Buying from a private seller

A private sale is one where an individual person sells their vehicle to another consumer - perhaps through a classified advertisement in a newspaper, from a roadside sale area, or through a car market or car fair.

Although you may get a cheap deal, you have less legal protection if things go wrong.

What to check

Quality

We recommend you get an independent mechanical check before you buy, because it may be hard to track down the seller to fix things after you have bought the vehicle.

The Consumer Guarantees Act does not apply to vehicles sold by a private person. This means that there are no legal guarantees about quality with this type of sale. 

Money owing on the vehicle

Check that the vehicle does not have any money owing on it before you buy. If the vehicle has money owing on it by previous owners it may be repossessed from you by a finance company. See Checking if money is owed.

If things go wrong - your legal protections

Contractual Remedies Act

The Contractual Remedies Act gives you some protection if you can show that:

• you were persuaded to buy the vehicle by what the seller said, and
• what the seller said was untrue, and
• the seller’s false statements have caused you to lose money - eg, by having to pay to repair the engine when the seller told you it was in excellent condition.

Compensation from the seller would be based on the difference between what the vehicle is actually worth and what it would have been worth if the seller’s statements about the vehicle had been true.

For more information on buying vehicles from a private seller see Buying Second-hand Goods and Buying a vehicle from a car market.