The sale turns on nine digits you may not hold
A Dutch car moves to a new keeper on two things: the kentekencard and the full tenaamstellingscode. Both are named on the RDW page for private car sales. Miss the code and the transfer cannot be started at all, by you, by the buyer or by anyone behind a counter.
Here is where financed cars come apart. The RDW addresses the code to whoever owns the vehicle, which under a lease or finance contract is the company, and it says so on its page about the kentekenbewijs document. Where your folder holds a registration card but no letter carrying the second block of digits, stop searching the drawers. It was never sent to you.
Nor can you order a replacement. For a lease vehicle the RDW issues a new code only to the lease or finance company, as set out on its page about a code gone missing. The call to make is to the lender, and the RDW cannot help you around them.
Four ways of paying, four different owners
Everything after this depends on one line in your contract, so put the contract next to the registration papers you actually hold and read both. A lease car may sit in the register under the lease or finance company, under the driver as a private person, or under a company such as the employer, which is how the RDW sets it out on its page for putting a lease car in a name. The name on the card is a clue, then, and not an answer.
- Private lease. A monthly fee buys you the use of the car. The lease company owns it throughout and takes it back at the end.
- Lease through an employer, operational or otherwise. The lease company owns the car and the arrangement runs through your work.
- Financial lease or car finance. You are paying the car off, and a clause fixes the point at which it becomes yours.
- A personal loan, or money from a relative. The cash was borrowed, the car was bought outright, and the debt sits apart from the vehicle.
A lease car was never yours to sell
With private lease, or a car arranged through your employer, there is no sale for you to make. The contract sets out the alternatives: run it to the end and hand the car back, break it early on the stated terms, or ask the lease company whether it will sell you the vehicle. That last route is the only one leading anywhere near a sale. Buy the car, get it into your own name with the whole code, and from that day it is an ordinary second hand car.
Expats usually meet this when a job ends sooner than the lease does. Where the contract runs through the employer, the fleet or HR desk is the first conversation, because the employer and the lease company settle the car between them and you are not a party to it. Our post on a car your employer pays for collects the questions people send us.
Finance in your name: clear it, then sell
Where you are paying the car off, the clean order is settle first and sell second. Ask the lender in writing how early repayment works, ask for a dated aflosnota, and ask what lands on your doormat once the contract closes. Lenders each have their own procedure, and theirs is the one that counts.
The other way round, paying the lender out of the sale money, is common and tighter. Sale and settlement now hang on each other, and the buyer still expects the code on the day. Agree with the lender in advance how and when the code reaches you, and tell the buyer about the finance before anyone talks about price. There is more in our blog post on cars on finance and lease.
- Dig out the contract and note the lender and the contract number.
- Request a dated aflosnota and the lender's rules on early repayment.
- Ask what the lender posts out, in writing, and when the code follows.
- Close the contract, or put the sale-funded version of that in writing.
- Sell with the card and both blocks of digits in your own hands.
A car bought with a personal loan is simply yours
Say the money came from a personal loan (persoonlijke lening), the car is in your name, and both blocks of the code are in your papers. Then none of the above applies to you. The sale is an ordinary one and the debt carries on as an agreement between you and your bank. Check two things anyway: whether the loan contract mentions the car at all, and how the instalments keep being paid if you are about to leave the country.
Asking webuycar.nl while the contract still runs
An unfinished contract is no reason to wait. Ask for an offer now and name the lender and the contract type in the notes, so we know what we are looking at and can talk the timing through with you. The offer holds while you deal with the lender, however long that takes.
On the day we come, collection costs you nothing anywhere in the Netherlands, we lift the car out of its current registration at the RDW on the doorstep, and you are paid on the spot. That last part needs the card and the complete code, which is the one real deadline in this guide: finance settled, digits in hand, before the handover. Our transfer guide covers that step.