Do Buildings Need VIN Numbers?


Do Buildings Need VIN Numbers?
Every car sold in America carries a number that follows it from the assembly line to the junkyard. It survives accidents, title transfers, and ownership changes. It is the reason a buyer at a used car lot can pull up a vehicle’s full history in seconds. Buildings, which cost orders of magnitude more than cars and anchor trillions of dollars in capital, have nothing like it. The Vehicle Identification Number was not born out of forward thinking. It was a reaction to chaos. In the early decades of the American auto industry, each manufacturer stamped its own serial numbers on vehicles with no consistent format and no interoperability across insurers, regulators, or law enforcement. That changed in 1981, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration standardized the 17-character alphanumeric code now required on every road-legal vehicle sold in the country. What the VIN unlocked was not just identification... ...more RSK: I guess it wouldn't hurt but I do not see any immediate rush on this.
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Every car sold in America carries a number that follows it from the assembly line to the junkyard. It survives accidents, title transfers, and ownership changes. It is the reason a buyer at a used car lot can pull up a vehicle’s full history in seconds. Buildings, which cost orders of magnitude more than cars and anchor trillions of dollars in capital, have nothing like it.

The Vehicle Identification Number was not born out of forward thinking. It was a reaction to chaos. In the early decades of the American auto industry, each manufacturer stamped its own serial numbers on vehicles with no consistent format and no interoperability across insurers, regulators, or law enforcement. That changed in 1981, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration standardized the 17-character alphanumeric code now required on every road-legal vehicle sold in the country. What the VIN unlocked was not just identification...

...more

Do Buildings Need VIN Numbers?

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