Selling your car on consignment: what it is, what you get and what you sign

7 October 2026 · GSM Serveis Integrals Automoció, Vilobí del Penedès

There's a way of selling a car that almost nobody explains properly: leaving it with a dealer so they sell it for you, without selling it to them. No offer, no money today, and the car stays yours. It goes on the market for what it's really worth and you get paid when it sells. It's called selling on consignment, it's completely legal and it has been done in Spain for years. Here's how it works, what you should ask, and where the small print is.

The three ways to get rid of a car

There are only three routes to selling a car, and each gives you something different. What changes between them isn't so much the money as who does the work and when you get paid.

The trap at each extreme is easy to see. Sell it yourself and you get more, but the work is yours: the photos, paying for featured listings, answering calls at eleven at night, opening your door to strangers, and dealing with it alone if the car turns out to have a fault. Have someone buy it today and you're rid of all that in exchange for money: whoever buys it has to resell it at a profit, so they offer below what it's worth.

Consignment sits in the middle, and that's why it makes sense for a lot of people: the car sells at the real market price, someone else does the work, and the only thing you give up is time: you get paid when the car sells, not today.

What selling on consignment actually is

Selling on consignment means the dealer does not buy your car: they sell it on your behalf. Under the Spanish Commercial Code this is a mercantile commission: you give the instruction and the dealer is the agent. On industry websites you'll see it written as 'gestión de venta', 'venta en depósito' or 'venta por cuenta ajena'. They're all names for the same thing.

The practical consequence is the one that matters: while the car is for sale, the car is yours. And when a buyer appears, there are two ways of closing it that are not the same, and that you have a right to have explained before you sign anything.

Your car's journey, step by step

And what does the dealer earn?

There are two models and it's worth knowing which one you're in:

• Commission on the final price. A percentage is agreed. Some Spanish companies publish it openly, in a range from 3% to 7%. The drawback: until it sells, you don't know what you'll get.
• Agreed price. The exact figure in euros that you receive is agreed, and the difference with the selling price is what the dealer earns. It's less 'transparent' as a percentage but far clearer for you: you know the number from day one and it doesn't change.

Neither of the two is dishonest. What is dishonest is not telling you which one you're in. And one question settles it in ten seconds: 'how many euros will I get?'. If the answer isn't a number, keep asking.

How many euros do you get? The 80 % and the 70 %

We say it with a number, which is what you actually want to hear. If your car is ready to sell, you get 80 % of its retail price. The remaining 20 % is our work: selling it, the paperwork, the warranty we give the buyer and the risk that it takes a while. If the car needs reconditioning, you get 70 %, and the reconditioning is on us.

And why 80 % and not less, put plainly: because that is what it takes for a good car to stay here. If we pay below that, the car goes to compramostucoche.es, to Flexicar or to OcasionPlus, and we are left with the worst ones every time. We would rather pay well and sell well.

In practice it is one sentence: «I pay you 80 % of what your car is worth; the 20 % is my work —selling it, the paperwork, the warranty to the buyer and the risk—. If it needs reconditioning, I pay you 70 % and I cover the reconditioning». No percentages to work out later and no last-minute deductions.

That is what you buy with the 20 %. Not one of those steps is paid for by you, not one is done by you, and not one is charged separately: it is inside the price and you know it before you sign.

Why do we want your car even if it's dirty?

Because a car that needs reconditioning isn't in our way: it is our trade. We have our own workshop and our own detailing bay, and we do it here every single day, with our own people and our own machines. We don't call anyone, we don't send the car anywhere and we don't wait our turn. That is why a dirty car, with hazed headlights or tired upholstery, doesn't make us drop the price: we recondition it ourselves and you get the most for your vehicle.

The usual thing in the trade is to photograph the car exactly as it arrives and leave the preparation to somebody else: Flexicar and OcasionPlus subcontract it. We do it. It is our work, our hands and our hours, and it is the reason we can take on a car that gets in everybody else's way.

For you that comes down to two very concrete things. One: you don't have to spend anything getting the car looking good before bringing it to us. And two: we won't punish the price over a headlight polish or upholstery that needs recovering. That's our trade, not your problem.

Can I take the car back whenever I want? The two options

It depends which of the two you sign, and it is worth understanding before you sign anything. Either you take the freedom to withdraw the car whenever you want, or you take the guarantee that you are paid come what may. Not both at once, and the reason is simple: we are the ones paying for the guarantee.

We don't hide option A. The fact that a free way out exists is exactly what makes option B credible: if we tell you we'll buy it at 90 days, it's because we can, not because we've tied you in.

And what you really buy with option B is sleeping soundly: you know you will be paid for your car come what may, and that once the 90 days are up you won't have to end up at a Flexicar or a «we buy your car» outfit for them to offer you peanuts.

One clarification, because these are two different things that always get confused. The 90 days are a purchase commitment to you, the owner: we bind ourselves to buy the car from you if it hasn't sold. The 12-month warranty is something else: it is what we give the buyer when the car sells, and that is what the purchase at closing is for.

The paperwork you need

For a car to be sellable it has to be in order. What you'll be asked for:

• ID of the registered keeper.
• Registration document and technical sheet.
• A valid roadworthiness test.
• The last circulation tax receipt paid (the council one).
• No outstanding fines blocking the procedure.
• That the car is free of charges: no seizure, no immobilisation order, no retention of title. This is checked with the vehicle's DGT report.

If the car has an outstanding loan or a retention of title, it can still be sold: the charge has to be settled or the finance company has to consent. It isn't an obstacle, it's one more step.

On the ownership transfer: the DGT has a specific procedure called 'handing a vehicle over to a dealer', with a fee of €8.67. It places the car in temporary withdrawal with the dealer as custodian, and if they don't sell it within a year they're obliged to put it in their own name. A normal transfer between two people has a fee of €55.70. These are the official figures from the DGT's website as consulted in October 2026; check them on the day, because fees get updated.

The double change of ownership, same day: the BATECOM

When the car is sold with us as the sellers there isn't one change of ownership, there are two, and both are done on the day of the sale. In the trade this is called a BATECOM. The DGT doesn't call it that: its official name is «baja temporal por entrega a compraventa» —temporary deregistration on handover to a dealer— and it appears in their systems under the code ENTG (the DGT's own online office). We use both names so that, when you hear it at an agency or at another dealer, you know it is exactly the same thing.

In practice: we buy the car from you with a sale agreement and, in the same act, we sell it to the buyer with an invoice. One single process, one single day, no waiting and no complications.

Who is liable if the car turns out faulty: you or us?

If you sell your car yourself, you are liable for hidden defects for 6 months, and you are liable even if you didn't know about them. Writing «seen and tested» in the contract does not protect you. If you sell it with us, we are the ones who are liable.

There are two articles of the Civil Code almost nobody has read, and they are the ones that really settle the argument:

• Article 1484: you are liable «even if you were unaware of them». You don't need to have known the car had the defect. You are liable all the same.
• Article 1485: «seen and tested» only helps you if you were also unaware of the defect. If you knew and kept quiet, that phrase in the contract does not protect you.

And three things that get said wrongly out there, because we don't want to frighten anyone with something that isn't true. A private seller is not required by law to give a six-month warranty: what they have is liability for hidden defects, which is not the same thing. Nor are they required to take out any of the warranties sold out there. And it isn't a new law: those Civil Code articles date from 1889. What changed in 2022 was the professional seller's time limit, which went from two years to three.

The three questions that really matter

If you only keep three, keep these:

How we do it at GSM

At GSM Serveis Integrals Automoció, in Vilobí del Penedès, we do consignment sales and this is how: zero euros up front, the figure you get in euros and in writing before you leave the car —80 % of the retail price, or 70 % if the preparation is on us—, our own workshop and detailing to look it over and prepare it, and we do the paperwork. And on option A you can take the car back whenever you want owing nobody anything; on option B, the one with the guaranteed purchase at 90 days, you can't, and why is explained above.

On timing, the data we have is our own: the cars we sold in 2026 took 36.1 days on average, and half of them sold in 15 days or less (GSM internal data as of 07/10/2026). A specific car may take more or less, and what matters most isn't the model: it's the price.

And there are a couple of things we'd rather say even though they don't help us sell: not every car suits us, and when one doesn't we say so on day one instead of parking it for three months. And if what suits you is something else — selling it yourself, or us buying it today — we'll tell you that too, because we've been doing this since 2006 and we'd rather you came back in two years.

🛡️ And insurance, in case you were wondering. If cover is needed at any point to move or test-drive the car, we take out the daily insurance ourselves and its cost is deducted from the settlement paid to the owner of the vehicle. Never from the buyer.