The Personal Property Securities Register (PPS Register)
If you are buying a new or used boat or car, or other valuable goods for your own personal, domestic or household use, you can now check the national register of personal property securities.
The Personal Property Security Register, or PPS Register, is a new online database that will show all items that have been used as security for a loan. It will also show if the car, motorbike or boat you are about to buy has been reported as stolen or has been previously written off in an insurance claim.
Personal property is any form of property other than land or buildings and fixtures which form part of that land. It can include tangibles such cars, boats, machinery and crops; as well as intangibles such as shares, intellectual property and contract rights.
The PPS Register can be accessed here or by calling 
1300 007 777.
Cars and boats can be searched by serial number, such as the vehicle identification number or chassis number for cars, and the hull identification number or official number for boats.
Online tutorials about how to use the PPS Register can be accessed here.
Previously, Western Australia used the Register of Encumbered Vehicles (REVS) system to record items such as motor vehicles, motorcycles, recreational boats, trucks, caravans, trailers and certain farm machinery that have money owing on them. Other states had similar, but separate, systems. The PPS Register supersedes REVS and REVS is no longer used.
Further information on the Personal Property Securities Register can be found here.
Closure of Western Australian Registers
REVS and the Bills of Sale Register, which were both operated by the Department of Commerce, were closed on 27 January 2012. The information on these registers that was current at the time of closure was transferred to the PPS Register.
The Department of Commerce has archived the information that was previously recorded on REVS and the Bills of Sale Register. It is possible to conduct a historical search for archived information.
Requests for historical REVS or Bills of Sale information should be made in writing and addressed to the Information Officer, Corporate Information:
Email: consumer@commerce.wa.gov.au
Post: Locked Bag 14 CLOISTERS SQUARE WA 6850
Fax: (08) 9282 0850
Or lodged in person at: The Forrest Centre,Ground Floor, 219 St Georges Terrace PERTH WA 6000
A fee of $3.85 is applicable to each REVS historical search request.
A fee of $26.40 is applicable to each Bills of Sale historical search request. If a photocopy or certified copy of a Bill of Sale is required, the request must be made in writing and fees of $26.40 for the first page and $4.40 for each subsequent page are applicable.
Please make cheques payable to the Commissioner for Consumer Protection, or include a completed credit card authority with your request. Cash payments may be made by lodging the historical request in person at the Forrest Centre.