Selling my car in Romania

irisgales wrote:

Dear members,

My plan is to buy a second hand van in the Netherlands, where we are from, (because it's very cheap) to move all our belongings to Romania. We already have a car in Romania so we don't need the van. So we would like to sell the van after we did this.
My question is, is this hard to do? Do we need papers for this or can we just sell it to someone with the Dutch plates on it (which doesn't sound logical to me..)

Thanks in advance,

Iris

Hi, I'm not sure if you are aware or not, but you'll need to get white export plates from NL upon leaving the country (de-registering the van from RDW and turning in the yellow plates), these export plates are only valid for 15 days.  So in order to sell it like this, you'll need to sell it within this 15 day period, which is not likely in my opinion. 

If you don't sell it with the export plates on it, either you or your buyer (more likely you, which I'll discuss in a moment) will have to get temporary red numbers, which may be done a total of 3 times maximum.  This alone can be a difficult process.  It was when I brought my car here from NL a few years back.

In my experience, when it comes to dealing with used cars, Romanians in general want the world before they'll agree to buy it.  They'll want permanently registered, the pollution tax paid with evidence it has been recovered by you, insurance, winter and summer tires, Rovigneta, all the filters and oil changed, and several other things.  On top of that, they'll usually offer half of what you ask...they'll want money off your asking price before they even come out to look at it.  They'll whine about the job they have and that they don't have enough money to give your asking price (which is often a lie).  Also, having just imported it from NL, people will suspect you're a "samsar de masina", somewhat of a dealer....as there's plenty of people that make runs to NL, Germany, Italy and bring back used cars for reselling at profit.

To answer your question, it may be possible....but by no means would I suggest trying to do it. Yes it is hard to do. It will likely be a lot of headache for you, and you might just be stuck with that van for a good while.  Save the hassle and hire a moving company or some type of household goods shipping.

Romaniac
Expat.com Experts Team

Hello. 

I did this a lot of times.  Buying a car in holland. Drive it to Romania with my stuff in it and sell it again.

You need to be patience to find a buyer. And everything depends on the price.

Olso you need to realize that vans (grijs kenteken) are a lot more expensive to import. Also the insurance and rovignet are more expensive.