MA title travel trailer

Tell them to get the title before you'll buy it.

Any chance that this is a home-built trailer?? If that's the case, the original owner/builder should have paperwork related to the purchase of the items. Have you checked the tongue of the trailer - likely the street side toward the front - for a series of numbers stamped into the frame? That would be the VIN#. I'd be leery of buying anything like that without a Title, but with the VIN# you could check with the registration office or even the police department to see if there is anything reported as stolen. Not even a Bill of Sale or any purchase documents from where it was bought?? Gotta have some paperwork or I'd steer clear.

Are you sure it's not "hot?"

Maybe that's what happens to all the stolen trailers taken all over the US: they end up sold sans title in Mass.

This may be a silly question but I hear on here occasionally about someone not having title to an RV. How can that be? When you buy one you get ownership papers and then as it sells the papers get transferred.

As you've already discovered, trailers over 3,000 pounds require Titling in Massachusetts (See below references).

Title requirements, here quoting from this link:

State of Massachusetts wrote:
Section 4. (a) Except for vehicles referred to in section two, whoever acquires a motor vehicle or trailer after the effective date of this chapter, shall be required to make application for a certificate of title. Such application shall be made within ten days from the acquisition of ownership of said vehicle or trailer.

There is a trailer-related exemption from this requirement in the section (2) mentioned above, here quoting from this page:

State of wrote:
Section 2. (a) No certificate of title need be obtained for:
.....snip...(10) Trailers having gross weight of three thousand pounds or less

Side note:

I think it would be illegal to represent a trailer as a camper in any State, and would be most uncomfortable making a purchase from someone who suggested it, perhaps having done it themselves?

EVERY trailer of reasonably recent vintage comes from its maker with what's called a "Certificate of Origin". That's the document used in all States/cases for original Titling. Hopefully you're dealing with the original owner of this unit, and that he still has that document or can acquire a copy. I strongly advise that you insist on that paperwork since you may eventually need it if, say you move or sell the trailer out of State where such Titling is required.

I would think your only reliable answer would come from a MA title office instead of strangers on the Internet.