Getting my first car in Singapore
Getting a car was always problematic in my head: COE how? What car to get? How to know if a car is ok? How will the dealer try to cheat me? How do I negotiate price?
My family car’s COE was expiring in January and they’re of an age where a car is arguably a necessity to get around hospital appointments and grocery shopping. We also needed a car since we also care for a special-needs foster child on weekends where we’d pick him up from his weekday lodging and bring him out.
So began my search for a car that wouldn’t make me broke.
Before I started, the process felt overwhelming since I’m generally not a car guy. With the help of a more experienced friend, I gradually got started by monitoring prices on SG CarMart which is the cesspit of secondhand car sellers and buyers.
For my own notes/anyone else aiming to get a secondhand car in Singapore, here’s what the process was like
Looking back on my journey, I think it can be broken down into 4 stages.
The why
When I previously did my calculations before COVID, a car was not worth it financially. Let’s assume for this section that you absolutely need a car to get around.
Private Hire Vehicle (PHV) rides back then usually cost less than $20 one-way. Keeping things moderate, assuming daily personal commutes, that’s maybe $40/day which ends up at $14,600/year.
Across ten years, this is $146,000. That’s roughly the price of a new car including the COE.
BUT, this also excludes your insurance (~$1+k/year), road tax (~$600/year), season parking fees (~$100/month), normal parking fees (~$100/month), petrol (~$400/month), and maintenance (~$1k/year). That adds up to around $10k a year, which means you’ll save $100k over ten years by not owning a car and leveraging PHVs instead.
These days, PHVs are admittedly more expensive so it maybe worth it to get a car for the convenience it provides.
Of course there are many other valid factors why you would get a car such as elderly folks, overly young folks, way of life, distance from workplace, time saved travelling, you just love cars etc. There’s no right or wrong and it’s always worth paying if you can justify how it results in real benefit in your quality of life.
The search
I visited SG CarMart weekly for a good 2-3 months before the time I actually had to purchase a car by. I was completely lost at the beginning but I have some idea of what to look out for now.
Some things that were important to me when looking at a car listing:
PARF/COE - The 10 year COE is renewable for another 10 years maximum. Cars with a COE that hasn’t been renewed before are known as PARF or pre-COE cars, cars that are in their second 10-year cycle are known as COE cars. At the end of the maximum 20-year lifespan of a car, it must be disposed of. Personally, I went for PARF cars exclusively.
Registration date - This affects your downpayment and loan amount which SG CarMart helpfully displays as a monthly value. Your downpayment will be 30% of the total cost, and the remaining 70% will be spread out across the remaining age of the car before the end of it’s current COE. Also, the COE price is known to fluctuate within a 10 year cycle and it’s theoretically possible to time the registration date to get a good COE-renewal price if you’re getting a PARF car. However, this cycle was recently broken by a government initiative to cool COE prices so this might not really be a factor anymore.
No. of Owners - This is obviously subjective but if a car is being traded every year and it’s a utility car rather than a sports/luxury one, why was it being let go of so often? I personally optimised for a low number of previous owners.
Mileage - Should be obvious but this is an indicator of how used a car is. Majority of cars these days have quite a high mileage since PHVs were in excess supply during the COVID era. Dealers are also known to modify this to sell a car to you at a higher price. Ask for the Agent Servicing Records if you’re choosing one of the street dealers.
Engine capacity - Especially so if you’re getting a PARF car and intending to renew the COE, the horsepower of the engine affects how much you’ll be paying for your next COE. I stuck to cars below 1600cc (Category A) for this reason
Fuel economy - How far can you drive given a fixed unit of petrol? A useful site to reference is https://www.fuelly.com/. Normally you would optimise for a low number so that you can spend less on fuel.
On the advice of my car-siao (interested in cars) friend, I chose an honest business over a good deal. I wasn’t a car person and he knew it, he also knows how shady some dealers can be being a car person.
I ended up filtering down by businesses and checking out their ratings. I found Carro to be the most convenient for me since it’s at Midview City. Also, my friend didn’t have any issues with Carro which he did with another dealer I was looking at.
Carro it was.
The viewing
Booked a few cars for viewing from the Carro website and went down on a Saturday to view them. Only one ended up being wide enough for my family to fit in comfortably. Coincidentally it was also the newer model of my current family car.
Went through a test drive and because I was so n00b, the salesperson was even telling me what to look out for like the brakes, acceleration, suspension, entertainment system.
Here’s some things I would look out for during my next test drive:
Handling - How easy is it to make turns/U-turns? Are you comfortable with the pivot distance? How does the car accelerate when starting from a turned position? How does the car handle tight corners?
Engine sound - This is difficult to describe but problems can be heard if you know what to look out for. I saw my previous car through from brand new to it being scrapped and have heard everything in between so I have some idea. Generally you’d want the engine to be steady sounding at a mid-frequency kind of level at rest before and after the drive.
Brakes - Some brakepads are incredibly sensitive based on my rental car experiences. No right or wrong here, but are you comfortable with how it feels?
Accelerator/acceleration - I dislike automatic transmissions with a passion because of how I’m talking to a computer rather than directly with the fuel injection component. The accelerator should feel right to you similarly to how the brakes feel right.
Parking experience - To me this is now the gold standard that includes everything above. If you can easily and comfortably park the car head-in, tail-in, and parallel, all of the above should be fine. Felt parking my current ride was a bit difficult because of the mirrors but I’ve checked out other mirrors and they all look the same these days.
Suspension - If you have the luxury of having a companion to test drive the car, get them to sit behind. Speed bumps are usually okay for the front seats and horrendous for the backseat passengers.
Entertainment system - Test connecting your phone. My new car doesn’t connect my iPhone via bluetooth because I forgot to check this, thankfully it connects very well via a wired interface.
Confirmed my purchase after test driving it with my family in the car and got quite a number of documents to handle.
The purchase
I felt the purchase process at Carro was pretty streamlined, but don’t take my word for it, it’s my first and only experience so far.
After my family was satisfied with the car’s form, I confirmed the intention to buy the car and the salesperson sat us down to go through the financial arrangements.
We intended to trade-in my current family car so we went through an assessment to see its worth. The person in charge of it took pictures of the car and did a test drive to verify the engine. He told me over the drive that all end-of-life cars these days are scrapped regardless of whether it was continental or not. Previously, continental cars fetched a higher scrap value because they could be sent to neighbouring countries, but apparently that isn’t so these days.
The assessed trade-in value came to a grand total of $700 given it’s end-of-life. Aside: it’s quite sad seeing a car you’ve driven for so long being attached to such a low monetary value.
With that we proceeded with the financial arrangements.
It was 30% downpayment with a 70% loan over the remaining duration the new car has until it’s current COE expires. For Carro, they had a $1k deposit to secure the order which will be offset from the downpayment together with the value of the trade-in car.
The order day consisted of the salesperson showing me multiple forms, some of which needed to be signed, which I wasn’t really clear about initially. These turned out to be:
Vehicle Sales Order - This is the sales agreement for the new car and contains details about the car like colour, engine capacity, registration date, license plate etc and also the financial arrangements like the downpayment and loan amount.
Terms and Conditions - Probably a big-company thing. Basically signing away my $1k deposit if I chose to not purchase the car after the order is complete. Also details what will be done to the car post-order. In Carro’s context, they keep cars in their original handover state and only do the fixing up of their “160-points inspection” after the sales order is through. This document documented all that in fancy legal terms.
Trade-in agreement - This is the sales agreement from me to the dealer for the car being traded-in. This basically says that I agree to sell my current car to Carro for $700 (again, sad) and that the value will be offset from my downpayment.
Car details from LTA - This is a printout of the car’s registered details from the LTA website to verify that everything is in order.
We were informed the car would only be ready in about two weeks from the order date, and we paid the $1k deposit via PayNow. And waited.
A few days after the order goes through, we were sent loan offers from the three major banks in Singapore. Logged in to the website and accepted the loan. Nothing much to talk about here, pay only. Another few days and the insurance invoice comes in. Again, pay only.
A day before the handover day, Carro pinged us to tell us to increase our transfer limits and add them as a payee since it takes 12-24 hours (depending on the bank) to take effect.
And came handover day.
Went down to Carro once again. They kindly offered to install our existing camera system into the new car at no cost so we spent about an hour waiting for that to be done. Said my sad goodbyes to my current car, and went to do… Wait for it… Paperwork.
On the handover day, I had to login to OneMotoring to initiate a transfer of my vehicle to Carro. It involves a sign-in with SingPass so bring your own laptop if you don’t want to use their shared computers to do it.
Carro then initiated the transfer of the new vehicle over to me. Signed a few more documents indicating the transfer of my existing car to them was complete, and the transfer of my new car to me was complete, and we were done. They handed over the keys to the kingdom.
Later at night the notification by LTA came in to accept the transfer from Carro. Logged into OneMotoring and accepted it (costs $25, but what is $25 in the grander scheme of things), and it’s now mine. All mine.
The new car
I didn’t think about it until I reached home when the carpark ERP gates beeped. My season parking was registered to the previous car.
Thankfully it was easy to rectify via the HDB website’s Transfer of Season Parking service. I needed the license plate number and the in-vehicle unit (IU) number and it was a pretty simple transaction. Private residences probably have something similar but until I stay in one and can document the experience, good luck!
Bye!
I hope this piece was useful for you if you’re intending to purchase a second-hand car in Singapore and had the same worries as me. Till my next life experience, chao!
Special thanks
Shoutout to Jackson who helped guide me during my car search journey. And Samuel and Adele for being lost with me.
Customory thanks
Header photo by 𝔑𝔦𝔩𝔰 𝔅𝔬𝔤𝔡𝔞𝔫𝔬𝔳𝔰 on Unsplash