People who love their cars, take great care of them. They don’t treat their cars simply as a way of getting around. They treat their cars as individuals with unique personalities. Every person has an identity. Why should cars be exception if they are being treated like persons?
So the car owners pay extra money to get private number plate for their cars. Private number plates are custom made to suit the fancy of the car owner. Is there any palpable benefit of having a car that has a private number plate tagged with it? Not really. But a personalized number plate does enhance the personality of the car.
There are private number plate sites galore in the web. By doing a little research, you could not only gain idea about how these sites work, but also the legal nitty-gritties that bind the buying and selling of the plates.
One reason car owners often opt for used numbers is cost. Fresh number plates could burn the wallet. Used number plates on the other hand, cost significantly less. An additional reason why used number plates are high in demand is the presence of number plate buying and selling companies who charge the number plate owners absolutely nothing and make profit by keeping a commission after selling the used number plate to the second buyer.
To buy or sell private number plates, you need to take help from a private agency because both buying and selling are quite tedious and involve a range of legal technicalities. However, having knowledge about something won’t hurt. If you are a car owner and you know the number plate buying and selling market well enough, you could grab yourself the best possible deal.
So in this article, we’ll discuss what personal number plate buyers and sellers need to keep in mind before entering into the market.
If you are a buyer, it’s essential for you to know what the law says. The law has no problem if you make your vehicle look a bit older. But if you do the opposite i.e. if you have an old car and you are making it look like a new car, you are violating the law. If your car’s registration number is 50, you could assign an older number such as 48, but you couldn’t assign a newer number like 51.
When buying a private number plate, it’s mandatory for you to pay a fixed sum of £80. It’s a fix fee and you need to pay it so DVLA acknowledges you as the owner of the new number plate and assign the number plate to your vehicle. If you are transferring the number plate from one vehicle to another, you need to pay £105, out of which £80 is assignment fee and £25 is retention fee.
A very important consideration for private number plate buyers is making sure the registration certificate is authentic. The DVLA will give you the confirmation that the retention certificate has a registration mark, but nothing beyond that will be disclosed to you because of the data protection act. Thus, hire an expert if needed and be absolutely certain before buying the number plate that the certificate is not phony.
If you are a seller, you need to study the market before entering into it. Few pivotal things to consider are;
- Estimating the likelihood that the number plate will be sought after
- Compare the prices of similar registration number plates
- How long it is taking other number plates to be sold
Sellers often complain they are not getting enough money for their number plates. They need to understand there’s no standard price for used number plates.
Some number plates are sold at a price that is higher than the selling price of other number plates even though everything between the two number plates are more or less similar.
Having said that, there are seasoned brokers in this market who have access to data related to buying and selling of number plates. They know some metrics that could be used for true valuation of the number plate. Hiring such a broker may be a good idea because you’d at least get to know how much your number plate is really worth. Albeit the price margin would be completely speculative, it would still give you an idea what you could expect.
However, if the broker charges you a sizable amount, don’t hire him. Instead, use your gut feeling and come up with a selling price.
Your number plate may be for sale for more than six months. A longer delay is indicative of some problems that your number plate might be having, or the higher price bracket.
