A stranger asked to buy my car in instalments — how would that even work between two private people?

The reason dealers can do this and you cannot comes down to one thing: they keep a claim on the car, and you would not.

When a dealer or a lender finances a vehicle, the loan is secured against it and that security is registered. If payments stop, there is a legal process for recovering the vehicle, and it works because the interest is recorded somewhere that a buyer, an insurer and the authorities can see.

As a private seller you have two options and both are bad:

Hand over the car and hold the title. The buyer has your car. You have a piece of paper. If they stop paying you are chasing a stranger for a debt, and repossessing is not something you may simply do yourself.

Keep the car until paid in full. The buyer is paying for something they cannot use. Almost nobody agrees to this, and it also raises the awkward question of who insures it and who is liable for it meanwhile.

There is no arrangement between two individuals that avoids one of those.

The other issue is the one people underestimate: the paperwork and the liability.

A vehicle has a registered keeper, and insurance, and responsibility for anything that happens while it is being driven. During an instalment period, who is the keeper? Who insures it? If it is involved in an incident, or gets a penalty notice, or is abandoned, whose name is on it?

Every one of those questions has an answer that is either bad for you or requires the transfer to happen — and once the transfer happens, you are an unsecured creditor.

Also worth knowing that in some places, providing credit is a regulated activity. A one-off private arrangement is usually outside that, and it is not the sort of thing to assume without checking locally.

Declining was the right call, and it remains the right call at any amount you would mind losing.

One practical note for whatever sale you do end up making: be careful about payment methods that can be reversed after the fact.

Some transfer and payment mechanisms can be pulled back days later, which means handing over a car against a payment that later disappears. Cleared funds in your account, verified with your own bank rather than from a notification, is the standard advice, and it is worth the extra day.

The version that is not a bad idea, since you asked whether one exists: let somebody else carry the risk.

If a buyer genuinely cannot pay in full today, the arrangements that work are ones where a third party pays you now:

• The buyer borrows from a bank or credit union and pays you the full amount.
• The buyer waits and saves, and you sell to somebody else meanwhile.
• The buyer pays a deposit and collects when the balance arrives, with nothing handed over until then.

That last one is the only instalment-shaped thing worth doing, and it is really just a deposit. Keep it modest, put the terms in writing including what happens if they change their mind, and do not take the car off the market for longer than you can afford.

And be alert to the shape of it — an offer at full asking price, from a stranger, with unusual payment terms, is a very common pattern in vehicle sale fraud.