Used Car Valuation - Tips & Techniques

Off-Ramp
1

Please correct my technique. I’m only concerned about selling to licensed car dealers.

  1. NADA, Black (Lite), KBB, Edmunds are initial idea of ballpark range. I find NADA to be the closest to the actual auction data after I find that out

  2. Ask someone with access to the Manheim data to provide the value ranges of the exact vehicle, mileage, region, etc. Sometimes, nobody steps up to the plate.

  3. Start offering to dealers in the area that sell the same make (they can CPO it or whatever) and normally can charge more because they are linked with the brand and have the service techs

  4. Drag feet to Carmax and just deal with that lowball experience. They used to be somewhat close years ago but they have been consistently many thousands lower on my last couple of sales. Maybe this step needs to be deleted.

  5. Take an average price of all other examples of your car for sale in the region. For cars under $40k, use the “minus $2000 rule” to arrive at a fair selling price to a dealer.

  6. By now, a dealer usually steps up and buys the car for a price that corresponds with the data research.

What have I missed, LH? I know you depraved car addicts sell a lot of your used cars. Let’s hear it.

2

I think the majority of lease Hacker’s would agree that CarMax evaluations are not low ball and quite spot on.

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3

Oh yeah, totally spot on. It’s not like they don’t just go flip your shit to auction or to another dealer and steal thousands from the seller in the process. A totally beneficial middle man service.

4

Carmax buys cars are low auction price which is pretty much what any dealer would offer. A dealer could offer you more but that’s usually only if they are making money on selling you a car. So if you’re trading yours in to Honda/Acura I’m betting they are making money on the flip side by selling you a new Honda/Acura. They sell and lease high so they definitely have a few extra $$$ to toss you. But no dealer is going go just outright pay more than auction price, why would they when they can get it at auction for less?

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5

Try getting an appraisal from Vroom.com. I think they offer fair numbers and the process is easy. I sold 5 cars to them last year.

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6

Thanks for the VROOM tip! I’m gonna check it out.

At this point, there’s nothing anyone can say to convince me that Carmax is offering fair prices. I just dealt with them in August 2017 where they quoted $26,500 for a Sienna. Later that week a Toyota dealer very eagerly offered me $28,600. That was not a trade-in. It took all of 30-60 minutes more of my time to complete the entire transaction for $2,100 more than Carmax.

$2,100 is not something anyone should be leaving on the table.

7

Depends on what you’re selling to carmax, minivan or low end sadan yeah they are going to be low. A lightly used luxury suv you will do pretty well selling to cmax.

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8

this is correct, a high demand car they will pay a fair value. Low demand car they will low ball and cars that don’t meet their standards to be allowed to be resold by carmax are going to get the worst offer because they’ll flip those to auction. Going carmax route is path of least resistance at most convenient but comes at a price.

FYI - if your car has an accident on the carfax, don’t even waste your time, they will give you peanuts for the car.

9

Here’s my data dump so far:

2017 Audi A4 Premium Plus, MSRP = 49,950
Current lease payment = $552 inclusive (I did pay drive-offs at signing)
36 months / 12k miles
Current odom = 11,750
Remaining payments = 21
Payoff = $39,600
Contractual RV = $28,875

Current wholesale data:
KBB = ~$31,000
Edmunds = ~$33,000
NADA = ~$36,500 (outlier)
BB Weekly = ~$34,500
Galves = ~$32,000

Offers:
Chevy Dealer = $27,000 / $28,000
Audi Dealer #1 = $29,000
Audi Dealer #2 = $29,000
Carmax = $30,000
Audi Dealer #3 = $31,500
Vroom = $32,000

I knew I would lose some amount of cash on this, but ~$7,500 is a tough pill. I am using my Bolt EV rebates of $2,700 to cover some of this loss, but still…

So how come my ~1 year old Audi is already flirting with it’s RV set at almost 2 years in the future? Reason given by 2 of the Audi dealers is that they have a deluge of 2017 A4 “service loaners” currently dumped to auction that are bringing down the values.

Question for anyone - would you wait out the service loaner flood and see what happens in a few months? Or just dump now and enjoy the savings with the Bolt EV?

I’m still going to be ~$400 per month cash positive with the Bolt EV due to the lower lease payments with $0 up front costs, lower energy/fuel costs, and a free HOV lane access sticker. I was paying about $250 to $300 per month just on HOV tolls alone with the Audi and a DOT transponder (they charge double during rush hour because they really want solo drivers out of there).

For reference it was costing me ~$900 to $1000 per month to operate my Audi. That car just isn’t special enough to fork that out each month.

10

Where is car located?
If you are willing to subsidize lease down to 350 per month PM me

11

Still debating lease swap, but VW / Audi as policy keep the original lessee on the hook for the entire duration of the contract. That’s too risky for me, unless the takeover person was a family member or something.

12

Putting a bow on this - I’m doing a lease transfer to cut some losses, but with a trusted friend to mitigate the guarantor bullshit that VW puts on their original lessees.