Flood Car Scams: Title Washing and What to Look for at the Salvage Auction

Hey guys and welcome back. Today is one of the first sunny days here that I've had in the Tampa Bay area in the past couple weeks. It's been raining non-stop. We've been getting some of the outskirts of the major storms and really nothing to compare at all to what Texas received with Harvey. Watching some of the footage on YouTube has been really eye-opening, specifically the guy that had the three BMWs. If you haven't seen his video, I'm going to link it in the description box below. He had three cars. One of them he already knew was going to get flooded, so he kind of just left it out. The second one he put up on a trailer that he had, and the third one he had up in his garage on blocks and then on jack stands lifted all the way up. He continued lifting it as high as he could and it just is something you got to see for yourself. If you haven't seen it, click the link in the description box below. The first thing I want to touch on is avoiding scams and especially after major storms like Harvey. There will be hundreds of thousands of flood cars entering the market in the coming months and even next year. There will be an undisclosed flood car and so you need to watch out for that. Then the next item is what we can do about the flood cars at the auctions, whether it's a good idea to bid on them and just basically my overall thoughts on flood cars. I heard a statistic and it was that GEICO insures a half million cars in the United States. GEICO being one of the major auto insurance companies here and out of that half a million cars, 50,000 of them or 10% of all the cars they insure will be claimed a total loss because of Hurricane Harvey. Texas is a massive state and if 10% of GEICO's cars are going to be claimed a total loss, just think of the other tens of thousands of cars by other insurance companies that will be claimed a total loss. It's imperative for you, if you're going out to be shopping for a used car, you make sure the one that you buy is not been in a flood before or this also works for anything that was in a major accident and claimed a total loss by the insurance company. Since there will be likely tens of thousands of these flood cars entering the used car market, whether it's in some guy's driveway or at a dealership, one of big things people are concerned about is title washing. That's where the car is flooded in a state like Texas, it's deemed a total loss and now has a Texas salvage title or salvage certificate. Somebody takes it to another state, does not disclose the damage, titles it let's say in California and while it's difficult to do, the people that are in the business of scamming others kind of know which states and how to get away with it. So they go ahead and do that and now they've got a car with a clean title in the state that they're in or another state. They can just go and sell it to someone unsuspecting and say hey I've got a clean title right here even though the car was deemed a total loss, had a salvage title at one time and was a flood car with probably potential issues that will come up down the road as the person is using it. Every single car that's deemed a total loss goes on record as a total loss vehicle and there's two resources I'm going to link in the description box below. The first one is the NICB, that's the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The second one is research.com. Research.com generally also shows any sort of total loss reports. So using those two resources along with a car fax or an auto check or any other VIN check you choose or the dealership provides, you should be able to let you know whether the car was ever deemed a total loss and it's really that simple. I always recommend two forms of vehicle history reports being generated, whether that's one from you and one from the dealership and from two different sources. I have seen in the past where CarMax will report an accident and AutoCheck won't or vice versa. It's just the way that these guys generate their data to put into reports and sometimes things are missed. But that NICB website will always show if the car was claimed a total loss by an insurance company. So if you are buying a used car in the near future, definitely check out those sites and make sure the car you're buying was not a flood car or an accident car. Now the next thing we'll discuss is the flood cars at the auctions. I've had one car that was genuinely flooded, not the money pajetta that had water entering through a seam in the top. We're talking about a car where water rose up and into the floor area and it didn't get much higher than that. But water is a major nuisance, especially the longer it sits in the car. Now in my situation, I was immediately able to push the car out of the water. I was able to get it running and clean everything up and it took a lot of work, but it was pretty much fine after that. When we're talking about flood cars, especially cars that are in this major hurricane, a lot of the water damage is going all the way up to the roof of the car and they're sitting in flood water for a few days at the very least. When water sits, it takes its toll. Water will corrode things mechanically inside the engine. Water will corrode the electronics inside of the cabin. You're talking about the potential of several components in your car needing to be completely replaced with new or used items. For me, I don't like flood cars because it just requires a lot of work. In a lot of cases, you'll see where flood cars are restored and usually it's little minor details, but some lights might flicker or something just might not work a hundred percent. Just not what I'm into, but if you insist or maybe you want to buy an older car that's not that electronically sophisticated, you can generally bring flood cars back to a usable state. First thing I always tell people when they're interested in flood cars, go down to the auction and check it out. When the cars are at the auction, they usually have keys zip tied to the steering wheel or somewhere else in the car. The first problem that gives it is somebody might have gone and tried to turn that car on. Now not all cars get hydrolocked, but most cars will have water in the engine somewhere. If you turn a car on while it's got a wet air filter, if it's actually got water in the engine, you increase the chance of issue and failure in the engine itself a lot more than it did before it was flooded. Like I said, when my car was flooded, I pushed it out of the water it was in, then I made sure water didn't get up to the intake area before I turned it on, and everything ended up working out. But at auction, you just don't know if somebody tried to turn the car on, if somebody did turn the car on, and then later it died. There's just a million different variables there. That's number one. Number two is the electrical failures in the interior, and you need to get familiar with the car you're buying and how many components it has electronically. This Fiesta behind me is actually a very simple car. It still has a lot of sophisticated electrical systems, but not nearly as many as that Audi S3, and that will make thousands of dollars of difference in your rebuild process. Another thing is, especially on the German cars, these modules that are in the cars, the dealerships will sell you a module, but then tell you, hey, it needs to be programmed to your VIN number. That's extra money you might not have already been calculating into your rebuild. Besides that, you can expect your typical things to be destroyed, interior pieces, whether it's the seats, the carpeting, even the dashboard. The longer the water sits, the worse off you usually are. It's not like if somebody had their car underwater, they went immediately, got it out of that area, and then opened it up, dried it out. You just don't know the history of that specific car you're looking at at auction, and when it comes to a flood car, it's generally always impossible to tell what the history was, unless someone was maybe vlogging while they were driving through water. So while I can't personally recommend flood cars at auctions, there are tons of people that do like them, and that's totally cool. It's really up to you to make the decision and find out whether it's going to be a good idea and good for the project that you want to take on. Before I end this video, I want to give a shout out to Spencer, who lost his original owner, 46,000 mile Mitsubishi 3000GT VR4 to Hurricane Harvey. Spencer wrote me an email, and Spencer, I want to tell you, I feel bad because this is the sort of stuff that us car guys get into. Again, watching that individual jack up his BMW M3 to the roof of his garage, literally. It really showed his devotion to cars, and Spencer, I hope that all works out for you. I don't know how damaged your car is. I don't know how long it was sitting underwater, but maybe if these videos have inspired you to take on a rebuild project, you might already have your very own rebuild project. Just try and negotiate something out with the insurance company, and that's only if you feel that it will end up being a good decision. I know we didn't cover absolutely everything when it comes to flood damage cars, but as always, if you have any questions about flood damage cars or anything in general, don't hesitate to reach out to me. Everything you need to contact me is in the description box below. If you feel that you learned something from this video, definitely be sure to leave it a like. Thanks a lot for watching, and I'll catch you very soon. So this is actually how the chickens bathe. They go into this dirt over here. They kind of wiggle around to get it all up in their feathers and cleans all the mites out and everything like that. It's really nice to watch them do that because basically their house has been flooded over the last few weeks. Every time it rains, chicken coops aren't the most weathertight things. I've got as weathertight as I can, so what they'll end up doing during the day is they'll come and hang out with the cars, and then they leave a mess all over the floor. But hey, everybody's living, so we're okay with it. Just have to do a little extra cleaning up.