The Marlborough District Council should provide an area for people wanting to sell their cars after the unofficial car sales lot on Grove Rd, in Blenheim, is turned into carparking, one seller says.
Lukas Javurek, originally from the Czech Republic, said it was a good idea the council was taking the land at the corner of Grove and Dillons Point roads and making it a nicer space, but it should come up with an alternative for people who want to sell their cars privately.
"It will be fair if the council have another place where you can put your car and people could pay a donation to sell it," Mr Javurek said.
Grove Rd was not the ideal place because cars were sometimes vandalised, he said. Stones had been thrown at a Toyota Corolla he had parked there to sell.
But it was still better to have the cars in one place, like a community market, than people selling their cars on different streets.
He had sold three cars at the Grove Rd site.
Council assets and services committee chairman Graeme Taylor said he was against the idea of the council providing an area for free car sales because it was unfair competition for car dealers who paid commercial rent and rates.
The idea did not come up at the council, and he said it should not get involved because it was "not the right thing to do".
The council said last week it was giving sellers until the end of the weekend to move their cars from the strip of land so it could start work this week to seal it to create 25 carparks for the new i-Site in front of the railway station, which was due to open in July.
When The Marlborough Express visited the site yesterday afternoon, more than 20 cars remained for sale there. Five remained at 9am today.
Joe Syomin, from Blenheim, said the sales yard was good for poorer people because it was more affordable than going through a car dealer.
He had parked his car on the land on Friday to sell but would remove it after the warning from the council.
He needed to sell the car to buy a bigger one and would try other ways such as approaching friends if he could not park it somewhere in town with a for sale sign on it.
Mr Syomin, who has sold two cars at the unofficial lot, had been to a car dealer who offered him less money for one car and to pay him half straight away and the other half when it was sold.
"That same car sold for about $400 more than the dealer offered and you get all the money at once," he said.
SIMON WONG
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