At the risk of belaboring the obvious (as I often do):

Each of the 50 states is different. Do not, therefore, assume that anything which applies in one state will apply in any other, no matter how sensible this might seem. For example, the previous poster says that sellers remove license plates at the time of sale: this is true in Colorado (I failed to do this once in Colorado, so I know how it works there), but it is not true in other states. Same with insurance: some places make it impossible to register a vehicle without insurance. For example, in Massachussetts the insurance agent actually does most of the registration paperwork. In other states insurance is up to you to provide. Some states require that you have it, however, and you'll get in trouble if you're caught driving without. As far as I know, some states still make insurance voluntary (but I might be out of date about this part). Get the picture?

I'll add that if you don't have bike documents in your own name, it's going to be more difficult to sell the bike. Imagine what you'd do if someone offered you a bike for sale, but said the documents were in someone else's name; you'd turn around and walk away, right? I sure would. It's easier to do things the same way everyone else does it whenever possible. Don't try to be so clever, or you'll outsmart yourself; just follow the crowd.

Hope that helps.

Mark

It has been said, many times already - each state has different rules/laws and the way we had to do it, in Ohio, was to register the bike with a friend and be a 'named' rider on his insurance. We did this in 2006 - bought an old bike for $1000 and sold it, 5,000 miles later for $900.
The following year, after much research, we found the simplest (if not the cheapest) way was to buy a bike in the UK and have it flown over. It cost $1,800 one way. At that time, it was almost 2 $ to the pound. Now it would be even more expensive.
We then left the bike in storage in Canada. Now, 3 years down the line, we leave the bike with friends and just pay for our flights each year.
That was 27,000 miles ago. We used to tax the bike even though it had never been on the road in the UK, but nowadays (the bike being 3 years old and due it's first MOT) we just use the SORN notice.
So, although, initially it cost a lot, it has worked out OK - but that is because we come over for around 10 weeks each year. If, like us, you fall in love with the USA, then there are many roads to ride yet, so we will be coming back for as long as we are able.
The down side is we don't have a bike in Europe!

You can check out the ups and downs of the whole process of shipping a bike on the website I did in 2007

A Long Ride In America - Home