Our latest data shows that more vehicles for certain key registration years are being offered for sale with finance outstanding than when we conducted similar research in 2019.

From a sample of over 5,906 vehicles offered for sale and checked via the Cartell.ie website in 2020, the figures show that more than 35 percent of three-year-old vehicles are offered for sale with finance outstanding. In the case of one-year-old vehicles (2019) the levels of vehicles offered for sale with finance outstanding is 34%. This means there is now a one-in-three chance of a one-year-old vehicle being offered for sale with finance outstanding.Similarly in the case of three-year-old vehicles (2017) checked last year there was a 35% chance of a vehicle being offered for sale with finance outstanding based on checks on Cartell.ie in the year gone by.

Graph 1: Percentages of Vehicles with Outstanding Finance by Registration Year checked on Cartell.ie (Source: Carstat, Cartell.ie)

Even older vehicles are regularly offered for sale with finance outstanding – 21%of all four-year-old vehicles offered for sale in 2020 had outstanding finance against them and the rates of finance are still prevalent for older cars too: four–year old to eight-year-old cars all showed levels of outstanding finance of at least 9% in the marketplace.

Jeff Aherne, Innovation Lead, Cartell.ie, says: “The overall percentages of vehicles offered for sale with finance outstanding in key registration years understandably fell slightly in 2020 owing to the prevailing climate, but, financiers will be buoyed by the fact the market showed a great deal of resilience: three-year-old vehicles, for instance, still returned an extremely high level of 35% and even five-year-old vehicles returned a rate of 19% which was up on 2019.

Buyers are strongly advised to be cautious in the market as you cannot take good title in the asset until the final payment has been paid to the financial institution. This means you may be buying a huge problem.”