If you decide to purchase a car here, make certain that you obtain the noted sticker on your bill of sale. Without it, the sale is not valid and you will not be able to transfer the car into your name. Also, and this is an important detail, make sure that if the car has been inspected that the inspection is post-Irma. Pre-Irma inspections are no longer valid and the car has to be reinspected, even if the expiration date was 2019 or 2020. This could add an unexpected cost to your sale if you weren’t aware it needed reinspection. My car was inspected post-Irma so it will cost me $11 to transfer the inspection to my name and the plate transference is free. 
St. Maarten Move 
Congratulations on your new car!! Vanessa, EXCELLENT information. We checked a little (we’ve found cars we were interested in twice, but both times it was too close to when we were leaving) but not looked into it in great depth. I’ll print your post and pass it along. Are you driving without a license now, or is your license on its way down “overnight!”? We do not have a garage, so our biggest issue is what to do with the car when we are back in the US and we didn’t have time to adequately plan for that, so we will make it a priority next visit. What to do with the car may end up being a smaller issue as we spend less time in the US! When we get to the island and start looking around, I will remember your experienced expertise!
Have you looked into furniture ordering in the US? We purchased a few IKEA pieces after we settled in–we didn’t know exactly what we wanted, so didn’t try to buy in advance. IKEA had exactly what we were looking for at a good price. You can order from IKEA in MIA (or even Puerto Rico) and have it shipped. We used MIA (we use a shipper regularly MIA – SXM). Bookcases and desks can be good that way! You can also buy from Lowes and HomeDepot that way.
I hope you have continued (and better) luck as your reconnaissance mission progresses! Yvonne
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I am not driving the car, it’s not insured or even titled in my name yet for reasons I posted about. It’s parked in the garage of our apartment building and I’ll go finish the insurance and titling when we get back.
I did look at shipping furniture but it is not cheap to do so. Four Star is 98¢ a pound under 1000 pounds and 77¢ a pound over that. If you’ve found shipping companies with lower rates than that, let me know. I’ve just not reached the acceptance level yet of paying $2000 for a living room set and another $500-$600 to get it to the island. That may grow on me, but I’m not there yet. We’ll see how it goes.
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