When selling a car, is it mandatory to disclose body work? Or just good form?

So I'm looking at a car to buy. Go drive it yesterday, ask the guy a million questions, get the warm and fuzzies. Talk with the owner today, agree to a price (more than $10k, less than $15k), schedule a PPI and discuss when to pick it up this week.

A few hours later, someone reminded me to ask one question that I neglected to ask: any paint work or body work? Hmm. 3 different parking lot speed incidents that required new panels and paint. You'd never know it by looking at the car.

So now I'm left deciding what to do. Buy it because it's so clean and pretty or walk because I don't want a car with that much work done.

My question for you...is it mandatory to reveal body work during the sales process? Or should it only be admitted when asked about directly? Clearly this seller believes the latter. What is the collective thought here?

on a new enough car, that hasn't been wrecked that bad, fixed right shouldn't be an issue.

assuming you looked it over thoroughly and didn't find any evidence of repairs, its probably nothing more than a simple question during the PPI. if the seller balks, or gets defensive, then you might know its time to walk.

It will make the car harder to sell in the future and it has the potential to be hiding damage under the panels. I would do some pretty serious poking around the areas repaired to look for evidence of shoddy or incomplete repairs.

I don't even ask anymore. I just look for it. When I find it, I just stare at it or tap it a few times until the owner fesses up. Body work is pretty easy to spot. If I missed it, the job was so good I'm not going to worry about it.

If I'm selling a car, I don't say anything. If the prospective buyer can't find it or doesn't want to spring for someone to inspect the car, I can't be responsible for that. Having said that, I've never sold a car that had anything worse than a fender replacement.

Caveat Emptor! I've seen cars where the body work was a massive amount of the car but it was done well. I've seen cars where the body work was minor and it was done like crap. Minor work done badly is much more common than major work done badly. That is prevalent on the private party side. Dealer side is run from any body work, it is never done right. Back in 2000 my parents bought a brand new car from the dealer, it had been wrecked and "rebuilt" Title is/was clean as the car had never been titled. nowadays you can tell that the car was in an accident.

It is not mandatory to disclose it, so to answer your question, he didn't do anything "wrong". It's a matter of how much it bothers you. As has been said here, if the repairs have been done 100% correctly, and the car was put back into pre-loss condition, does it matter? If the repair is poor quality, it's a point of negotiation.

It gets into the whole "diminished value" can of worms. It's probably one of the biggest topics of debate in the auto claims world. It's very subjective. So only you can decide how much it bothers you.

Personally, if the damage was only cosmetic and it's been repaired right, it doesn't bother me at all. If there was unibody damage, I'm going to look real hard to make sure it was repaired right. If it was, then I'm OK with it. If it wasn't, obviously that's another story.

I might be dealing with this in the near future, but from the other side. We bought a 10k-15k vehicle a few months ago with 12xxxx miles on it. It had lots of little nicks, dings, etc and marks on the front bumper cover from a very minor bump. Within 4 weeks got rearended knocking us into the car in front of us. Nothing structural was damaged, but the bill was $5500. It was repaired perfectly by the same shop the local dealer uses and looks better than ever. In fact, the new front and rear bumper covers reduced the minor nicks and dings that were on the vehicle to almost none.

Now, I may be going overseas for work and would have to sell the vehicle (after less than 4 months of ownership) and I'm in the position of do I tell people about the damage or not. It may show up on a Carfax, but I haven't checked. Anyway, I'm thinking, I'll leave it up to the buyer. I'll certainly explain if they ask, but I know it might scare off people who would never otherwise be able to find any trace of an accident. Especially if I have only owned it 4 months. I know I can't tell it was repaired and I know what was fixed. It will look better than when I bought it and I got a great deal (as will they) so I don't have a problem with it. And using the Golden Rule, I wouldn't be upset if I bought it and it had been repaired this well.

In reply to Clay:

So whatcha sellin? (Of course I would have to offer you less than market value due to all those value sapping repairs )

The seller doesn't have to tell you anything.

I go the opposite route and list everything I know that is wrong with the car in the ad and put my price down as firm. When my Mazda 3 was hit while parked, I disclosed it in the ad, kept the door that was hit and showed it to any buyers so they could see that the damage was cosmetic.