Outstanding Car Finance Check

If you want to sell a car that has outstanding finance on it, you need to arrange for the outstanding finance to be paid off before putting it on the market. While it’s not impossible to sell your car if there’s outstanding finance, you’ll need to check your lender’s terms and conditions.

Our outstanding car finance check will give you a breakdown report of the finance that is left on your vehicle. Simply enter your registration details to perform a full check. Information such as the finance agreement date and the lender’s details will be included so that you can make the necessary actions.

Our outstanding finance car check comes as part of a package of comprehensive car checks. Choose to add it onto our standard check and, as well as finding out if there’s money owing on it, it will let you know if it’s been scrapped or imported, if there’s any history of plate changes and what its MOT record is like. Upgrade to our full check and you’ll also find out if it’s been registered as stolen, receive an idea of vehicle valuation and the number of previous keepers, and get the lowdown on its mileage history.

When buying a used car, it’s important to carry out due diligence on the vehicle to make sure it can be legally sold and bought (by you). If you hand over money without checking and there’s credit owing on the vehicle, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to keep it or get your money back.

Our stolen car check extracts data directly from a comprehensive database of financial institutions. Using data directly from this we can tell you if the car has an outstanding loan or finance agreement registered against it. It will also show the finance agreement date and the lender’s details so you follow-up if you want to. You’ll also get a range of other details, including the car’s MOT history and whether it’s ever been imported, scrapped, written-off or had its plate changed.

If you buy a vehicle that later turns out to have money owing on it, you don’t have the legal right to keep it. The car will still technically belong to the lender. You will need to let the lender know and either pay the money off, try and get your money back from the seller, or enter into a legal claim to prove its ‘good title’.

You’re entitled to expect that your seller has a 'good title' to the vehicle. This means that person selling the vehicle must own it. If you genuinely had no idea that the car had outstanding finance (and can prove this) then you might be able to keep it. This is called ‘good title’ and means you bought the car in good faith without knowing about the issue. But it won’t be easy. The lender will be looking to recoup their losses and will ask lots of questions before they agree to settle.

Car finance is easy to come by. Which explains why more than two million cars bought in the United Kingdom (UK) each year are with help from a lender. So, chances are you’re likely to stumble across at least one in your search for a used vehicle.