When people get behind on their car payments, it is common for the lending institution to take back the vehicle, especially if there is no way for the person to get caught up on missed loan payments. The result is that the larger banks, credit unions and finance companies are often overflowing with repossessed cars and seized cars that they need to sell through a seized car auction.

A variety of different government agencies, from the local level to the federal level, have the authority to seize vehicles and place them in seized car auctions. These seizures occur when someone owes a lot of money to the IRS, or when the vehicle was involved in a crime, or when it was bought illegally with drug money.

When lending institutions, banks, police departments, and various federal agencies end up with a growing number of cars that have been seized or repossessed, they ultimately spend a lot of money to store these vehicles. In most cases, the people from whom the cars were seized have either no recourse at all for getting the vehicle back or a short window of opportunity to get the vehicle back before the agency has the right to sell it off. If there is no longer any chance of the person being able to reclaim the vehicle, then it can be sold through a seized car auction, which the agencies prefer to do as soon as possible to minimize their storage expenses.

In many cases, a seized car auction can be a bargain hunters dream, enabling them to save hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, on a wide variety of cars, truck, vans, recreational vehicles, and even boats and other recreational sports vehicles. These seized, motor car auctions provide people with terrific opportunities to get a better quality vehicle than they might otherwise have been able to afford. For those who are really lucky, they could be driving away with their dream car after only paying one quarter to one half of the amount that they might have paid, had they gone to a regular dealership.

Before attending seized car auctions you need to be sure to do some homework first. If you have a particular model in mind, then do some research to find out what the fair market value is. It is a good idea not to start bidding at the first used car auction you attend, but instead, watch the proceedings so that you can get a feel for the general buying environment and gain an understanding of how the entire car auto auction process works.