New York specifies the colour of your sign, and the radius of the arc.

New York is the clearest example on this site of a state that regulates the thing it can see from the road and leaves the rest alone.

It publishes no office square footage, no lot dimensions, no minimum opening hours and no course. It does publish, to the quarter inch, the stroke width of the letters in the word REGISTERED.

Everything below comes from Part 78 of the Commissioner's regulations, the DMV's dealership guidance and the VS-1D application with its VS-142 requirements insert, cited by section. Where New York publishes two different figures, both are here.

The sign, in full

Section 78.26(d) requires every retail dealer to display either the official dealer sign or a permanent sign at least three feet by two feet, visible at all times from the nearest street or highway. The official sign is specified like a part drawing:

If street visibility is impracticable, the Commissioner may approve an alternate location giving equal or better notice. The DMV does not supply the sign. You buy it from a sign shop, and the inspector will deny the application if the signs are not clearly visible.

One honest discrepancy. The DMV's own dealership page describes the whole string as "two inch block lettering" and renders it as MOTOR VEHICLE DEALER. The regulation says four inches for REGISTERED and for MOTOR VEHICLE RETAIL DEALER, with two inches only for the facility number and STATE OF NEW YORK. The regulation is the regulation, and the VS-142 insert points at it rather than restating it.

Separately, 78.26(b) requires permanent signs or window lettering on the front of the premises carrying the actual name the business trades under, large enough that the public can quickly and easily discern them. Trading under two names means a sign in each name.

Three cars, or you are a dealer

Section 78.1(a) gives New York two triggers, and the second one is the one that catches people.

• More than five motor vehicles, motorcycles or trailers sold or offered for sale in any calendar year
• Or three or more displayed, or permitted to be displayed, for sale at any one time or within any one calendar month on premises you own or control, where the vehicles were obtained for resale

The second trigger does not require a sale. Park three cars you bought to flip on your own property for a month and the definition has already found you. Note also that New York measures by the calendar year, not a rolling twelve months, which is unusual in this cluster.

One more classification rule worth knowing: a dealer who marks 25 per cent or more of the vehicles sold in any month as salvage on its MV-50s must register as a vehicle dismantler instead.

The facility, which is mostly furniture

There is no established-place-of-business section in Part 78. The physical requirements live in the VS-142 insert and the inspector's checklist, and they are short:

• Heat, electricity, a desk and chairs
• A business phone. A cell phone is explicitly acceptable
• A separate and exclusive mailing address, verified by the USPS, with exclusive use of the mail receptacle
• Space to display at least three vehicles at all times. Transporters and wholesale dealers are exempt
• A permanent physical barrier if other businesses share the location: a non-movable wall, fence or landscaping, separating display areas, signs and offices
• A lockable cabinet or safe for security items
• A six-month lease minimum. If any lease expires within six months you must supply a letter of intent to renew, or the application will be denied

That is the whole building specification. Ohio names the furniture and the square footage. New York names the furniture and stops.

The mailbox clause is more serious than it sounds. It has to be at the business address, dedicated to the business, and the Post Office has to confirm it. A shared mailbox fails the inspection.

The bond, tiered by how much you sell

New York is the only state covered here that scales the bond with volume. Everywhere else it is one number whether you sell six cars or six hundred.

The bond goes on form VS-3, completed by the surety with its seal, matching your exact business name and address, with power of attorney papers attached. Exempt dealers, those selling only trailers, motorcycles, vehicles over 10,000 pounds, ATVs, boats, snowmobiles or limited use vehicles, file a signed statement naming the groups they will deal in exclusively.

One wording difference worth noticing if you are applying for the first time. The forms tie the tier to vehicles sold during the previous calendar year. The DMV's web guidance ties it to the number you anticipate selling. With no previous year behind you, the second phrasing is the one that applies.

What you actually pay

That $175 cap deserves its own paragraph, because it is a consumer rule with teeth and it is the kind of thing a new dealer gets wrong. Under 78.19, a dealer may charge up to $175 for assisting a purchaser in obtaining registration and title, exclusive of the actual DMV fees. The disclosure has to say THIS IS NOT A DMV FEE, in type no smaller than the other charges on the invoice or bill of sale. Presenting the optional processing fee as something DMV requires is itself a violation.

New York does not publish a dealer plate price in the regulation, the application or the guidance read for this page. Section 78.21(i) establishes only that such fees are prorated for terms shorter than two years.

There is one internal contradiction in the regulation itself, and it is small but real: 78.23(b)(1) sets the fee for dealer-issued customer plates at $2.00 per set, and the footnote on the same page says the current cost is $5.00.

The plates, and the rule about lending them

Section 78.21 is unusually detailed about what a dealer plate may and may not do.

• A set is one plate. Since July 1993
• Five days is the maximum loan of a dealer plate to a purchaser, recorded on the MV-50
• No renewing that loan for the same vehicle and the same plate to the same person or firm
• 24 hours or less with a prospective purchaser for demonstration is not a loan at all
• Not on a vehicle kept primarily for towing or hauling property, a vehicle rented to another, or a vehicle carrying passengers for hire
• Not on vehicles owned by the dealer's family or employees, and not on service cars
• An insurance ID card from the purchaser first, if the vehicle is to be registered in New York
• Never lent to another dealer or any other person except as 78.21 specifically permits

Then 78.21(j), which is the clause to plan around. If a dealer has not sold at least five vehicles in the previous twelve months, the Commissioner may demand in writing the return of one or more plates within ten days. Failing to surrender them is itself a violation.

Texas and Michigan attach a sales minimum to keeping the licence. New York attaches it to keeping the plates.

The records, and the electronic book

Every New York dealer must enrol in and use VERIFI, the electronic book of registry, signing a facility participation agreement with the vendor and paying a per-transaction fee. A dealer selling fewer than ten vehicles a year, with two or fewer plates, not in the partnering or plate issuance programmes and with no suspension or revocation history, may ask the Commissioner in writing for an exemption, and then reports by paper or telephone within five days of each sale.

The book of registry itself has to carry a full description of every vehicle acquired, traded or sold, who it came from, the last plate on it, the odometer at purchase, the buyer, the date of sale, the MV-50 number, any dealer plate loan with the date the plate came back, and for titled vehicles the number of liens on the application.

MV-50 books are security documents. They must be kept inaccessible to anyone not directly connected with the business, may never be lent, and a dealer who cannot satisfactorily account for every single MV-50 is in violation.

Where you may sell

All sales happen at the registered place of business, under 78.8(a). The exceptions are narrow:

• At the customer's home or place of business
• Two authorised away-from-premises sales per calendar year, maximum

An away-from-premises sale has to be staffed for its whole duration, and the booth sign must carry the dealer's name, registered street address, registration number and telephone number, either proportionate to the sign or in four-inch letters with a three-quarter inch stroke on a sign of at least 18 square feet. An unstaffed display is not a sale and does not trigger the rules. Put a salesperson next to it and it does.

The inspection

Albany receives the application and checks it is complete, then sends it to a regional office, which contacts you to schedule an on-site investigation by an Automotive Facilities Inspector.

VS-142 splits the requirements cleanly: items 1 to 10 go in the envelope, items 11 to 15 are met at the inspection. The inspector wants the dealer starter kit present, the signs mounted and visible, and photo ID for everyone named on the application. Approve and the DMV issues the certificate of registration, the MV-50 books and the dealer plate letter.

New York publishes no processing time anywhere in the regulation, the application or the guidance.

What is not there

It is worth listing, because the absences are as distinctive as the sign.

• No office square footage, and no lot size
• No minimum opening hours. Records must be open for inspection during reasonable business hours, and that is the only mention
• No pre-licensing course, no exam, no continuing education
• No fingerprinting. Instead a disclosure section covering every owner, officer and member and their immediate family, down to any misdemeanour or felony conviction ever
• No separate salesperson licence. New York licenses the facility, not the people selling in it
• No published liability insurance limits. An insurance ID card is required before plates are issued, and workers' compensation plus disability cover if you have employees

Where the money actually goes

New York's published entry cost is one of the clearest in the cluster: $487.50, a $20,000 bond while you are small, a sign, a desk, a mailbox and room for three cars. There is no course to sit and no exam to fail.

Which leaves the whole question of whether this works as a business sitting exactly where it always sits: on what each car cost you and how long it stood there. New York will not tell you that, and neither will a bank statement.

The costs that decide a year arrive one receipt at a time, and they attach to one car each: the transport, the detail, the two tyres, the $175 of title work you may or may not have charged on, the month it sat. Deelary keeps every one of them on the vehicle it belongs to, so the total cost, the margin and the days in stock on screen are the real ones. What a good gross profit per car looks like is the figure to measure yours against, and days on the lot is the one New York's plate rule quietly cares about too.

Comparing states? Dealer license requirements by state puts the bond, the office, the sign and the course side by side. Texas measures the ceiling, Florida inspects before you file, California gives you an exam you can fail, North Carolina rations your plates, Ohio counts the chairs, Michigan counts your hours, Arizona lets the lot be a vacant lot, Georgia denies the five-car rule outright, Tennessee will not let the lot be grass, and Pennsylvania measures it in cars with their doors open. Do you need a dealer license to flip cars covers the threshold question across states.