KIA Insurance - Totaled car, no collision coverage, still owe money on loan. What do I do?
I hope I'm in the right sub for this but I'm not sure, if there is a better place for this post please let me know.
So I got into an accident that I was at fault, I do not have collision coverage, and I still owe about $19,000 on the vehicle. I asked my insurance and without coverage there is nothing they can do. It is not drivable and the air bags deployed. There is heavy front end damage but the rest of the vehicle is fine. I've only taken it to one shop for an estimate because I don't want to keep paying for a tow to get different quotes and they all end up being close to the same amount anyway. The estimate I got was $20,000 to fix it, so I'm not going to be able to afford that, and even if I could I don't see how that would be worth it. The car before the accident was probably worth $20,000 - $25,000 at most. (2022 KIA K5 GT LINE). I have pictures of the vehicle as well but wasn't sure if I was allowed to include those in the post.
So as far as I see it, it's going to just sit somewhere until I pay off what I owe. So instead of paying a storage fee to keep it somewhere (my apartment doesn't allow vehicles that aren't drivable to stay in the parking lot), I want to either sell it or scrap it. Whatever I decide to do with it, I want the next tow to be the last.
If I can make a little bit of money on it, great, if not then like I said if I can at least avoid a storage fee or paying to tow it several times that's a win for me. Anything I do make would go straight towards paying it off anyway. I'm already pretty screwed, paying on a car that I can't drive so I'm trying to see my options and cut my losses.
I've gotten suggestions to declare bankruptcy, sell it, scrap it, keep it, sell all the parts individually, sell it as a whole for parts. A lot of the issue is, I don't think I can sell it, even to a salvage yard, without paying it off first, so what do I do with it until then? That's going to take a long time for me. I can't afford to fix it, can't sell it, scrap it etc. What do I do?
And I understand I'm not going to make money on this, I understand I'm screwed either way, I understand that I will not financially recover from this for quite some time. So I'm just asking what is my best course of action to cut my losses as much as possible? Is there a way to sell it before paying it off? Do I need to let the lender know about the accident? Is there a different way insurance can help even though they said they can't? Is there a service or organization that helps with this sort of thing? Should I declare bankruptcy?
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