How Do I Get the Best Price for my Car?

When it comes to selling your used car ,you need to understand the dynamics of the car market to get the best price.  In addition to where you sell your car there are seasonal dynamics as well. For example, did you know the worst time of year to sell your car is December?  Additionally, you need to consider what to fix and what to just disclose to the seller.  In some cases you may not get the value out of the repair you have done which could be a significant amount of money.  The most important thing however is where to sell your car.  There are generally three options to sell your car:

1) Trade-In at the dealer

2) Go to Carmax or a similar service that will give you cash

3) Sell it yourself

Let’s look at each of these potential options:

Trading In At The Dealer: Dealers will only pay so much for a trade-in, since they have expensive overhead to keep up with. Be careful sometimes they will give you more money for the car you are selling only to charge you more on the car you are buying. Typically this is done by selling at a higher price(even if they say they are discounting it), charging you additional points or a higher interest rate, or charging you more for a car warranty.

Going To Carmax Or A Similar Service: Carmax offers a compelling service that will give you an offer that lasts for a week while you can see if you get more money.  Unfortunately, when you get to the dealer they can change the price after you have waited for hours to get someone’s opinion on your quote. This is typically not the highest price you can get.

Sell It Yourself: Selling it yourself is “hit or miss” depending on how much time you have to allocate to people deliberately “low balling” you.  Additionally, with COVID you have strangers that are going to want to test drive your car which means you are going to need to sanitize it after you show each buyer.

There are some things you can do to make the process of selling your car easier for you though.

Ways to Limit Wasting Time:

• Include a video clip of the vehicle starting and running for a brief moment

• Include a video clip of any problem sounds the vehicle makes or actions it does

• Includes as many details as possible in the written description

• Use as many photos as possible for the listing that shows all of the car

• If not accepting trades, make it known in your listing

• Let it be known that the price is not negotiable if you don’t want to be haggled

By making your listing as detailed as possible, and full of enough information about the vehicle, you can limit the amount of time you potentially waste restating the same information to different inquiries, and mostly rule out any hagglers that could come your way. You can also get a buyer faster since all the information is quickly and readily available without having to wait for responses from you, thus enabling a sale to happen more quickly.

If you end up showing the vehicle in person to someone, try to meet in a busy public place if possible or bring someone along and let someone know where you’re going and for how long- like if the car runs and drives without a problem- or make sure someone else is there with you if it is non-drivable and the interested persons have to come to your home to view or purchase the vehicle. Your safety should always be a priority, so make sure to take the necessary precautions when meeting up with strangers about purchasing anything through the internet.

As long as you put out all the right information and take precautions when meeting people, your experience in selling your old car can be a great one, and relatively fast since you save time by putting everything about the vehicle in your listings. You can also check out My Car Auction for the fastest and easiest way to sell your old car without having to deal with meet-ups and no-shows.