Knowledge base · RDW
Overschrijving: putting a Dutch car in your name without trouble
With a car from a private seller, things rarely go wrong with the engine — they go wrong with the paperwork. The transfer itself takes ten minutes at a counter, provided you know which documents you need and in what order to do things.
What you need
- The registration card (kentekencard) of the car.
- The transfer code (tenaamstellingscode) that belongs to the card. Without it the car cannot be put in your name. The seller must hand it over.
- Valid photo ID of the person the car is being registered to.
The transfer itself is arranged at an RDW-approved counter — in practice often a PostNL location offering vehicle registration services.
The vrijwaringsbewijs: the paper that matters most
As soon as the car is in the buyer's name, the seller receives a vrijwaringsbewijs — an indemnity certificate. It states: from this moment I am no longer liable for this vehicle. If you are selling, never let anyone drive away before the transfer is complete and you hold that document. Without it you remain the owner on paper, with all the road tax, fines and insurance duty that comes with it.
If you are buying, keep your new transfer code safe; it arrives by post and you will need it again the day you sell the car on.
The order to follow
- Beforehand: check the registration, APK expiry date and odometer reading. You can look up the expiry date free with the APK check on our homepage.
- At the purchase: go to the counter together, complete the transfer, seller gets the indemnity, buyer gets the vehicle.
- Immediately after: arrange insurance. From the second of registration, driving uninsured is your problem, not the seller's.
- Within a few days: have the car inspected technically if you did not do so before buying.
Pitfalls we see in the workshop
- "The APK was just renewed." Fine, but a valid APK is a snapshot, not a guarantee. We regularly see cars with serious faults a month after passing.
- A suspended vehicle. If the car is suspended (geschorst) you may not drive it away. Arrange the transfer, the lifting of the suspension and the insurance first.
- No transfer code. Without it you get nowhere. Sort this out before you pay, not after.
- A test drive around the block. Far too short to notice anything. Drive at least a stretch of motorway and over a few speed bumps.
Unsure about the car itself?
Paperwork is handled at the counter; the mechanics are another matter. We inspect a car before purchase on the lift: brakes, suspension, rust on load-bearing parts, leaks and fault codes stored in memory. That last part often says more than the car does: stored faults reveal what has been going on recently.
You can arrange all of this in English, Dutch or Polish — at our garage in Tilburg.