The entry in the register is the whole transaction
A Dutch car is tied to a named person inside the RDW register, and selling it means getting a different name into that field. Two features of this catch out people who have sold cars in other countries. The plate belongs to the vehicle, so it does not come off and follow you to whatever you buy next; the formats and colours are covered under Dutch number plates. And you do not make the change yourself. The buyer does, either online with DigiD or at a public desk, working from the documents you put in their hand.
That leaves the seller with a short task and one piece of discipline. Hand over what the buyer needs, let them register the car, and keep the keys until the proof comes back to you. How both routes run, and what to do when one of them stalls, is set out under the transfer itself.
Four routes, and who absorbs the work
Four arrangements cover very nearly every sale. What separates them is how much of the effort and the waiting lands on you.
- A private sale. You write the advert, usually on Marktplaats, the Dutch classifieds site, then run the viewings, the test drives, the payment and the transfer yourself.
- A trade-in. The dealer supplying your next car takes this one in part exchange and sets its value against what you are buying.
- A sale to a garage or dealer. A business that resells cars buys yours on its own merits, with nothing bought from them in the other direction.
- A car buying service. You supply the details, an offer comes back, and the next move is yours. That is what webuycar.nl does, with free collection anywhere in the country.
Your own answer turns on three things: the time you can spare, how you feel about negotiating in Dutch with people you have never met, and whether you need the car up to a fixed date. The private and trade routes side by side works through the trade-offs.
Where a private sale actually goes wrong
Two moments carry nearly all of the risk, and the price is neither of them. The first is the test drive. Ask to see a driving licence and sit in the car while they drive it. The second is payment: nothing leaves your possession until the funds are in your account and the register has been changed, in that order. The RDW also warns about text messages faked to look as though the RDW sent them, so follow no links in an unexpected message about your vehicle and give no personal details through one.
Then write the deal down. The price, the date, the odometer reading, and whatever you told the buyer about the condition of the car. Both of you sign it. Nobody at the RDW will ever ask to see this, which is not its purpose; it exists so that a conversation about a fault six weeks later has a record sitting behind it. Arriving at a realistic figure in the first place is covered under valuing your own car.
The card, and the code that arrives separately
The RDW wants two items from a seller and only two: a registration card that is still valid, and a complete tenaamstellingscode. The code is the awkward one, because it reached you in two pieces from two different envelopes. The first four digits sit on the registration report you were handed when you bought the car. The last five came in the letter that delivered the card. It is easy to file one of them carefully and lose the other. A car that has had the same owner since before 2014 may still carry the paper registration, which remains perfectly valid and can be transferred over a counter alone.
Add the most recent APK report if the car has ever been inspected, because the RDW asks sellers to pass it on, and what the APK covers explains the test behind it. Hunting down a document you cannot lay hands on, or replacing one that has gone for good, is the subject of replacing a missing document.
Who is eligible to buy, and whose DigiD matters
Start here, because this is the rule that kills deals late. A Dutch registration can only be held by somebody aged 18 or over who is recorded in the BRP, the municipal register of residents, at an address in the Netherlands. A keen buyer in Belgium or Germany cannot take the car on at all. Selling to them converts the transaction into an export, and the RDW's recommendation is that the buyer handles that export in their own name, which puts the responsibility where it belongs.
DigiD is the smaller question. You need none of your own to sell a car. Your buyer needs the DigiD app with an identity check only if they mean to transfer online; at a desk they show identification in person. Having DigiD is still worth it for your own sake afterwards, since it opens Mijn RDW where you can confirm the car has gone from your name, and it is how a replacement code gets ordered.
The timestamp is the dividing line
All of this hangs off one number, the moment printed on the vrijwaringsbewijs. Before it, the car was yours. After it, it was not. A fine arising after that minute belongs to the new owner, and the document is how you show as much if one reaches you by mistake.
Road tax settles itself. The RDW notifies the Belastingdienst of the change, so there is nothing for you to declare, and motorrijtuigenbelasting already paid for a period when you no longer owned the car is refunded without anybody asking. Whatever was owed for the months you did own it remains payable as normal.
Insurance is the exception, and the one people forget. No part of the RDW process touches your policy. Send the insurer a copy of the proof so the cover can be cancelled, or carried across to whatever you buy next. The rest of the tidying up is listed under the week after the sale.
Six cases that need clearing first
The route above covers the large majority of sales. Read this list before you agree anything with anybody, because each entry changes what has to happen or who has to agree to it.
- The car is on lease or finance. Whoever holds the contract holds the code, so speak to them before you speak to buyers.
- The car is registered to your partner or a parent. The named person holds the documents and the liability, making the sale theirs to agree as much as yours.
- A company, not a person, is the registered owner. Company names go through a separate RDW procedure, and its online services expect eHerkenning where a private owner would use DigiD.
- The APK has run out. Selling is still allowed; driving is not. See the page on lapsed inspections.
- The registration is suspended. Nothing to do here, because the transfer lifts the suspension on its own.
- The car came to you through an inheritance. 5 weeks is the window the heirs get, either to register it to themselves or to pass it straight on.
Selling as part of leaving the country
Once a sale is tied to a departure date, that date becomes the binding constraint on everything else. Your buyer has to be resident here, which rules out selling to anybody in the country you are moving to. Replacement paperwork goes to a Dutch address by post, so losing a document late costs you days you may not have. And no other name replaces yours until a real person takes the car on, which makes a suspension or an export your fallback if no buyer appears in time. A timeline for leavers puts it in order and covers both fallbacks.