Sam’s seen a recent uptick in his construction business and is looking to upgrade his equipment. He found a second-hand excavator for $75k on the ‘equipment4sale’ website and messaged the seller Evan to negotiate the sale.
Sam knows that to help protect himself, he needs to do a $2 PPSR search to check if there’s money owing on the excavator. The PPSR allows Sam to search against serial number, a business, or a person’s name. He goes to ppsr.gov.au to find what information he needs from Evan to do his search. Sam sees that this particular excavator is considered a ‘motor vehicle’, so he needs to search by serial number. As this excavator doesn’t have a VIN, he uses the excavator’s chassis number.
Sam’s PPSR search shows Evan’s bank has a PPSR registration over the excavator. Sam knows this means Evan could owe money to the bank secured against the excavator, which may put him at risk of the excavator being repossessed later by the bank. Sam tells Evan he’s happy to go ahead with the deal provided the registration is removed.
Be aware – different equipment will require different searches.