Carvana vroom etc offer much lower than kbb, is it normal?

Ask the Hackrs
, ,
1

Hi, I have started leasing a bmw m340i from Dec 2019 and current it’s around 20 months of the 3 year lease. Due to covid, the mileage is only around 2000-3000 miles.

KBB gives estimation of 56,000 usd for private party. However Carvana Vroom Carmax etc quote is around 45,000. Why is it much lower than KBB?

Thanks in advance.

2

Carvana, Vroom, and CarMax aren’t private parties, they’re dealers. So you’re better off looking at something like NADA / wholesale pricing. KBB also doesn’t buy cars, so their valuation is only as solid as your ability to find someone to pay that number.

2 Likes
3

KBB is useless for ‘pricing of cars’. It serves one major purpose, when you wreck your car, how much the insurance company will give you. That’s about it.

People like using it for pricing of a car when you buy / sell, but it isn’t going to be accurate for that.

1 Like
4

Try enterprise, they are using KBB to value the vehicle … you might be lucky …

2 Likes
5

Private party from KBB is just an estimate of what a private party (you) could potentially sell the car for. I don’t think the number is very accurate. Dealerships or car buying services are buying at wholesale book. Different rate intended for different purposes.

2 Likes
6

Specifically, it is an estimate of what you could maybe sell the car for to another private party.

3 Likes
7

thank you! What is the wholesale book? Is it same as the trade in value I see on KBB?

8

I tried KBB, Carvana, Vroom and CarMax 3 days ago for my CX-5. Highest to lowest; Carvana, CarMax, Vroom and by far the lowest KBB.

1 Like
9

One of them is called ‘Black Book’ it’s a competitor to Blue Book and is usually gauged to car industry values (Way lower than Kelly btw).
Because of the market, most are pulling the Manheim numbers (Need a Dealer license for this) and will offer you LESS than this number. (Because if they can buy it on the market for say $10000 why offer YOU $10000).

As I said before Kelly is just a number, and when you crash your car and the insurance company tries to lowball you, you can reach for the KBB and say, give me at least this much. It’s not a number dealers use at all.

Right now if you want the correct price, you need to go to Carvana, Vroom, Carmax and see what they will offer. Then you have a real number and not KBB’s ‘crash’ number.

3 Likes
10

Is it xdrive? I might be interested in it if it is.

11

nah it’s not xdrive

12

Enterprise used the ‘good’ value on our civic with 5k miles that was flawless and I had detailed the day before…so yeah. If you can find a store who will use ‘excellent’ then maybe it will work.

13

My hypothesis: kbb was slow to catch up with the car buying spree and jacked up prices that carvana/vroom/shift were on early in all this madness, say Feb-May 2021. Then kbb caught up with the boom and their prices are similarish to carvavrooshift. Emphasis on ish. More recently, it seems kbb is overvaluing many cars relative to shifvanaroom and often the latters’ prices are lower as I suspect they are predicting this boom will start to dry up/correct itself over the next many months.
TLDR: early boom kbb low/normal, carvrooft high; late boom, kbb high, vroovaft lower/probably still not yet normal.

14

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.