Selling a car under finance..

[gerhard]

Majority of cars encumbered? WTF???? I seriously doubt that. Owing money on a car is ridiculous!

And I'm not talking about leasing here, I'm talking about getting into debt to aquire a depreciating asset. Seriously? WTF????

Errmm, I suspect that 80-90% of all new car sales are encumbered, with a large portion of them being salary sacrifice leases.

In the OP's case, it appears that the finance owing was higher than the sale value of the car, hence creating significant extra difficulty with who owns what at a particular moment in the transfer chain of events.

When buying second hand, it's often far more comforting for the buyer if the car is encumbered, since title transfer will then be from a "trusted" source (the financier) rather than the (relatively) "untrusted" source of an individual owner.


I can't see any difference between getting into a lease and getting into debt - they are one and the same with a different label.