Significantly more vehicles for certain key registration years are being offered for sale with financeoutstanding than last year, vehicle data check experts, cartell.ie has reported.

In the case of 2012 vehicles, the levels of vehicles offered for sale with finance outstanding has jumped from 15.9 perf cent in Q4 2012 to 22.6 per cent in Q2 2013 – a huge increase of 42 per cent.

Similarly in the case of registration year 2011 there has been a surge in vehicles offered for sale with finance outstanding – up from 18.5 per cent in Q4 2012 to 20 per cent in 2013.

Based on extensive data checks carried out by Cartell.ie, the proportion of vehicles offered for sale with finance outstanding is 10 per cent.  Historically, the highest level recorded by the company is 16 per ent. The overall decrease is reflected in relative drops in finance levels for 3-year old and 4-year old vehicles.

Statistics published by Cartell.ie indicate that buyers have a one-in-eight chance of purchasing a five-year-old vehicle with finance outstanding. From a sample of over 5,906 vehicles offered for sale and checked via the Cartell.ie website in 2013, the figures show that 11.7 per cent registered in 2008 are still on finance. Even older vehicles are regularly offered for sale with finance outstanding – 8.4 per cent of all 2007 registered vehicles offered for sale had outstanding finance against them.

Volkswagen Bank and BMW Financial Services hold a combined 16 per cent of the automotive finance market in Ireland. Both these players, who only recently entered the market, have an estimated market share of 8 per cent each based on results of finance checks carried out by Cartell in 2013.

Director Jeff Aherne, Director of Cartell.ie says: “Once again these results show the importance of checking for outstanding finance – just because a vehicle is older doesn’t mean it’s free of finance. Every day customers are getting caught buying an older car assuming the finance has been paid off.”