Car being sold hundreds of miles from old owners address

[Funinthesunshine]

Hi,
Looking for some advice on buying a used car. Seen a car I like and all looks good upon inspection, but the old owner lives 200 miles from the garage that is selling it, is this a red flag? The old owner lives near London and the car is being sold in a little village near Manchester. The car looks good but my question is why would the old owner have sold it to the garage so far from home? Is this normal? I do not have much experience in this!

Could be the car was put in for part exchange for a new car down in London.
I do know that dealers sometimes off load their part exchange cars, some get bought as job lots and some go into auctions.
Could have been owned by someone working in London area who moved to Manchester and decided to sell their car here.
Ask the question at the garage you’re buying from and if they don’t have a convincing answer, just don’t buy it.

personally id suspect theft

How have you got the old owners address? You’re worrying about the wrong thing entirely. Most garages will get their cars from manheim or bca and the like. These are auctions that may be in person and may be online. The garage then collects the car and sells it. They will travel for the right car, especially if they collect several on a transporter.

I sold my car to webuyanycar, it ended up at auction and was then sold in snodland which is 100s of miles away from me.

I know it was sold in snodland because a few weeks after I sold it, I searched for my car type with the same miles and colour etc and there it was. I wanted to see how much more they sold it for than I did.

Totally plausible. I don’t see it as a red flag at all.
I sold my car via an agent (my husband is in the trade so had the contact). The agent put the car out to their dealer/garage contacts, and then once he had the highest offer, it went to them and the agent took a cut of the profit.
Off my car went to a garage far away, anyone interested in it, like you, would see the cars previous owner as being nowhere near the garage now selling it.

How do you even know the old owners address?

A complete non-issue. Dealers source stock from all over the country.

Exactly. PIL have just bought a car from a dealer local to them in the NW of England, previous registered keeper was in Fife.

We bought a new car. Dealer who had the model we wanted was the other side of the country.

we completed the sale with the local branch, including the part exchange of our car.

the dealer then drove our new car to us, and drove the old one home. So when it went up for sale yes, the last owner would be hundreds of miles away.

Isn't this how motorway or whatever that competitor to webuyanycar works? They put a car out and a dealer who thinks they can get a better price buys it, often from quite far away and the whole thing is facilitated by th einternet which means more money for the seller and more money for the dealer who buys the car?

I replaced my car last year. The previous keeper was in Harrogate and I bought it from an excellent dealer in Bolton, (70 miles from Harrogate and 50 miles from where I live.) You can get a credit check done on it and check the status of the MOT and car tax on the DVLA website. I've had absolutely no issues with mine.

Probably bought it at auction

Not a red flag at all

I work at a dealers (small independent) and we buy cars from all over the country, and will deliver them when we sell them to anywhere in the Uk, sometimes even to Ireland. What’s more important is checking out the dealer themselves and reviews to make sure they’re a reputable company. You can also use websites to do your own checks on the car to be on the safe side, and also check out the MOT history.

I sold my car to Webuyanycar and then saw it advertised online shortly after at a small garage nowhere near where I live. I guess they auctioned it and the garage bought it cheap to sell on. Nothing dodgy and there was nothing wrong with the car.

I bought a used car from a garage 400+ miles from where I live and had it delivered to me on the back of a trailer. It was perfect.

Thank you all for your replies, I’m glad it is not a red flag as I really like the car.

I saw the old owners address as when I went to see the car they showed me all the paperwork/history including the V5 and I noticed the address was not local.

Thank you all again!

My brother had to sell his car due to ULEZ in London - he drove it to stay with me and arranged to sell it in Manchester as he thought he'd get a better price in a non-ulez zone. Maybe it's something similar?

Loads of reasons, maybe the car the owner wanted to buy was in Manchester so they did a part exchange, maybe they have family in Manchester who offered to sort out selling the car for them. DH bought his current car from a garage 2h drive away because he was looking for something specific - went there in the old car, left it as part ex and came home in the new car.

I traded in my 11 year old car with one of the UK's biggest car retailers. The salesman made it clear that my car would go to auction rather than going to one of their forecourts. A few weeks later I spotted it online several hundred miles from where I live.

I traded my car in at a dealership 100 miles away, they had bought the car I bought from them from a dealer a couple of hundred miles south of them.

Another time I travelled from the NE to Inverness for a car, only had it a couple of months before selling it to a guy who had travelled to me from Leicester.

Cars end up all over the place.

I recently sold my car to a dealer. It was linked to my Apple Maps. Same day I handed it over, I was removing it from Apple Maps and it was 200 miles away that evening