August and September are prime times for used car bargains, as new-look demo stock rolls off dealer lots at end of financial year and straight into private-sale listings. For anyone over 60 shopping for a runabout or a tow vehicle, that means more tempting cars than usual popping up on the classifieds. The catch is that a private sale carries none of the protections a dealer forecourt automatically hands over.

We think that is exactly why this is the month to slow down, not speed up. A private seller can offer a genuinely good price. What they cannot offer is a guarantee that the car is actually theirs to sell, or that it will still be running sweetly in a month’s time.

The NRMA calls buying a used car “a daunting process” that involves “dealing with a relative stranger, negotiating a fair price and taking their word on a vehicle’s maintenance and condition”. South Australian Consumer and Business Services puts it more bluntly still: “You might think a car offered for sale looks great, but if you don’t make some important checks you could end up with a dud.”

Our first stop, always, is the Personal Property Securities Register. A PPSR check tells you whether there is money still owing on the car, whether it has ever been reported stolen, or whether it is listed as a statutory write-off. Vehicles under 15 years old that have been written off show up on the written-off register too. Skip this step and you risk paying for a car that turns up on someone else’s finance agreement, or worse, gets repossessed out of your driveway.

Warranty is where private sales and dealer sales part ways completely. Buy from a licensed dealer and an eligible used car under 10 years old with under 160,000km on the clock comes with a statutory warranty of three months or 5,000km. Older or higher-kilometre cars still get a shorter class B warranty of one month or 1,000km. Buy privately and you get none of it. No warranty, no cooling-off period, no clear title guarantee. Whatever goes wrong after you hand over the cash is yours to fix.

That gap is exactly why we never let a private-sale car near our signature without an independent mechanical inspection first. If you cannot get the car to your own mechanic, a mobile inspection service will come to it. Book it in daylight hours too, when panel damage and mismatched paint are far easier to spot than under carpark lighting at dusk.

Safety is worth a proper look as well, not just a glance at the badge on the boot. The SafeCars app and Used Car Safety Ratings, developed by the Monash University Accident Research Centre, let you compare crash protection and crash-avoidance technology across used models within your budget. The advice from howsafeisyourcar.com.au is simple: “look for a vehicle with a 5-star overall safety rating and a ‘SAFER PICK’ marker.” Check the ANCAP “year tested” date too, since the ratings criteria tightens roughly every three years, so a 5-star car tested a decade ago is not the same proposition as one tested last year.

Price surprises are another private-sale hazard, though the rules cut both ways. Dealers advertising a single price must show the full drive-away figure under Australian Consumer Law, bundling stamp duty, transfer fees, registration and CTP into one number. Moto-Corp warns buyers can otherwise “spot a great vehicle online, head down to the yard, and suddenly notice the price jumps by thousands of dollars during the final paperwork.” Privately, those charges land on you separately, so budget for them from the start.

For those of us shopping with a caravan in mind, the checklist grows one more line. Carsales notes plainly that “you’re not going to find many car dealers that will let you hitch up your caravan to try it out” before you buy, so the specs have to speak for themselves. Favour a longer wheelbase and shorter rear overhang for stability on the road, since a shorter wheelbase and longer overhang give a van more leverage to sway the tow vehicle. A live rear axle generally carries a higher load limit and wears its tyres more evenly under towing load than an independent suspension setup, worth matching against your van’s towball weight before you sign anything.

Our verdict is simple. August’s flood of demo runoff is a genuine chance to find a well-priced car with low kilometres and a fresh look. Just make the PPSR check, the mechanical inspection and the safety rating your price of admission, not an afterthought. A dud car is never a bargain, no matter how good it looked in the photos.