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Domicile, Vehicle Registration, and Insurance with a Skoolie


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I am in the process of constructing a skoolie in New Jersey with the ultimate goal of arranging a domicile in South Dakota through the Escapees RV Club, registering and titling the bus in South Dakota, and then obtaining insurance sufficient to safely travel in it across the country.

My question is, can all of this be done without physically setting foot in South Dakota? Would it be possible for me to mail the necessary application and documents to the South Dakota DMV to register and title my privately purchased school bus in South Dakota before I have arranged a domicile/address in the state? Or do I have to establish residency (submit the residency affidavit and camp ground/hotel receipt, etc.) beforehand? My prior knowledge of vehicle registration is nonexistent (I  have never owned a car before), and somehow my already weak understanding becomes weaker the more I research these processes.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

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Welcome to the Escapee forums! In answer to your questions, you can not register a vehicle in any state until you have an address there to register it to. In the case of South Dakota, they also require that you show proof of having spent at least one night in that area to register the vehicle there. And as to the previous comment, there is no better mail service than Escapees. There are many reasons for that and they serve about 20,000 addresses for good reasons. 

Is it safe to assume that you have a driver's license and are an experienced driver? Do feel free to ask any questions and offer comments in any of the forums and threads on these forums. We are happy that you are here. The following is from the SD Department of Revenue.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Quote

Recreational Vehicle (including motorhomes, converted housecar/bus)

 Chapter 32-03

A recreational vehicle is a vehicular portable structure built on a chassis designed to be used as a temporary dwelling for travel, recreational and vacation uses and permanently identified as "travel trailer" by the manufacturer of the trailer. A trailer identification plate may not be used on a recreational vehicle.

Motorhome - A vehicle designed to provide temporary living quarters for recreational, camping or travel use, built on or permanently attached to a self-propelled motor vehicle chassis or on a chassis cab or van that is an integral part of the completed vehicle.

License fees on a travel trailer shall be determined under the current noncommercial trailer fee schedule.

An Application for Motor Vehicle Title and Registration must be completed and filed in the county of the applicant's residence along with payment of applicable fees.

A purchase order, sales contract or bill of sale will be required if the Dealer Price Certification is not completed on the application.

Attach to the application the manufacturer's statement of origin or title properly transferred to the applicant.

Motor vehicle titling and registration fees are done through your local county treasurers office. Click here for all applicable license fees that must be paid to the county treasurer.

 

Edited by Kirk W

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Welcome to the forum.

As Kirk said, establish your mail service first. There are several in SD, each with advantages and disadvantages. Check them all out and make your decision. Once you have your new address you can register your vehicles there. It is easy enough to do yourself if you are there, but it can be done by your mail service for a fee. I'm not sure about the insurance. I'd suggest you contact your current agent and ask. We have our car insured with State Farm, and they require an agent in the new location write the policy.

As you are doing your mail service research you may want to call each company and ask them some questions including the ones you asked here. They should all give you the same answers (other than fees, of course), but if one doesn't match up with the others that may be a red flag.

David Lininger, kb0zke
1993 Foretravel U300 40' (sold)
2022 Grand Design Reflection 315RLTS

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You do not have to have an address in SD to register a vehicle in SD.  So will do out of state resident vehicle registrations.  I do not have a SD address, but I have a vehicle registered there.  It was all handled over the phone and through the mail.  It should be possible to register your vehicle in SD with your current NJ address.  I don’t know if there will be any issues with the “skoolie” conversion though.  NJ may also have an issue with you registering your skoolie in SD, but keeping it in NJ for a time.  I don’t know the answer to that.  There could be possible insurance ramifications as well.  I would investigate all of this first before registering the vehicle in SD.

Ultimately, when you move out of NJ, you can go to SD and get you drivers license there.  I would consider setting up a mail service ahead of time to make sure you get everything you need moved over to your new mailing address and then it can be used as your domicile address when you actually move.

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13 hours ago, Kirk W said:

In the case of South Dakota, they also require that you show proof of having spent at least one night in that area to register the vehicle there.

The proof of having spent at least one night in SD pertains to getting a driver's license, not vehicle registration which can be done via mail. 

I don't know if Escapees' SD mail service offers services besides just mail, but the other mail forwarding services in the state will help with getting vehicles registered (for a small fee, of course).

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
2011 Kia Soul

 

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3 minutes ago, whj469 said:

If I follow the thread correctly? You must go to SD, stay the night, get proof that you stayed for the night, both names on the receipt and then get insurance and register your vehicles?

Read LindaH's post (just ahead of yours).  There is no stay  requirement for registering vehicles, just for obtaining drivers licenses.

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17 hours ago, Buses_and_Minuses said:

My question is, can all of this be done without physically setting foot in South Dakota? Would it be possible for me to mail the necessary application and documents to the South Dakota DMV to register and title my privately purchased school bus in South Dakota before I have arranged a domicile/address in the state?

Yes the vehicle registration can be done without setting foot in SD, its done every day. But the SD registration process is handled by the County Treasurers, not the DMV directly. So getting your SD address established first will help, but its not required. For most of us that have done this, it's all handled by your mail forwarding company, for a small fee, you mail them the docs and they go stand in line at the County Treasurers office and get your Title, registration & plates. I've used Americas Mailbox and highly recommend them.

The only possible bump in the road would be if your "conversion" requires a change of vehicle title class, like Bus to RV. That may require a physical  inspection by the SD folks. If you can get the Title converted in NJ first, then the simple transfer to SD will be no problem.

As others have clarified, the requirement for staying one night in SD only applies to the SD drivers license, which is not required to register a vehicle. But once you are ready to make SD your domicile, it will require you to visit in person and stay overnight to get your DL.

 

Jim

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The one-night stay is a requirement to obtain the driver's license AND to register to vote. If you don't care what county you are registered in, you can use just about anywhere for that stay. Your license and voting will be in that county, which may or may not be the one where your mail is sent. When we moved to SD we stayed at a great State Park south of Sioux Falls. The attendant was familiar with the receipt requirement and made sure that our receipt had both of our names on it. We got the car registered (we had done the MH via mail months earlier) and then went to register to vote. That's when we found out that we would be registered to vote in the neighboring county, because that's where the park was. We were on our way to Brookings for a Habitat For Humanity RV Care-A-Vanners Build, so we went up for our two weeks there, then came back down to Sioux Falls, where we stayed a few nights at the fairgrounds. We could then change our voter registrations to Minnehaha County.

David Lininger, kb0zke
1993 Foretravel U300 40' (sold)
2022 Grand Design Reflection 315RLTS

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16 hours ago, kb0zke said:

We got the car registered (we had done the MH via mail months earlier) and then went to register to vote. That's when we found out that we would be registered to vote in the neighboring county, because that's where the park was.

That's similar to our experience in SD.

We had registered our vehicles via mail with the help of our mail forwarding service and then went to SD to get our DL's and register to vote.  We had no problem getting our DL's, but we were, unknowingly to us, staying in an RV park that was in a different county than our mail forwarding service.  I suppose we could have gone ahead and registered to vote in the county where the RV park was and then later changed our address, but we just came back another time and made sure we were in an RV park that was in the same county.

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
2011 Kia Soul

 

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