Outstanding finance on a car for sale, talk to me....

[HBFS]

Can anyone tell me a bit more about it? I'm not really sure what to ask and how it would work.

The reason I ask is, I've just done a 160 mile round trip to see a car at a dealer which I really like. Excellent price, but...
I've just come home to do my due diligence before committing to buy and a HPI report tells me it has outstanding finance.

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Cheers

[LukeSi]

If you can find out who held the finance then contact them and ask if it is still owed on.

[PumpkinSteve]

It may have just been cleared by the dealer and just not showing up yet, for example if the previous owner part-ex'd it and bought another car from them by adding the outstanding amount onto their new agreement. A similar sort of thing happened when I was selling my car and had settled the finance a couple of days before, it hadn't shown up but a call to the finance company confirmed that it was settled.

[HBFS]

PumpkinSteve said:

It may have just been cleared by the dealer and just not showing up yet, for example if the previous owner part-ex'd it and bought another car from them by adding the outstanding amount onto their new agreement. A similar sort of thing happened when I was selling my car and had settled the finance a couple of days before, it hadn't shown up but a call to the finance company confirmed that it was settled.

An hour ago I would have said thats probably it. The dealer explained it was p/x'd by a regular customer. However, its been advertised on ebay since November...

[robsco]

The dealer should be able to produce a clearance letter for car. As long as you see this, you're fine. It might not drop off the HPI/Experian check for a little while afterwards.

[GavinPearson]

I sold a car with finance outstanding on it in the last century.

I got a letter from the finance company showing the payoff amount.

I made an arrangement with my personal banker to receive the cheque from the buyer and then pay off the finance company and give the buyer confirmation that the money was transferred.

This satisfied the buyer and me - we verified that his money was good so I wouldn't be out of pocket either.

[HBFS]

GavinPearson said:

I sold a car with finance outstanding on it in the last century.

I got a letter from the finance company showing the payoff amount.

I made an arrangement with my personal banker to receive the cheque from the buyer and then pay off the finance company and give the buyer confirmation that the money was transferred.

This satisfied the buyer and me - we verified that his money was good so I wouldn't be out of pocket either.

But would a dealer really wait untill they've sold it, untill they clear the outstanding finance? Sureley because they've got the car in, they must have received suffcient funds to pay the finance off?!

[masonj]

Not sure if it's a mina dealer or not but most businesses use a stocking plan which is a form of finance and will show on a HPI. This is usually due to the fact that a franchise is unlikely to have the liquidity to have all their stock paid for at once.