Leave it where it is. A car that has sat on a driveway since the spring does not have to be running, charged, tested or cleaned before it can be sold, and getting it going first is the most common piece of wasted money in this whole subject. A flat battery is not a fault anybody is pricing in. It is the signature of a car that has been standing still, and buyers read it as exactly that.
What does need attention is the paperwork quietly running in the background, because a parked car keeps its obligations unless somebody formally takes it off the road. If the car is on private ground and the standing is going to continue, suspending the registration is the mechanism for that, and it is worth reading before you decide anything else.
What months of standing actually change
The predictable list is short. The battery goes flat, and a battery that has been flat for a long stretch often will not come back. The tyres develop flat spots where the weight has been sitting on them, which sometimes works itself out after a few miles and sometimes does not. Brake discs pick up surface rust, which the first few stops usually clean off. Petrol ages. Rubber hardens. Mice take an interest in wiring and in cabin filters, and they do more damage in a quiet garage than on a street.
Almost none of that is worth fixing to sell. The battery is the only one people reliably spend money on, and they spend it so the car will start for a viewing, which is a reason that disappears the moment the car goes on a transporter.
What does matter is being able to describe it. How long has it stood, where, under cover or not, and was it running properly when it was parked. A car put away in good order eighteen months ago and a car parked because it started making a noise are two different propositions, and the second one is not a problem as long as you say so.
The costs that did not stop when you did
Three obligations stay attached to a car while it is registered in your name, and none of them care whether it has moved.
Road tax (motorrijtuigenbelasting) carries on. Third party insurance stays compulsory. And the APK, the Dutch roadworthiness test, keeps falling due on its own date.
The APK one has a detail most owners have never read. The RDW’s page on the APK says the test may be up to two months out of date only if you are not driving the vehicle. After those two months the vehicle has to have been tested, the RDW checks that in the register, and an untested vehicle earns its keeper a fine from the CJIB, the agency that collects Dutch fines.
This is not occasional enforcement. The RDW runs a comparison of the register against the inspection and insurance data every day, and says every vehicle is checked on both obligations at least once a year. A car nobody has looked at since March is still being looked at by that process.
So the first question is whether anybody ever took the car off the road officially. If nobody did, those three obligations have been running the whole time, in whatever state the car is sitting.
Suspension, and whether it is worth starting one now
A suspension (schorsing) switches all three off at once. The RDW’s conditions for requesting one are clear about the trade: no road tax, no insurance requirement, no APK requirement, and in exchange the vehicle may not stand on the public road or be driven on one. You choose a term of one, two or three years and arrange it online with DigiD. The Belastingdienst confirms its side of it, that you pay no road tax for a suspended vehicle, and refunds what you have already paid from the suspension date.
The condition is the one that decides it. A resident’s bay on the street is a public road. With nowhere private to keep the car, a suspension is not available to you, however much the saving appeals, and the honest answer in that situation is to get the car sold.
If the car has been standing on private ground and nobody suspended it, you cannot backdate your way out. A suspension starts when it is granted. What it can do is stop the meter from today, which is worth doing if the car is going to sit for months more, and close to pointless if a sale is a fortnight away, because the fee does not come back.
If a sale is already in sight
There is one timing rule in here that catches people, and it sits on the tax side.
The Belastingdienst says that if you end a suspension within one month, you must pay road tax for the period of the suspension after all, and a catch-up assessment follows. That sounds like an argument against suspending a car you are about to sell, and it would be, except for what is printed underneath it: if the suspension ends within that month because the registration at the RDW lapses, no road tax is due.
Selling the car is what makes the registration lapse. The RDW puts it simply on its own page about selling a vehicle: the suspension expires after the sale. So a suspension followed by a sale does not bring a catch-up bill. Ending a suspension yourself inside the first month, to drive the car again or to put it back on the street, is the move that does.
None of which changes the practical advice. A suspension taken out days before a handover costs a fee to save almost nothing.
What a buyer has to be told about a car that has not moved
The duty is straightforward. Under the Dutch government’s description of the rights and duties in a purchase agreement, the seller must tell the buyer what he knows about the thing he is selling. For a car that has stood still, that means how long it has stood, whether it currently starts, whether it is suspended, and what was wrong with it when it was parked, if anything was.
Half of it is public anyway. The APK date and the suspension are both in the plate check, so a buyer who looks will see a test that ran out last autumn before you have finished your first sentence. Saying it first costs you nothing and saves the conversation.
The mileage is the one number that has not moved. Whatever the odometer read on the day it was parked is what it reads now, which makes a standing car unusually easy to describe accurately.
For our part, the APK does not need to be valid, the car does not need to start, and it is collected on a transporter, free, anywhere in the Netherlands. A number plate and the mileage are enough to ask with, and photographs help without being required. How quickly an offer comes back depends on how much detail came with the request, so the sentence about how long it has stood is worth including. If you would rather sell the car to us, ask for an offer.
Frequently asked questions
Should I get the car running before I sell it?
No, and we would prefer you did not. A battery bought so the car will start for a viewing is money spent on a car that is going to be loaded onto a transporter anyway.
Can I sell a car that is suspended?
Yes, and there is nothing to undo first. The RDW says the suspension expires after the sale, so the buyer registering the car ends it as a side effect.
Does the APK have to be valid to sell the car?
Not to us. For a private sale it matters more, because the car may not use a public road without one, so the buyer has to get it home some other way.
My car has been parked for a year without a suspension. What have I been paying?
Road tax throughout, insurance if you kept the policy, and you have been exposed to a fine for an expired APK since two months past the date. The RDW checks both against the register.
Is it worth suspending the car first and then selling it?
Only if the sale is some way off. The fee is not refunded and the suspension ends the moment the car goes into the buyer’s name, so a week of suspension buys a week of saved tax at the cost of the whole fee.