Can You Use We Buy Any Car for Probate?

If you’re dealing with a deceased person’s estate and there’s a car involved, the temptation to Google the registration number and take a screenshot is understandable. You’re busy, you’re grieving, and the probate process is already asking a lot of you. We Buy Any Car gives you a number in about 30 seconds. Job done, surely?

Not quite. There’s a meaningful difference between a valuation that satisfies HMRC and a quick online estimate designed to get you to a branch. Both produce a number. Only one of them is fit for purpose. Understanding why is important for an executor and more importantly it could save the estate money.

How We Buy Any Car Valuations Actually Work

The thing that makes We Buy Any Car so appealing to executors is also what makes it unsuitable for probate. Type a registration number into the site and it returns a figure in seconds; no questions about condition, no mention of service history, no enquiry about whether both keys are present. Nor does it take into account whether the rear bumper took a knock last winter. The quote assumes, in effect, that the vehicle is in excellent condition, because at that stage, it has no reason to assume otherwise.

That changes the moment the car reaches a branch.

We Buy Any Car applies a standard schedule of deductions at physical inspection. A missing key typically costs £150–£250 off the offer. No service history, common in estates where paperwork has been lost or never kept, can reduce the value by £500 to £900, sometimes more. Minor bodywork issues, the kind that accumulate over a decade of normal use, add further reductions: around £75–£200 per kerbed alloy, £150 per scratched panel. By the time a realistic condition picture is assembled, the headline quote can fall by 15–25% before any negotiation takes place.

This isn’t speculation. The Office of Fair Trading investigated We Buy Any Car’s practices and found that 96% of customers who sold their car received less than the original online valuation. The OFT’s published case found that WBAC used internal KPI targets that actively incentivised inspectors to reduce offers below the online figure. WBAC signed formal undertakings in response. The case is publicly documented on GOV.UK.

Consumer forum data bears this out. A PistonHeads user who systematically tested WBAC’s own online adjustment tool on a car initially quoted at £7,275 found the figure dropped to approximately £5,500, a 24% reduction, simply by inputting realistic condition details, before setting foot in a branch.

Why the Gap Matters for Probate Specifically

At this point you might be thinking: fine, so the final offer is lower than the headline quote. That’s a problem for someone selling a car. What does it have to do with probate?

Everything, as it happens, but the risk runs in the opposite direction to what you might expect.

When you include a car in an IHT400, you’re declaring what that vehicle was worth at the date of death. If you use the number-plate quote as your figure, the pre-inspection, best-case estimate, you are almost certainly overstating the open market value. That means the estate may be paying inheritance tax on a higher figure than it should.

On a car worth £8,000 at retail asking price, a realistic open market value might sit closer to £6,500 once condition, service history, and missing keys are factored in. At 40% IHT, the difference between those two figures represents £600 in tax the estate didn’t need to pay.

What a Proper Probate Valuation Actually Looks At

The standard HMRC requires is set out in Section 160 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984. The value of an asset in an estate should be the price it might reasonably be expected to fetch if sold in the open market at the date of death, accounting for its actual condition, not an assumed one.

A valuation prepared to that standard looks at rather more than a registration number. The vehicle’s mileage, service history, number of keys, bodywork condition, MOT status, and any known mechanical issues all feed into the figure. Market evidence, what comparable vehicles actually sold for around the date of death, not what sellers were asking, anchors the number in reality.

That’s precisely what Swift Values’ car probate valuation provides. For £49 including VAT, a specialist valuer reviews the vehicle using photographs and supporting details you supply, produces a condition-adjusted open market value at the date of death, and delivers a formatted PDF report with a Section 160 compliance statement ready to submit with the probate application. It typically arrives within one to two working days. If HMRC doesn’t accept it, the fee is refunded in full, though to date, every report submitted has been accepted.

For most executors, that represents a straightforward exchange: a modest fixed cost in return for a defensible, compliant valuation and the certainty that the estate isn’t paying a penny more in inheritance tax than it needs to.

So Can You Use A We Buy Any Car Valuation For Probate?

So, can you use We Buy Any Car for probate? Technically, nothing prevents you from entering a registration number and writing down the figure. But a WBAC quote is not a valuation in any sense that HMRC would recognise. It assumes perfect condition, ignores the date of death, and, as the OFT’s own investigation confirmed, routinely overstates what the vehicle would actually fetch.

For probate purposes, that creates two problems at once. Submit an inflated figure and the estate may overpay inheritance tax. Submit a figure without credible supporting evidence and you risk a compliance query you’re poorly placed to defend.

The good news is that getting it right is neither complicated nor expensive. A proper probate car valuation, prepared to the Section 160 standard, costs £49, takes a day or two, and removes the risk entirely. For most executors, that’s a straightforward decision, particularly when the valuation fee is itself a legitimate estate expense.

Use WBAC to get a rough sense of the market if you like. But when it comes to the IHT400, use a valuation that was actually designed for the job.