Car registration and plates
New to North Carolina, or just bought a vehicle: title and register it in person at a license plate agency below — bring your out-of-state title or registration, ID, and proof of insurance. A license plate agency issues tags and titles; it does not issue driver licenses or ID cards.
Renewing an existing registration: North Carolina bills your vehicle’s property tax together with the renewal fee on one combined notice. Pay it through myNCDMV online, by mail, or in person at a license plate agency — your vehicle needs a passing inspection first.
Just titled a newly bought vehicle and don’t want to pay the property tax right away: you can defer it for a set window after titling, but a limited plate applies until you pay — there’s no grace period once that window closes.
Questions about what your vehicle’s taxed value should be: that goes to the county, not the DMV — see pay property taxes.
What to expect: bring your title and ID regardless of which you’re doing — a plate agency can’t title or register a vehicle without them.
Who to call
One office handles this.
NC DMV — Waynesville License Plate Agency
- Main: 828-452-1577
80 Waynesville Plaza, Waynesville, NC 28786
This is a privately-contracted License Plate Agency — vehicle registration, tags, and titling only. It does NOT issue driver licenses or ID cards. Haywood County also has a Canton License Plate Agency (828-646-0091), confirmed via the same county source. UNCONFIRMED: hours (third-party DMV directories consistently say Monday–Friday 9:00 AM–5:00 PM, but no official NCDOT page states this, so it's omitted as a structured field — call ahead or check NCDOT's DMV Office Locator to confirm). ADDRESS CAVEAT: the 80 Waynesville Plaza address is from an NCDOT press release soliciting a new operator because the prior contract (run by MLG Enterprises/Melissa Gladden since 2008) expired May 14, 2026 — before today. The agency itself should persist (NCDOT's policy is to keep an LPA running in Waynesville), but the specific operator, and conceivably the address, may have changed since; confirm before relying on it. Separately, third-party DMV directories consistently list a full driver-license office (licenses, ID cards, road tests) in Clyde at 290 Lee Road, 828-627-6969 — that address/phone couldn't be confirmed against NCDOT's own office locator, which is an interactive map with no fetchable list view, so treat it as a lead, not a verified fact. Before a driver-license/ID visit, use NCDOT's official DMV Office Locator or call NCDMV Customer Service at 919-715-7000 to confirm the current nearest office and hours.
Related questions
Every office on one page
It happens: you call, and it turns out to be someone else's job. The cheat sheet puts every number on this site in one place, grouped by who runs it, so the next one to try is right there.