Car repossessions - How much under the market value would a bank sell the car for ?

Pacing Mule

A family member has come to me for some advice - and frankly speaking I don't have a clue what to say to her so I thought I would ask the more knowledgeable folks here.

Story is this:

She has an 05 Hyundai Tuscon which is in arrears with the bank. (When I say bank it's some new company that took over PTSB car finance loans so it's not strictly speaking a bank) The bank have issued a notice saying she has 21 days to pay all arrears or they will repossess etc.

Approx figures are this:
Balance due overall €6600
Including arrears of €4,000

Options she thinks she has (and please feel free to say if this is wrong) is

1) The bank go ahead and repossess the car. They sell it off and the difference between the balance due and the sale price is still owed by herself. Repossession will add fees to the balance due too.

2) She contacts the bank and terminates the agreement herself under the 50% rule. In this case she is liable for the arrears and any repair costs to the car. It needs a new exhaust and one of the door locks does not work with the central locking. I'm guessing but it's a pure guess they could knock on up to €500 for this making a balance owed of €4,500

She will have to come to some sort of arrangement with them of course as the funds aren't there to pay off the balance due no matter what.

The maths then becomes this - is she / the bank likely to sell the car and leave her owing more or less than option 2. In other words which is the better option to take / route to go down. Looking at auto trader cheapest asking price for same car (petrol version) is 3900 but thats a dealer with warranties etc. If the car was likely to fetch more than €2500 at auction she'd most likely be better off if they repossessed it. But if it were only going to get say €1000 then she'd be far better off pre empting things and giving it back under the 50% rule.

I did ask her how the arrears were so high but these have been built up because the loan has been restructured numerous times over the course of the last couple of years. Keeping the car / sorting out repayments again is not an option at this point. She's paying over €700 tax a year just to tax this :eek: Getting a cheaper on the tax and costs run around would be her best option going forward. I'm not sure what impact a 50% rule hand back would have on a credit rating but I do suspect that's not an issue for her.

Thanks for any thoughts / experience or advice you may have on this.

Bigus

Get her to ask the new crowd what the best settlement figure is now, and tell them she prob hand it back if its not a figure of 2 k market value. I don't think they'll chase her for balance if she hands it back