Sell Your WAV

As Ira Gershwin said, “Life is one long Jubilee,” but maybe not for those seeking to sell a WAV sooner than they’d hoped. Because they are specialist vehicles and people who need them don’t want to buy them, they tend to seek security when purchasing a wheelchair accessible vehicle. Private buyers of disability vans buy on a “sold as seen” basis, which means the buyer is taking the risk with a specialist vehicle that may not be suitable or may not have had the WAV conversion serviced. Here at Southern Mobility Vehicles, we cover all the bases before allowing the public to see our WAVs.

Valuing a WAV is a tricky one. As discerning buyers, we at Southern Mobility Vehicles value some WAV’s highly and others we may not be interested in. Our experience has taught us that some WAV’s don’t hold their value as good as some. Even if the make and model are the same and different companies carried out the conversion, this can seriously affect the valuation when you come to sell. Disability cars are hardly a sound financial investment. Still, you cannot measure the value the quality of life that a WAV brings, and the difference between what you paid for it and what you may be offered will probably be more than you’d want but try to measure this with the person it helped get out and about more. The bottom line is that new or used wheelchair accessible vehicles will lose money, and the financial loss is much along the same lines as those encountered with standard cars.

WAV is the acronym for a wheelchair accessible vehicle. WAVs can also be known as or called a: mobility car, disabled van, disabled vehicle, wheelchair car, disability vehicle, disability car, WAV, wheelchair car, wheelchair vehicle, wheelchair adapted car, wheelchair adapted van, mobility vehicle, disability van, mobility van, wheelchair van or WAV’s. Read more on what is a WAV here.

Selling your WAV can be challenging as they are a specialist transport for wheelchair users and aren’t mainstream vehicles. They are often misunderstood and will often scare standard car dealers away, or worse still, they will massively undervalue them if you are looking to part exchange your mobility car. You can sell privately through sites like Autotrader or eBay, but used car websites often make your WAV hard to find as they aren’t designed with the search parameters potential buyers need to find them. This usually means WAVs will often sit for long periods as buyers can’t find them. The other problem is connecting the right private buyer with your WAV.

Southern Mobility Vehicles are specialists and match the suitable WAV with the right person. You could, of course, be fortunate enough to come across an experienced WAV owner who knows what they need so it can be a bit of a lottery.

Sometimes buyers believe any WAV will work for them; they buy it and realise (or don’t realise) it isn’t suitable. The choices are to sell it on or put up with it. Not ideal for buyers or wheelchair users, so we always encourage sellers seeking to sell a WAV to go to a specialist like us, Southern Mobility Vehicles, who truly understand them.

Southern Mobility Vehicles is where you can sell your wheelchair accessible vehicle or sell your disabled car. We have been buying and selling wheelchair accessible vehicles for years, so please be assured we are experts in buying wheelchair vans.

This is complex and comes down to several areas; the desirability of the car and the conversion design, condition and mileage. A WAV buyer could be a private or trade buyer, but it takes a specialist to identify a WAV’s actual value. It is essential to factor in the availability too, a vehicle converted in low numbers doesn’t necessarily increase its value because it’s rare. It may be that it had a low entry height for wheelchair users, so it didn’t suit many people. Correspondingly a car converted in great numbers may point to its high practicality, and its popularity lies in this alone, but it doesn’t necessarily make it desirable. It’s a bit like saying I like all BMW’s or all Toyotas, WAV vary greatly and not only does make and model affect value, but the specification of the conversion matters greatly too.

Everyone’s four-wheeled friend loses money the moment you leave the forecourt, new or secondhand, and mobility cars and wheelchair vans are no different. Wheelchairs and cars are not a great combination, and wheelchair cars are not something people want to buy; they need them, and no one wants to buy a need, especially when they aren’t cheap. The value is in the eye of the wheelchair user and maybe their loved ones who can see what freedom a mobility car brings.

Disabled WAV owners sometimes think they will be taken advantage of by WAV buyers & dealers, and as this type of vehicle is a specialist conversion, it’s vital to ensure you speak to the right people. Here at Southern Mobility Vehicles, we’ll be straight with you; we won’t try and buy your wheelchair accessible vehicle on the spot; we’ll always let you think about it. We will always try and offer the most money the first time but reconsider if you get a higher offer. There is no magic book of WAV values like standard cars. As we advise any customers who come to us, we ensure the person ends up with the right disability vehicle, so we choose what we buy carefully.

Yes, all we ask is you are honest about it. We may well ask you for some pictures which you can send by message, WhatsApp or email, whatever works best for you. We have experts around us at all times. There is nothing that cannot be fixed, but it does have to be viable to buy, complete the work and retail, and this must be reflected in the valuation we offer, but we will tell you exactly why and how much it will cost us to do, honesty works both ways.

This is a good question. Pretty much any WAV can be made fully operational again, but mobility cars and vans can be expensive to fix, so as long as we know what isn’t working, we will quote you a valuation if it is a WAV we seek to buy. We will always help and advise in any way we will. Here at Southern Mobility Vehicles, we want you to feel you have been treated fairly at all times and are in control of your decision-making even if we aren’t going to make you an offer.

This would be pretty rare, although we always seek low mileage wheelchair accessible vehicles and mobility cars less than 6 years old here at Southern Mobility Vehicles. We tend to find that higher mileage or older WAVs tend to be noisy or lack the luxuries people are used to in their current standard vehicles, but we always buy any car that guarantees to make an offer if you are a private seller. We usually use WBAC to value WAVs anyway, but sometimes the values can be a long way off as, again, they aren’t specialist buyers of disability or mobility cars.

It can take weeks or even months. We often get contacted by people trying to sell their WAV and haven’t had a call on it, even at a bargain price. The lack of a private WAV sale is usually because buyers are nervous, they don’t know much about wheelchair-accessible vehicles, and they typically come to us here at Southern Mobility Vehicles knowing they will pay a bit more but buy with peace of mind they are better covered and it is buyer beware if you buy privately.

Yes, high mileage is often a key factor as the wear and tear on the vehicle and, most notably, the conversion can be quite telling. WAVs usually have higher road noise than standard vehicles, and the wear and tear of higher mileage often mean that general road-noise, rattles, and squeaks have developed. There will be a market at the right price, but it isn’t something we choose to buy although we do have associated traders who will consider your WAV, so please get in touch with us, and we’ll put you in touch with the right person.

The short answer is no; the Motability Scheme is a lease scheme that runs for five years, so if your WAV is not on the Motability Scheme, you could not sell your WAV to them. If your WAV is on the Motability Scheme, you are not permitted to sell it as it is not the lessee’s to sell, and you would have to return it under agreed terms to Motability, which they would notify you about, the lessee. Ex Motability WAVs are primarily sold through their trade channels once WAVs can no longer be put on the Motability Scheme, subject to their criteria.

Yes, we understand that it is often the case that the person selling a WAV is not the registered keeper and the V5 or registration document is not proof of ownership. We constantly check the provenance of any mobility car offered and seek to identify the seller as a connected party. Determining why the sale is taking place is not usually too difficult to ascertain, and we often buy wheelchair-accessible vehicles from estates, trustees, beneficiaries, relatives, and lawyers.

Complex adaptations are valuable but usually only to the person they were designed for. Complex and numerous adaptations will often seriously devalue a wheelchair accessible vehicle because a future buyer wouldn’t want them, and the cost of returning the WAV to its original unadapted state can be very high if indeed it is possible. We welcome your call here at Southern Mobility Vehicles to discuss your heavily adapted WAV. We can usually identify who completed the adaptations and determine what can be reversed, removed, sold on, or even returned to the original modifier. Some parts have no value, but some do, and we use our expertise to help you find out more so you can decide how you want to proceed.

We at Southern Mobility Vehicles will buy your financed WAV and clear the finance if you don’t want to. We are well versed in handling secured finance, and as long as you get a settlement figure in writing, we can usually agree on terms and complete matters for you. If, of course, you are looking to part exchange your WAV and even finance your new mobility car, we can help you with this too, so please ask us.