Keeper history
Six keepers in eight years usually means something. We tell you what.
There’s no rule that says one previous keeper is good and four is bad — but the shape of ownership says a lot about a car’s life. Short overlapping ownerships often mean a car that was hard to live with. We surface the pattern.
2.4
avg. keepers, 8-year-old car
4+
flagged as worth investigating
17%
have at least one ownership <60 days
How it matters
A car that’s changed hands quickly multiple times has often been someone’s mistake — repeatedly. It might be mechanical. It might be that nobody figured out the sat-nav. But repeated short ownerships warrant a closer mechanical inspection and a longer test drive.
What to look for
Patterns where a keeper held the car for less than six months, multiple times in a row. Gaps in V5C transfers (the car was off the road, or being reissued). Ownership transitions that coincide with MOTs the car has only just passed.
How we check it
We pull the full V5C transfer history and chart it. Where multiple short ownerships cluster, we flag it. Where there are V5C gaps that suggest reissue, we flag those too — and tell you what the pattern usually means.