I've lived in NJ and PA, no outboard titles in either state.
The only state I've run into with outboard titles myself was Missouri, I bought 3hp motor off a guy at a yardsale and before he would let it go, (super cheap, he insisted that we go down to the municipal building to 'transfer ownership because he didn't want me using that motor while it was still in his name and something about getting it off his tax bill. I only went along with it out of curiosity, and it cost me $9.25 in title and sales tax and they gave me a 30 day warning that I needed to procure a valid MO residency certificate of some sort or be fined up to $30. I would have just walked away but the motor only cost me $20 and if another $9.25 made him feel better, so be it, but it taught me not to bother buying anything in MO if they insisted on changing the title over on the spot. As far as I was concerned he could keep the title, its worthless in NJ. Since I sold the motor years ago, I still have a MO title here somewhere in my name.
NJ also doesn't title small trailers that are not commercial or those that do not exceed 3,500 lbs empty. That rules out nearly all boat trailers. But, PA requires a title and inspection for trailers, and PA has big issues with NJ trailers because so many trailers here are registered as 'homemade' and traded like baseball cards with no paperwork all the time. More recently NJ started to get a bit more serious about trailer registrations but the only change is that they want a picture and certified weight on the trailer, and that was only brought on by so many commercial owners cheating the system with their big trailers that were often tagged or sharing tags with their personal jon boat trailers and such. It made the common guy have to go spend $15 to get a weight slip if they wanted to register a new or 'homemade' trailer. They still don't care if its truly homemade, just so they have a picture of it. They don't even care if its got a brand on the side. Its only about the money aspect of it.
Around me, there's far more two strokes than four strokes, most guys have given up on four strokes due to the fact they don't last as long, I've seen guys buy and run four strokes for 3 or 4 years only to find out they're down on compression or they need major repairs, or they have computer related issues due to being fuel injected.
Many if not most simply go back to an old used two stroke so they can afford to stay on the water.
Out of the 30 or so motors I have myself, only eight are four strokes, and all are 9.9hp models, (5 Honda's, one Yamaha, one Mercury, and one Yamaha powered Mariner). I rarely run the four strokes though, i generally grab my 1982 Johnson 15hp first.
Those older Mercurys look pertty clean, but that seems to be the norm over in PA where they don't have saltwater. Those 40hp twins ran really well, and will outrun and out pull the same hp OMC by a huge margin.
I had a Mercury 400 on my first 16ft V hull back in PA as a kid, it was scary fast, and faster with two people than with one because the added bow weight kept the bow down and improved the bite of the prop so much.
We didn't have GPS back then to check speed but it was fast enough to make my 18 year old self want a life vest on when flying across the half frozen lake in late April. All was fine till we got too brave a few times and started pushing our boats through the melting ice to get to back areas on the lake, we found out that ice could cut through aluminum and it cold also remove a lower unit faster than you can blink an eye.
