isn't that much that goes into a history report?

History reports are a combination of information pulled from a few different sources, some of which are only a small drive down the street.

The first source where information is gathered from is the Department of Motor Vehicles. Every single time a vehicle is registered or inspected, all the information is kept on file. This also means that each time the vehicle is sold, the information is logged into a central database.

The other place that information is gathered is from an insurance type database, that is sometimes very incorrect. Unless an accident was reported to insurance company or police department, accident information won't be on file. So those small fender benders that didn't cost that much to fix but still left the vehicle drivable will not be listed anywhere. However, most if not all of this information will be included in a Title History Report from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The Department of Motor Vehicles in all states have all this information on file, and most of the time for a smaller fee that what CarFax charges, you can fill out a form and have the vehicles title history within minutes. Some states do require that the information be mailed to you as they are understaffed and need to have someone take care of it at a later time.

However, most of the information that is listed on a vehicle history report will be located in a Title History Report obtained from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The DMV will also allow you to access accident reports for some accidents that will appear on Title History Report. The average cost for copies of these reports is about $1.00 per page, but can be well worth it to discover the extent of an accident, detail in which CarFax does not provide.

The next time you are interested in obtaining a vehicle history report before purchasing a new vehicle, call you local Department of Motor Vehicles to see exactly what they include in a Title History Report and what the fees are. It might just offer you more information for less money.

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