What a car buyer takes off your hands
For somebody fairly new to the Netherlands, the useful part is the RDW transfer. A trade buyer does it every working day, so the one step of a Dutch sale that is genuinely unfamiliar, moving a registration into another name and getting your own proof back out of it, stops being your problem. The advert goes too, along with the messages and the strangers in your street inspecting the paintwork.
The trade is not uniform. Some buyers are a yard and a van, others are national operations. Some put the cars back on Dutch roads, some ship them out of the country, some are interested only in damage or very high mileage. Where your car ends up has little bearing on you. How the buyer runs the sale has all of it.
An offer is a bet on what the buyer cannot see
Half the information is already public. Put a number plate (kenteken) into the RDW register and out come the make, the model, the year of first registration and the fuel, so no buyer has to ask you for any of it. What the register knows nothing about is the dent in the tailgate, the mileage, the warning light on the dash and whether the car starts on a cold morning. That half comes from you, and photographs do the job better than adjectives.
Get the figure in writing, with the description it rests on beside it. Two reasons for that. It stops a number drifting quietly between the phone call and the collection, and it records what you declared about the car, which protects you as much as it protects the buyer. A buyer who will only discuss figures by telephone can be asked for the same thing by email.
Checks worth making before you commit to anybody
None of the following takes long, and a business that objects to any of it has told you something useful. Work through them before a collection date goes in the diary.
- A traceable business: a name, an address and a KvK number that you can find in the Dutch business register and that match what you were told.
- An offer in an email or on paper, with the description it rests on written next to it.
- A human being at the end of a phone or a message, giving direct answers to direct questions.
- A clear account of how the RDW transfer is done and the point at which the proof of transfer reaches you.
- Room to think. A buyer who needs an answer today is managing you, and declining should cost you nothing.
Two things never to agree to, and three to be wary of
Never pass on the registration code before a sale is agreed, and never let the car be driven away on a promise that the transfer will be dealt with afterwards. Neither of those is fussiness. The RDW puts the responsibility for the transfer actually happening on the seller, so a car that leaves your street still registered to you can generate fines and road tax in your name for months, with no car to show for them.
Be wary of a payment that exists only as a screenshot or a link, of a buyer who will not say what happens to the car next, and of a figure that shifts every time you speak. On the second of those: where the plan is export, the RDW's position is that the buyer registers the export in their own name, and what export means for you sets out why that is the version you want.
The order of events on collection day
Three things have to happen, and the keys come after all three. The buyer looks over the car and compares it with your description. The registration moves out of your name at the RDW, and the vrijwaringsbewijs comes back to you. The money lands in your account, which you confirm in your own banking app and not on a screen somebody else is holding.
Everything else is preparation. Put the registration card (kentekencard), both halves of the nine digit code and every key in one place. Clear out the sunglasses, the charging cable and the child seat. Peel off any parking or toll badge that is registered to you. What the buyer has to take away is the full list.
Where webuycar.nl sits in that picture
We are one of the buyers this guide describes, set up for people who would sooner do all of it in English. Ask for an offer with your plate and a handful of questions about the car, and the figure comes back by email with a link to a page of your own. It stays open until you answer, so nothing stops you putting it beside what anybody else says.
Say yes and we come to the car, anywhere in the Netherlands, free of charge, on a date you choose. The transfer out of your name is done at the RDW during that visit, the proof of transfer goes to you there, and so does the payment. Anything you want to ask first can go by phone or WhatsApp, and a person will answer it.