There are multiple reasons you might want to conduct a license plate owner lookup to find out who a vehicle is registered to. Maybe the vehicle is for sale, and you’re looking for contact information about the seller. Maybe the vehicle was involved in an accident. Regardless of the reason, there are ways to do a reverse license plate lookup to find out who owns the vehicle in question.
Public Information Act
The Texas Public Information Act gives Texas citizens the right to access accurate and up-to-date information in government records. All vehicle records are stored and maintained by the Texas DMV. You can visit the DMV in person with the license plate in question, and the office will give you all the information they are legally allowed to provide to the public.
Some information cannot be disclosed by law. However, you’ll be able to receive the name of the person who owns the vehicle with that particular plate.
Unfortunately, visiting your local Department of Motor Vehicles office isn’t always the easiest or most efficient means of obtaining information. Lines at the office are notoriously long, especially if you arrive in the afternoon. It’s also hard to carve out time for an office visit when you have a busy schedule. Sometimes you need answers faster, which is when you’d turn to an online third party.
Looking up a License Plate Online
Online public databases keep records of license plates as well as millions of public and private records. Because of the Texas Public Information Act, these databases have access to up-to-date information regarding the owners of every license plate across the entire state. The amount of information available varies from database to database, though, so you’ll need to choose carefully.
These websites are run by outside third parties instead of the government. Because of this, you may have to pay a fee to use their search tools. This website will let you run a license plate search completely free of charge.
A license plate check will give you access to the following information:
- The full name of the owner of the vehicle
- The VIN number of the vehicle
- Whether or not the vehicle has ever been reported stolen
- The accident history of the vehicle
- Whether the vehicle has ever been declared salvaged
- The ownership history
If the license plate check alone doesn’t yield adequate contact information, oftentimes you can do a second search for the vehicle owner’s name. This will give you access to contact information such as a phone number or email address.
