How to sell a car privately in Australia

The Personal Property Securities Register records security interests over goods, including cars. If you bought your car with a secured loan, the lender registered an interest against the vehicle identification number, and that registration survives the loan being paid out unless somebody removes it. Lenders are supposed to discharge promptly. Many do not, and nobody notices until a buyer runs a search.

Search your own vehicle before you list it. A search costs a few dollars, is done on the VIN, and returns exactly what a prospective buyer will see: registered security interests, whether the vehicle has been recorded as stolen, and whether it has been written off. Discovering a stale registration a week before sale is a minor administrative task. Discovering it while a buyer is standing in your driveway with cash usually loses the sale.

If an interest is still registered and the debt is paid, contact the credit provider and ask them to discharge it, then re-run the search to confirm. If the debt is not paid, the practical options are to pay it out before settlement or to arrange for the buyer's payment to go to the lender directly, with the balance to you, and only hand over the vehicle once the discharge is confirmed.

Selling a car with an undischarged security interest is not a technicality. Under the personal property securities regime a secured party can, in defined circumstances, enforce against the vehicle in the buyer's hands. The buyer who loses the car will come after you, and a court will be looking at what you knew and what you said.

The register also surfaces write-off history. A vehicle recorded as a statutory write-off cannot be re-registered in most jurisdictions; a repairable write-off can be, subject to inspection, but its value and insurability are permanently affected. Both must be disclosed, and both will be found.

Give the buyer the certificate. Sellers who run the search themselves, print the certificate and hand it over with the service history convert far more inspections into sales, because it removes the single biggest source of buyer anxiety at no cost to the seller. It also creates a dated record of what the register showed on the day of sale.

Requirements differ by state and territory, and the differences are large enough that advice from a friend interstate is often wrong. Victoria requires a current roadworthy certificate to transfer a registered vehicle in most cases. Queensland requires a safety certificate for a registered vehicle offered for sale. New South Wales does not require an inspection to transfer, but registration renewal for older vehicles requires one, and a car sold with little registration left is worth less for that reason.

Where a certificate is required it must be current at the time of transfer, and the validity period is short — measured in weeks or a limited number of kilometres. Obtaining one too early means paying for it twice.

Have the vehicle's registration status clear in your own mind before advertising. Selling a registered vehicle transfers the registration to the buyer; selling an unregistered vehicle usually means the buyer must arrange an unregistered vehicle permit to move it and complete an inspection to register it. Both are legitimate, but they attract different buyers at different prices, and misdescribing which one you are selling wastes everyone's time.

Prepare the documents a serious buyer expects: the registration papers, the service history and receipts, the owner's manual, both sets of keys, and any records of major work. A folder of receipts is worth real money in a private sale because it is the only evidence a buyer has that the car was maintained.

Write a receipt at the point of sale and keep a copy. It should record both parties' full names and addresses, the buyer's driver licence number, the vehicle's registration number and VIN, the odometer reading, the date and time, the price, and the fact that the vehicle is sold as is. That document is what protects you if the buyer later disputes what was agreed, and it is what lets you nominate them if a fine arrives.

Remove yourself from the vehicle before handover. Unpair phones and delete the address history from the navigation system, remove the toll tag and close or transfer the toll account, take the garage remote out of the visor, and clear any saved home address. Cars retain far more personal data than most owners realise, and a garage door opener paired to a home address is a genuine security problem.

Verify the buyer before handing over keys. Ask for a current driver licence, check that the photograph matches, and photograph the licence. If the buyer will not produce one, the test drive does not happen. A person unwilling to be identified is not a buyer.

Check your insurance position before the first inspection rather than after an incident. Comprehensive policies commonly cover another driver with your permission, but exclusions apply — unlicensed drivers, drivers below a nominated age, and drivers excluded by the policy schedule. Read the product disclosure statement or call the insurer and ask specifically about a prospective purchaser test driving the vehicle.

Go with them. Sitting in the passenger seat removes the risk of the car simply not returning, lets you answer questions in context, and gives you control over the route. Choose a route that includes a hill, a rough surface and some open road, because a buyer who is properly shown the car is a buyer who negotiates less afterwards.

Meet in a public place in daylight for first contact, and tell someone where you are. Do not have strangers come to your home for the initial inspection if you can avoid it, and do not leave the vehicle keys accessible while people are looking through the car.

Encourage an independent inspection and let the buyer arrange it. State motoring bodies and mobile mechanics do pre-purchase inspections, the buyer pays, and a clean report closes sales quickly. A seller who resists an inspection tells the buyer something they cannot un-hear.

Be straightforward about known faults. Volunteering a list of the things that need attention costs you a little on price and removes the buyer's principal lever for renegotiating at handover, which is where most private sales fall apart. It also protects you: a fault you disclosed is a fault the buyer accepted.

Never let a vehicle leave for an 'overnight test' or to be shown to a partner. That request, framed as reasonable and slightly hurt, is the standard opening of a vehicle theft.

The governing rule is simple and unforgiving: hand over the keys only when the money is available in your account and cannot be reversed. Not when a receipt is shown, not when a text message says the transfer is processing, not when a screenshot appears on the buyer's phone. Payment fraud in vehicle sales is overwhelmingly built on the gap between an instruction to pay and money actually settling.

Bank transfers are the common method and the common vector. Real-time payments settle in seconds between most Australian institutions, so a transfer that is 'pending' or 'held for review' when the buyer is standing there is a warning, not a delay. Check your own banking app or internet banking directly. Do not accept the buyer's screen as evidence.

Fake payment confirmation emails and text messages are convincing, use real bank branding, and are trivially generated. So are forged bank cheques, which look correct at the counter and are dishonoured days later. If a bank cheque is unavoidable, present it and wait for it to clear before releasing the vehicle.

The overpayment scam persists because it works on decent people: the buyer sends more than the price, apologises, and asks for the difference back urgently, often to cover a transport agent. The original payment is later reversed and the refund is gone. Refund nothing, ever, until an overpayment has been confirmed as settled by your bank rather than by the payer.

Third-party escrow, vehicle transport agents and buyers who cannot inspect because they are overseas or offshore on a mine site are the recurring features of remote-buyer fraud. A buyer purchasing a car sight unseen at full asking price, in a hurry, using an intermediary you have never heard of, is not a stroke of luck.

Cash is workable for smaller amounts but carries its own risks. If you accept cash, meet inside a bank branch and deposit it at the counter, which handles both counterfeit risk and the safety of carrying a large sum.

Report attempted fraud to Scamwatch even when nothing was lost. Reports are what produce the warnings that stop the next seller, and the reporting process takes a few minutes.

Complete the transfer paperwork at handover, with both parties signing. In most states the buyer then lodges the transfer and pays the transfer fee and stamp duty within a set window — commonly 14 days — with late fees if they do not. You cannot compel them to do it, which is exactly why the seller's own notice matters.

Lodge the notice of disposal yourself, immediately, and do not rely on the buyer's transfer. Most states let you do it online in a few minutes. It tells the road authority you are no longer the responsible operator from the date of sale, and it is what redirects camera fines, toll notices and parking infringements away from you.

Keep evidence of the sale date. The receipt with the buyer's licence details, the signed transfer form and the notice of disposal confirmation together let you nominate the new owner if an infringement still arrives, which happens where the fine relates to a period around the changeover.

Deal with the toll account and any e-tag separately. Removing the tag does not close the account, and a vehicle registration left on a toll account continues to accrue charges and administration fees against you.

Cancel or transfer your insurance from the sale date. Comprehensive cover on a vehicle you no longer own is money wasted, and most insurers refund the unused portion. Compulsory third party arrangements move with the registration in most states, so check what your state does rather than assuming.

If you are selling an unregistered vehicle, or cancelling registration rather than transferring it, return or dispose of the plates as your state requires and claim any refund of the unused registration period. Refunds are usually available pro rata but must be applied for; they are not automatic.

Finally, keep the paperwork for a few years. Disputes about a private car sale surface months later, and the file — receipt, PPSR certificate, roadworthy certificate, disposal notice — is the difference between a short conversation and a long one.