What to Expect When a Buyer Comes to See Your Car

You have an offer, and the next step is somebody standing in your driveway looking at your car. That is the part nobody describes, so here it is start to finish.

Almost all of it happens where you are. The only reason anybody leaves your street is the bank.

Who is going to show up at my door?

Around Edmonton it is either Hasan Tayem, who runs our field operations and does most of the pickups, or Samir, who co-owns the company and holds the AMVIC licence we buy under, number B2036941. Which one you get is not something you pick and it changes nothing about the appointment.

Any Alberta buyer's licence can be checked before you open the door, and it is worth doing with us as much as with anybody else. Telling a licensed buyer from a curber is a short job with its own answer.

What happens before anybody comes?

Nothing gets booked until you are holding a number you would accept. Once you are, we agree a time and a date, and two things shape that window, neither of which is about you.

The first is that the money moves through a bank, so we buy just about every day except Sunday, when the banks are shut. The second is closing time. A late appointment can run out of bank before it runs out of steps, so if yours is at the end of the day it is worth asking which branch we will be heading to and when it closes.

What do they do when they get here?

Five things, in this order, every time.

1. 1You say hello and talk for a minute. Nobody walks past you and starts inspecting the car.
2. 2A walk around the body. Both sides, both bumpers, the corners and the lights. Two or three minutes unless something on the car was not in the description.
3. 3A short drive. Long enough to hear whether the car drives smoothly and whether anything clunks. Not a tour of the city.
4. 4A conversation about the number, if there needs to be one. It happens then, before anything is signed and before anybody goes anywhere.
5. 5The paperwork, and then the bank. After that we are out of your hair.

There is no hoist, no scan tool and nobody taking the car away to be looked at somewhere else. What surprises sellers is the speed of it rather than the depth of it. If something turns up that was not in the description the number gets re-made on the spot, and why that happens, and what to do if you think the new one is wrong, is its own question.

You are not expected to arrive knowing how any of this works. The person doing it does it most days of the week and will talk you through each step as it comes.

How long should I set aside?

About an hour, hello to handshake. Call it an hour and a half if there is still a loan on the car, and know that the extra half hour is the queue at the bank rather than anything happening to your car.

The range underneath that average is wide. A paid-off car that is exactly as described has been bought in thirty minutes, and the transaction part of it can run ten or fifteen. Six hours happens too, and it is nearly always travel, a lender, or a decision somebody is not ready to make yet, rather than an argument about price.

Does it all happen at my house, or do we go to the bank?

The car part happens where you are. The money part happens inside a bank, and usually that means two of them.

That is not a formality. In our experience a draft cannot be deposited anywhere except an account in the name printed on it, which is why the bank matters more than the driveway does. You are welcome to come with us to our own bank and watch the draft being issued, and we then drive to your branch so you watch it go in rather than being handed a piece of paper and left to find out. If there is a loan, your lender is paid first, from inside the branch, and you take what is left. How the draft behaves after that, including the hold on the funds, is worth reading before the day.

If there is a version of this that would let you stop worrying, say so when the time is being booked rather than when somebody is standing in your driveway. We have made arrangements like that before, one seller at a time rather than as a standing offer, and they are far easier to agree to in advance than on the day.

Do I have to hand over the car that day?

Usually the car leaves with us at the end of the appointment. It does not have to, and if you would rather it did not, that is a question for the booking rather than for the driveway.

Sellers do change their minds partway through, and it is not a crisis when they do. One seller walked as far as the bank with us, decided he would rather do it in the morning, and we met him again at half past nine the next day when the branch opened. Nothing had been signed and no money had moved, so there was nothing to unpick.

What do I need to have ready?

Not much, and one thing that catches people out constantly. The full paperwork list is longer than this, but this is what has to be in the house when we knock.

• Your registration. It is the single document sellers cannot find when we arrive.
• The car registered in your own name. If the registration shows somebody else, nothing can happen until that is fixed at a registry.
• Both signatures, if there are two names on it. Alberta's bill of sale, form REG3126, has two Signature of Seller lines for exactly that reason.
• A payout letter, if there is [still money owing](/car-selling-guide/selling-a-car-with-a-loan). Your lender writes it, and it states what closing the loan costs on the day.
• A screwdriver. The plate belongs to you rather than to the car, and it comes off before the vehicle is driven away.

Take your things out of the car before the drive rather than after it. Dash cams are what people forget, and a dash cam is yours to keep, because it adds nothing to what we pay. Just take it out gently. We have watched an A pillar trim come out with one and refuse to go back in, which turned a free decision into an expensive one. Anything smaller than that we will get back to you: a seller in Edmonton realised the next day that his AirPods had gone with the car, down beside the driver's seat, and had them back at his house that afternoon.