Selling a car, need short term insurance, best approach

colman12

Hi,
Appreciate advice on this issue.

My father passed away recently. He owned a car, which now has no insurance. 

I need to sell it, so I am assuming my options are

1) Sell it to a dealer / company that would come and pick up, so i don't need to insure it

2) insure for days / month, but temp insurance v.expensive and look to sell privately

3) take out an insurance policy on the car, find one that has minimal cancellation charges / a long cooling off period, sell the car, assume a pro-rata refund less any charges. 

There is probably around loss of around 1/3 in value if i sold it to a We Buy Any Car place vs. private sale on Autotrader, so i am minded to try and sell it privately, which means i need insurance

Thanks

AdrianC

My vote would go to 3.

When you say a third of the value, are we talking about a £1k car, a £4k car, a £10k car, a £50k car?

born_again

Long cooling off period?
Given it has no insurance, then is it taxed?
Just remember that while you see a price on Autotrader. It is odd's on not the amount they get for the car.

colman12

We talking £3.5k AutoTrader vs. WBAC say £2k once they probably chip the price. So not talking expensive cars.

Long cooling off, i mean 14 days, which i guess is probably standard. 

It is taxed and MOT'd. So i would want to sell before needing to do all that again

The_Rainmaker

OP how much hassle are you wanting?
In these circumstances I would try a bit of word of mouth.
You are saying Autotrader £3.5k is this really achievable, probably nearer £2.5k if you're lucky.

colman12

Well if we are truly talking £500 delta, then I would agree, lets sell to dealer who can pick it up.
If it is £1.5k, then thats too much. 
Its a fair point on autotrader, I don't know what the delta between advertised price vs. realised is. 

walwyn1978

Also, how much time do you have/how much do you value your time? 

Are you prepared to spend time online or with a broker for research, setting up and cancelling insurance, waiting for people who don’t show up to look at the car, etc? 

Saving an amount of money in exchange for a load of stress isn’t always the best thing to do. When my gran died we sold her car (5 year old low mileage but elderly person driven Corsa) to a dealer who picked it up purely as a no hassle thing, and accepted that we’d get less than a private sale (probably £750 less based on for sale prices on Autotrader for similar cars). Total time spent on that probably 30 mins tops. 

Whatever you decide to do, good luck. It’s not easy having to do all this following the death of a loved one. 



Good luck with it. 

AdrianC

colman12 said:

It is taxed

Umm, it's illegal to have an uninsured car unless it's SORNed. You need to either insure it or SORN it, sharpish.

colman12

Thanks all.

Yep, i need to make this decision on insurance or SORN ASAP. 

foxy-stoat

Cheapest option is to SORN it now and park it off the road.  If anyone wants to test drive it then you can always buy a 1 day insurance for £25 and risk getting stopped with no tax on the test drive, however if they do buy it then it will be taxed at some point that month.

colman12

The issue is the car is at my mothers, 120 miles away. So i need to get it to my house, which brings in the insurance option or like people are saying, selling it to a dealer who will pick it up themselves.