So I terminated a lease early (wish I knew about this site earlier) and was given the option to pay for an private appraisal or use the wholesale pricing. Does anyone have experience with this? I’ve been looking at KBB and black book, not sure which they would use. Is it worth paying $300 for a private appraiser?
If it matters the car is:
2017 Alfa Romeo Giulia, RWD
Sport Package
Navigation
Dual Pane Sun Roof
Just under 31,000 miles
No mechanical issues
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a service for private appraisal on a car. It is all but useless as they will most likely offer you wholesale pricing, anyways.
Have you gotten offers from Vroom/carvana/carmax/shift (California only on shift)?
You can get an idea what your car is worth selling to a dealer based on all those sources and offers from different dealers. You can also attempt to sell private party online using KBB as a starting value.
Your car is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it, there’s no point in paying 300 bucks just for a private appraiser. That’s just lighting money on fire.
Yes. the lease is turned in already. The servicer on my lease in the termination letter to find out what I would owe. They give an option to obtain a private appraisal of the vehicle or they would use the wholesale value to determine the difference from the gross termination amount and that would be what I owe.
Wholesale pricing is generally based on a Manheim Market Report (MMR). The only input into MMR is Make/Model/Year/Mileage/Condition. Making an assumption that your Alpha is in average condition the MMR would be right around $22,100. Here are the 14 most recent transactions used for this valuation;
With wholesale at $22K and retail at $26K your hope would be that a private appraisal will get you closer to the retail value of the vehicle. This is possible because the private appraisal may take into better consideration the options that differentiate your car from average.
We definitely have them in CA: primarily used by owners of exotics (insurance appraisals and diminished value after accidents) and for part of the paperwork to import/export used cars. I hired one when I was trying to get one of my leases that was hit to be considered a total loss.
I have another thought on this: I would not leave to chance what month’s MMR they use (or: I want prices of comparables going through the lanes today, not last month or the month prior when they were closed). For that alone I’d probably spring for appraisal, esp if I can choose/hire the appraiser, to avoid/minimize my balance due.