Who edits the register, and who carries the risk
The RDW keeps a national record of every vehicle in the country and the person it belongs to. What you and your buyer agree between yourselves does not touch that record. For as long as your name sits in it, the Belastingdienst keeps billing you road tax (motorrijtuigenbelasting), the duty to insure the car is yours, and any fine the car picks up lands on your doormat.
The awkward part of the Dutch arrangement is that you are not the one who edits it. Your buyer is, and two things make that possible: the kentekencard, which is the registration document in credit card form, and the tenaamstellingscode, nine digits split into two parts and deliberately printed nowhere on the card. You hand those across, the buyer completes the transfer, and the register issues a vrijwaringsbewijs addressed to you. The RDW nonetheless holds the seller answerable for whether the transfer happens, which makes the division of labour less generous than it first looks.
Two documents that can quietly be dead
The most common way a handover day collapses has nothing to do with the buyer. It is a card the register will no longer accept, or a code that no longer belongs with the card. Order a replacement card because you cannot find yours, then find the original a fortnight later, and the old one is no longer the valid document whatever it looks like in your hand.
So test both before you agree a date. The RDW runs a free lookup for precisely this. Feed it the number plate, the document number, which you will find in the lower right corner on the face of the card, and then the code. Where those nine digits came from in the first place is covered under the code itself. A card the lookup rejects has to be replaced. A card it accepts alongside a code it rejects means the code is the problem, and that is a separate request. Replacements travel by post, so neither is something you can fix on the morning of the sale. Each paper and its replacement route is listed under paperwork for a sale.
The online route, and who qualifies for it
Two conditions decide this. The buyer has to hold the DigiD app with the identity check completed, and the car has to be on a kentekencard, because a vehicle still carrying the old paper registration cannot be transferred over the web at all. The fee is identical on both routes, the buyer pays it, and the current figure sits on rdw.nl.
- The buyer opens the RDW transfer page and signs in using the DigiD app.
- They copy across the details from your card, type in your code, and pay.
- Three emails reach them: a receipt, a notice that the vehicle is now theirs, and a download link for the vrijwaringsbewijs and the tenaamstellingsverslag.
- They print the vrijwaringsbewijs or forward you the file. This is the easiest step in the whole sale to forget, so ask for it while the buyer is still standing there.
- A few working days afterwards their own card arrives at their Dutch address, with part 2 of their new code.
The counter route, and what the buyer must bring
This route has a side effect worth engineering for. You can stand beside the buyer while it happens, walk out of the building together, and have your vrijwaringsbewijs already in your pocket. That removes the whole problem of chasing a document out of somebody who has driven off.
Three sorts of place can do it. A kentekenloket, which is a registration desk often tucked inside a post office. The RDW service desks at Veendam and Zoetermeer. And RDW inspection stations. None of them want an appointment first, and some keep evening or Sunday hours.
Identification is where this catches people. A valid Dutch driving licence is what the RDW specifies for a kentekenloket. At RDW locations a passport or ID card will also do. A buyer who arrived in the country recently and has not swapped their licence over yet should telephone the desk before driving across the province. They take your card and code, or the original paper documents for an older vehicle, and they come away with two items: a tenaamstellingsverslag carrying part 1 of their new code, theirs to keep, and the vrijwaringsbewijs, which belongs to you.
The moment the keys may change hands
A parking fine dated three weeks after the handover is the scenario all of this guards against. If the register still names you on that date then it is your fine, and the one thing that unwinds it is a document recording the exact minute the register changed. That is the entire purpose of the vrijwaringsbewijs, and it is why the RDW boils this guide down to a single instruction for sellers: do not release the vehicle before you are holding it.
You need not take the buyer's word for any of it. Mijn RDW lists the vehicles in your name once you sign in with DigiD, and the public Kentekencheck lets you confirm the same thing from the plate alone. Then file the vrijwaringsbewijs somewhere you will still find it in a year, because a bill can arrive long after a car has gone. What has to appear on the face of it is set out under the document itself. While papers are crossing the table, the latest APK report goes to the buyer too, where the car has one.
What the transfer switches off, and what it leaves running
Two obligations hang off your ownership, and they behave nothing alike. The tax side looks after itself. The RDW notifies the Belastingdienst on your behalf, so there is no form to submit and no call to make, and road tax already paid for days you no longer own the car finds its way back to you. How the refund is calculated has the detail. A suspension, if the car was carrying one, drops away at the same moment.
Insurance is the one nobody automates. The RDW tells your insurer nothing, and your insurer will carry on collecting the premium until you say something. Read the moment of transfer off the vrijwaringsbewijs and quote them that. From that minute the buyer is on their own, and the car needs their third party cover (WA) before it moves anywhere.
When the buyer is allowed to do it in house
A garage or trader can apply to the RDW for permission to process transfers on its own premises, and one holding that permission is an RDW-erkend bedrijf. Sell to such a business and the choreography changes. You pass the complete set of registration documents to their staff, and the vrijwaringsbewijs comes back to you from the business, with nobody visiting a post office. There is a sign in the window saying so, and rdw.nl carries a search tool if you want to check a name before driving over.
Every other buyer, private individual or ordinary company, uses one of the two routes above. The running order you care about never changes: documents out, transfer completed, proof in your hand, keys last.
Five situations the standard route does not cover
Settle any of these before you agree a handover date with anybody, since each one changes who you are able to sell to or when.
- The buyer lives abroad. Only an adult of 18 or over who appears in the Dutch population register may hold a Dutch registration, so a foreign buyer means exporting the car, not transferring it.
- The car is on the old paper registration. A desk visit with the original documents is the only way through.
- The car is leased or financed. Its code belongs to the lessor or the lender, so they decide whether a sale can happen at all. That conversation is covered under finance and lease cars.
- You inherited the car. The heirs get 5 weeks to move it into a name of their own or straight on to a buyer.
- You are leaving the country. Your departure date governs the whole plan, which planning around a move abroad works through.