Where do people sell used cars these days?

Lease (correctly) and you will almost never worry about selling a used vehicle! That was one of the attractions of leasing for me. Trading in a vehicle, or selling outright, makes the next car deal that much more difficult and I got tired of going to dealers and having them offer next to nothing for trade.

Yeah not allot people looking for a high mile Audi that is 6 years old, you should be happy with anything over $12k. Any light comes on in the dash and someone is looking at $800+ repair.

Dealers often do have quotas for used cars

1 Like

I recently sold an older car (under $2k) on Craigslist quickly - not sure if it works as well to sell a higher-valued vehicle.

I’m not on Facebook but apparently they have a buy/sell marketplace

  1. If it is NOT an AWD V6 model, then it is NOT “fully loaded”
  2. If it IS an AWD V6 model, then something is wrong because that is worth $14k at dealer auction.

So, which is it?

As to your question, the last couple of cars I sold, I used Ebay’s classifieds. But when you get into 5 digits, it is very difficult to sell private party because most buyers will need financing, which you don’t provide.

From the manufacturer? I didn’t specify, but I meant no dealer cash or quotas set by the manufacturer. Dealers definitely have quotas for their used cars.

I am trying to sell my 2016 Miata. Listed it on Autotrader ($25 minumum listing fee), Cars.com, Craigslist, and Facebook. Car is definitely appearing in tens of search results and getting multiple page views everyday. No offers other than a few scammers so far…

All of the above plus brand specific forums

I always called the used call factory to find out my monthly quota

Aren’t they always “fully loaded”, all my cars are

5 Likes

hahaha.
according to their ads, yes!

I’m waiting to see someone post their “fully loaded” $13,000 Versa S

5 Likes

C300 4matic, $47K original MSRP, fully loaded.

I know what I got

6 Likes

Financing is the biggest issue with private party sales. So very different selling a car for 1.5k cash verus 16k with financing.

1 Like

Do you have the V6 quattro, 2.0T quattro or 2.0T FWD variant?

How is the condition? pristine, good or average? What state are you in?

Fully loaded on a 6 year old car doesn’t mean much to a used buyer, unfortunately. The value difference between fully loaded and normal content level is less than $1k in actual value. Mileage and condition will have a lot more impact to the price point you can expect.

I looked up some auction prices and wholesale values on a V6 quattro w/ 80k in good condition is around $14,150 nationally. If you have the 2.0T quattro, the value is in the $12,200 range.

This is what the dealer would pay before any transport/recon fees from the auction.

4 Likes

This.

Under $5k, selling on craigslist/facebook is super easy. Tons of buyers, cash transactions, no issues, just lots of idiots and sketchy people to deal with.

Between $5-10k, you can somewhat easily find buyers online but it has to be a desirable vehicle that stands out or is unique in some way. No one is going to get on craigslist searching for an $8000 Nissan Sentra, or click on it when he sees it. NO ONE.

Over ~$10k is really difficult and time consuming, you have to be very patient and you’re not going to get dealer retail money unless your vehicle is very desirable, in pristine condition and dealers just don’t have them. This probably doesn’t describe an A6 with 80k miles. You have to find a person who has cash or is intelligent/credit-worthy enough to line up his own financing AND follow through on a car sale. I have only sold one vehicle private party in this price range and it took two months and a lot of BS’ers. But once I found the right dude, it was a smooth process.

Regardless, 95% of the work of selling a car privately is weeding through the lowballers/BS’ers/time wasters/morons. I assume it’s the same working in dealership sales.

2 Likes

This is exactly what I was thinking. It’s a small small microcosm of buyers who:

  1. Are savvy deal hunting folks who like to buy used
  2. Actually have the cash or the wherewithal to fetch it straightaway
  3. Are in the market (timing-wise and geographically) for what you’re selling where you’re selling it

Most buyers of things >$10k are likely perusing dealers, so as to have more than one specimen at one place to examine. It’s just really inefficient to look at private party sales and many people also feel it’s risky, with no recourse when :poop: goes sideways.

:bat:

1 Like

Yeah not very many buyers in this class exist from my experience. I have been one twice before, but I was searching for a very specific vehicle/trim that no dealer within hundreds of miles had in inventory. And when I sold those cars, the exact same type of buyer bought those cars from me - they just couldn’t be found elsewhere. But it took a looooong time. Rare doesn’t equal desirable until you find the person who wants to buy that rare thing :rofl:

Also, on an interesting/irrelevant note: <$5000, I have found that large volume new car dealerships have much better deals than private party sellers. I think that individuals get attached to their cars and over value them. Dealers get these things in on trade for $500 and just want them off the lot.

1 Like

I have sold a lot of cars private party, like around 20 of them or more. Prices have ranged from under $1k to over $30k. Most were sold through Autotrader (in the past) and Craigslist more recently. One thing that I have noticed is the more mainstream the car, the more of a PITA the buyers are and the harder it is to sell. My past few cars that I have needed to get rid of were sold through Vroom, Carvana, or traded in. It seems harder to sell these days and Vroom and Carvana at least haven’t been too far off what I could get myself.

1 Like

@benibarra not many people realize but cars.com does free listings with up to 5 photos.

Its always best to sell it on your own private party.

Not many people realize when selling PP, folks are going to finance it thru their credit unions and those are the easiest to work with because their credit union will guarantee title and payoff your existing lease or loan and cut you a check on the spot for any equity.

If negative equity then you’d write a check to their credit union. Its a big plus that the negative equity check will be ALOT less than than the check you would write to carmax or carvana to off load it.

but the CU handles everything for you which is super nice. Plus these CU’s want more members so you can easily have you buyer sign up by opening a free checking account with most of them.

3 Likes