Establishing your Montana presence: Personal Registration lease explained
We at visitor.us are excited to introduce Personal Registrations, which allow us to register a vehicle in Montana directly in a client’s name, no Montana Limited Liability Company (LLC) required!
Personal Registrations allow us to skip the Montana LLC - because who wants to think about owning a company when you just want to do a road trip? - and register vehicles directly in the name of our clients.
This article explains the Montana law that enables Personal Registrations, why it exists, and how visitor.us works within it to register vehicles directly to clients.
Background
Montana is paradise for people that love the outdoors. The state home to many ski resorts, including one of the biggest in North America, Big Sky. It is also a world-class fishing and hunting destination, and attracts hikers, bikers, boaters, campers, and climbers from all over the US.
Thousands of these people keep holiday homes in Montana, which they visit frequently.
But to get to Montana, it takes two full days of driving from California, three full days of driving from Texas, and four or more full days of driving from the East Coast.
So outdoorspeople have always had a difficult choice: drive their home vehicle for a multiple days to Montana, or fly and be forced to rent a vehicle.
Montana state senator Brian Hoven saw an opportunity. If people with Montana holiday homes could register a vehicle in Montana, they could simply keep it here, instead of having to drive their home vehicle or rent a vehicle.
And if people with Montana holiday homes could register a vehicle in Montana, Montana would earn tax revenue from those vehicle registrations.
Win-win.
In 2013, Senator Hoven introduced a bill called HB-414: Permit registration of motor vehicle to those having interest in real property, which the Office of Budget estimated would generate an additional $1.2mln per year in revenue for the State of Montana.
The bill passed by a vote of 90 to 10 and was signed into law by the Governor of Montana in 2013.
The law
With the passage of HB-414, Montana’s vehicle registration law, MCA 61-3-303, was updated to read as follows:
A nonresident who has an interest in real property in Montana may register in the county where the real property is located a motor vehicle, trailer, semitrailer…
In other words, anyone who has an “interest in real property” in Montana can register a vehicle in Montana.
This raises two questions:
- What is real property?
- What counts as an interest in real property?
What is real property?
Real property is essentially real estate: land and buildings.
What is an interest in real property?
There are many types of interest in real property, including:
- Fee simple - complete ownership, with the right to use, sell, or transfer as desired,
- Easement - the right to use another’s property for a specific purposes, such as accessing a road or utilities, and
- Leasehold - The right to use a property for a specified period of time according to a lease agreement.
(An interest in real property does not include a hotel room, a VRBO / Airbnb, a campsite, or a post office box.)
Who has an interest in real property?
Therefore, since 2013 the range of people who can register a vehicle in Montana according to the law includes:
- People who live full time in Montana and own or rent their homes,
- People who have a holiday home in Montana, whether owned or rented,
- University students (who aren’t necessarily Montana residents under the law) that own or rent their Montana accommodation, and
- Anyone else who has a leasehold or other type of interest in real property in Montana.
The visitor.us Personal Registration lease
The visitor.us Personal Registration lease grants our clients a leasehold interest in our Bozeman, Montana office (which is real property).
The lease agreement begins when signed and terminates on the last day of the month, one year after the client’s first vehicle registration.
(Montana does not need to see evidence of interest in real property to renew an existing vehicle registration, which is why the lease only lasts for about a year.)
(We are also required to submit two pieces of mail addressed to the client, postmarked within the last year. We generate, send, and receive these pieces of mail as part of the Personal Registration process.)
We submit the lease agreement - electronically signed both by the client and by visitor.us - as well as the two pieces of mail, to the Montana vehicle registration authorities as proof of the client’s interest in real property in Montana.
And this is how we register vehicles directly to visitor.us clients, without forming a Montana LLC for them.
The Personal Registration lease cannot be used for insurance purposes
Insurance companies require applicants to provide a vehicle's 'garaging address,' or the address where the vehicle is normally kept. This helps them accurately price the policy to reflect the risks of a claim. Since you will not keep your vehicle at visitor.us' address (our lease prohibits it), our address cannot be used for insurance purposes without explicit permission from a licensed insurance agent. For more information on insurance, please consult this resource.
Conclusion
We’re excited to now offer Personal Registrations, which allow us to register vehicles directly to our clients, removing the need to form a Montana LLC.
We are able to do this by leasing a portion of our office in Bozeman, Montana to each of our customers, and sending them a couple of pieces of mail.
You - who gets to own the vehicle that you want - win. And Montana - which receives the vehicle registration fees that visitor.us pays on your behalf - wins.
If you have any questions about the Personal Registration process, you can get in touch with us here, and we’ll respond to your inquiry in about one business day.
If you would like to move forward with the Personal Registration process, click the button below to Get Started now!
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