I’ve been a lot of conversations about trading in early or - GHASP - selling to Carmax. Maybe it’s just me, but I never trade in, instead sell privately. Yeah it takes some more time and effort, but the difference in price is thousands of dollars. I’ll spend a few hours on the phone and test driving with people to make $3K or $4K, which is the difference between trading in a $30K car vs selling it yourself. Even with sales tax savings, it’s still $2-3K difference.
I just find it odd that people here who will haggle over $5/mo on a lease, just walk away from $2K by trading in.
My last example was earlier this year. I had my wife’s Sienna for sale. Dealers offered $13K as a trade. Sold it for $16,500. Total time spent I’d estimate was 20 hours including taking pics, posting an ad, talking to potential buyers, meeting them, and then once the buyer agreed to it, meeting him at his bank to do paper work since he got a loan. Taking into account the sales tax credit on $13K (at 8%), I saved $2460. Which works out to paying myself $123/hr (income tax free). I’ll sell cars for $123/hr all day, every day
List all the great features of your car using short concise bullet point items using HTML code <li>. For example <li>GPS maps will show up as a bullet point.
Don’t price your car too low, you always need room to drop the price.
Be upfront and honest, people can smell a scam a mile away, why waste time.
100% of the last point. Nobody expects a used car to be perfect. Be honest about the condition, people will appreciate that vs saying it’s showroom condition then showing up and there is a 7" scratch across the hood, tires are bald and the check engine light is on.
Appreciate the tips! For my Car, CARMAX offered 19K but when I quote over 2K of this price, folks are like we can buy a brand new Accord for that or even lesser and I’m like #TrimMatters😁
When I put up my last car for sale on Cars.com, I had to deal with so many Paypal scammers and fraudsters that it made me question if the extra $1,200 I got out of a buyer vs. the dealers offer was worth it. I complained and got a refund on the listing cost though…
Get the NADA trade in values and KBB private party values. They’re usually in the same ballpark. Then ask a little more so you have room to come down. Everyones wants a good deal after all, right? If the car is worth $10K, ask $11K and the buyer will think $10K is a good deal. Ask $10K and the buyer will think he’s getting ripped off at $10K if you don’t negotiate.
Selling to CarMax is a thing of convenience which comes at a price.
I personally have tried to sell on CL. What i’ve found is the following:
People on CL typically try to buy a very cheap car (under $5k). For those types of cars it’s a good platform.
Higher priced cars are hard to sell. Not everybody has $20k+ stashed in their mattress.
Everybody on CL tries to “get a deal”. You will be met with a lot of “unreasonable” offers/hagglers.
Very time consuming.
If you were to sell a car to someone and something goes wrong with the car within a short time of selling it, then you have to deal with an angry person who you just sold an expensive item to. Potentially a dangerous situation. People on CL aren’t all the most upstanding people.
I personally don’t want to deal with CL people. I don’t want to have them come to my house. I don’t want them having my number etc. Maybe it’s just where I live but the risk/reward isn’t there for me personally, even if it means a few bucks more, it’s not worth it.
Yeah, you’re making a choice of convenience over money. I’m a greedy cheap bastards so I choose the money
But CL is not just for cheap cars. Even though most people don’t have $20K in cash (although a lot of people do, you’d be surprised), you can buy from a private party using a loan. I’ve sold many cars privately, and the buyer used a loan for the purchase. You go to their bank, get a cashier’s check from the loan officer. Easy. I’m not sure what “people on CL” really means. Everyone buys and sell on CL. People on CL are basically the general population. I own several rental properties and I use CL exclusively to find my tenants. And these aren’t $450 studio apartments, they’re $2500/mo houses. My point is everyone uses CL, to buy/rent/hire. I sometimes think how did the world work pre CL and Amazon?
Low Ball: I always make it clear in both my ads and when talking to people that my bottom line is $X, let’s not waste each others’ time. You put the asking price a bit higher than what you want, then the buyer feels like they’re getting a deal. No different than how all sales transactions work.
Risk: I always meet in a parking lot at a Home Depot or Walmart or something, not at my house. And yeah I guess a buyer could get mad and show up at your house. But I am always upfront about things I’m selling, including the negatives. Yeah you’re right, there are crazy people out there and you never know. But I try not to live my life in fear.
@Boomba i don’t know what part of the country you live, in S. FL Craigslist is just a breeding ground for scams. The reason people use it because CL doesn’t do a good job monitoring what goes on and it’s free.
I can only speak from experience, i’ve sold some stuff to “normal” people, but most are “questionable” to put it nicely.
Yes, meeting in a well-lit public place is def Craigslist 101 however I personally wouldn’t do a big ticket transaction on CL, too risky to squeeze an extra few bucks.
As for people getting loans to buy used cars from CL, i haven’t experienced that personally, i’m sure that happens but if i had to guess it’s not the majority.
If you’re in the RE rental game, i’m sure you’ve seen people list apartments for under market for rent and then you get an email from the owner with a shady email address, no real contact info and a generic name with a link to fill out a credit app and many people fall for it and then become victims of identity theft. I’m just saying, people doing transactions on CL need to be careful.
I’ve had more luck selling cars on Ebay vs CL, especially in this price range. Easier to communicate & you know who are you talking to ( based on their feedback & history )
There are very few 2013-2015 Touring’s out there offered for sale. Was looking for one for myself ( don’t like the look of 2016 + ). Couldn’t find it in the colors I’ve wanted.
There are some situations where a trade-in is beneficial over selling private party. My recent experience was I had a 2013 Hyundai Elantra that was in an accident. A teenage driver sideswiped my wife. Airbags weren’t deployed, and no frame damage, only the driver’s door had to be repaired. This added an accident to the Carfax/Auto Check. Every offer we got was low-balled, private party, and at dealerships because of the accident. In the end, I was able to get a dealership/sales manager to give me $2k more than any other offer I had received. He was willing to do this to seal the deal. In my mind, that was just an added $2k cap cost reduction, that I didn’t have to pay for.
In a perfect world, private party is usually more lucrative. But if there is an excuse to talk you down on price, a private party haggler will do it (I do the same).
