Motor vehicle dealers; use of buyer's order for leased motor vehicles.
HB2659 amends Virginia’s motor vehicle dealer buyer’s order law to expressly address leased motor vehicles. The bill requires dealers to complete a buyer’s order for each sale, lease, or exchange, and clarifies that a dealer may use a separate buyer’s order form for leases, but is not required to do so. It also requires that a copy of the buyer’s order be made available to a prospective buyer or lessee during negotiations and before any sales or lease agreement is signed, and that the completed duplicate be delivered to the purchaser or lessee at the time of the transaction.
The bill preserves and expands the list of information that must appear on the buyer’s order, including the vehicle description, price, deposits, trade-in credit, taxes and fees, processing fees, and dealer business license tax. Most notably, it adds a specific disclosure for leased vehicles when the lease is conditional on dealer-arranged financing, mirroring the existing disclosure for dealer-arranged financing in sales. It also retains the requirement for a “No Liability Insurance Included” stamp when applicable, allows a signed buyer’s order to serve as a bill of sale, and continues existing disclosure rules for demonstrator vehicles and certain used vehicle sales.
The bill primarily affects Virginia Code § 46.2-1530, the statute governing buyer’s orders used by motor vehicle dealers. Its practical effect is to standardize disclosure requirements for leased vehicles, especially where the dealer expects to assign the lease to a finance provider, and to make clear that lease transactions can use either the same buyer’s order form as sales or a separate lease-specific form. Dealers must continue to disclose fees and transaction terms in a detailed, itemized way, and lessees gain clearer written notice of cancellation rights, return obligations, and potential remedies under the Virginia Consumer Protection Act.
The bill appears to have been broadly supported and noncontroversial. It passed the House and Senate overwhelmingly, including unanimous votes in the later stages after a Senate substitute was adopted and then agreed to by the House. The committee vote in the House Transportation Committee was also favorable, though not unanimous, suggesting some limited concern or technical disagreement early in the process. Overall, the voting history indicates strong bipartisan acceptance of the measure.
The main point of contention appears to have been procedural or technical rather than ideological: the bill moved through a committee amendment, then a Senate substitute, before final agreement by the House. Because the text focuses on disclosure language and form requirements, likely concerns would have centered on dealer compliance burden, the need for separate lease forms, and the exact wording of the financing/lease cancellation notice. However, the near-unanimous floor votes suggest no major substantive opposition remained by final passage.