Has anyone sold a newer car?

[Stewart G Griffin]

Has anyone privately sold a newer, more expensive (let's say $5000 and above) car?

Not necessarily talking about trade-in, although if you did that please discuss as well.

1) Were you actually able to sell it?

2) How did it go?

[fitz]

  I've sold lots cars & trucks over $5k.
  Back in the day I used The Want Advertizer ( used to be a weekly publication sold at convenient stores). Craigslist pretty much put them out of business.
  Craigslist works great for me. You will quickly learn how to weed out the scammers.  I always meet the people in a public place when they first come look at the vehicle.  In front of an ATM works great because they are film. I use 1 near my house and tell them to call when they get there. That also helps if they are no-shows. That way your not sitting around all day waiting. Any questions, I'll be glad to help.

[Monkey Uncle]

It's been a long time since I sold one for over $5k.  I sold a couple back in the pre-Craigslist days (early '90s and early 2000s).  It took a while, but I got them sold for what I thought was a fair price.  One car I sold using an ad in the paper, the other I sold to my insurance agent's secretary by word of mouth.  I was pretty naïve about it then, and I think I probably took cashier's checks or some such form of payment.  With all the scams nowadays, I would never do anything but cash, unless I was selling to someone I know and trust.

More recently I've sold two in the sub - $4,000 range.  Used the Autotrader for one and Craigslist for the other.  Craigslist is free and just as effective, once you learn how to avoid the scams.  I imagine $5k wouldn't be too tough to do, but as the price goes up, it likely will get harder to find someone who is able to pay cash.  I just made sure I met people in a public place, preferably some place with security cameras.  I either went along on the test rides or stayed with the person's car while they took mine for a ride.  Luckily I never had to deal with anyone who seemed sketchy.  I had a clean cut young guy with his girlfriend, an older guy on disability, a teenage boy with his father and girlfriend, etc.

[bluevan]

Not sure what you consider "newer", but when selling something 10 years old or more can be a challenge sometimes because you are limited to cash buyers.  Most banks are very leery of having a car loan out on something over 10 years old.  Just something to keep in mind.

[Irish_Alley]

I've never would anything like that but have bought for around that much. I would always be nervous and really didn't like going to people's houses but sometimes had to. It helps to bring a friend along and really helps if someone is carrying but not open just concealed. When you dealing with that much money or something worth that much, it's hard to say what someone might try. But like said if you can meet them at a public place even police station. If they won't meet your demands then don't bother with them

[Jason S]

For larger sums of money, a cashiers check from a bank would be better (in my opinion) than a wad of cash.

[Robb0h]

As a car guy, I have to ask...Whatcha selling?

I would guess I’ve sold ~20 or so $5k+ cars private party over the years.

For larger amounts I ask for a cashier’s check from a well known bank.  I ask for the check number before we meet (for final transaction) so I can look up the bank and call to verify.

As far as where has given me the best luck in advertising that has changed over the years & depended on size of city.  I lived in a suburb of Dallas/Fort Worth for awhile and Craigslist was good...but in the smaller city I live in now that is on its own, away from any metroplex the size of DFW it hasn’t been that great.

If it’s a niche vehicle in any way (and maybe it doesn’t have to even be a niche car haha) vehicle specific forums have worked ok for me too.

Facebook has City Specific Sale Boards & Groups too (as well as vehicle specific) that, while I haven’t sold on, they have been good for the sellers I met & darn bad on my wallet because I’ve bought 4 cars off there haha. (Cheaper cars...but there are $$$ cars on there too)

As far as trade-in, I’ve done that too and never gotten a price that I’ve loved... and any time I’ve had friends who claim they got an excellent trade in value, I’ve always found the purchase price of the new car to be inflated to make the trade value seem better than it really is if you have the dealer at their rock bottom, no-trade in purchase price.  It is super convenient though.  I even traded in 2 cars on one newer truck one time...I still don’t like to think of the trade-in price I got for those...it hurts my heart.  haha.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Irish_Alley]

With trade in value, I find that just like Rob stated. They tend to inflate other prices to make up the difference or give you bellow what the vehicle is worth just so when they turn around to sell it they make a profit. I've alwybeen told to take the trade in at a different time. When you do they they tend to give you a better price and some dealers will buy a car just to have it to sell to someone else.

[Irish_Alley]

Also if you're thinking about buying from a dealer there's plenty of games they will play to try and manipulate you. They'll find a common ground like where you work and build on that then they'll act like your friend and build a personal relationship with you. Then when it comes to money there's more games like they'll ask you "how much can you afford a month" that doesn't matter and you can tell them "let's talk about the cost of the car"

I went to the dealership with my impala, it's been years ago and I think they wanted to give me 2k for it when the value was around 8-9k and trade in was 3-4. He tried to give me the Bs about "oh it's a common mistake to use kbb, we use NADA"  which stands for national automobile dealership Association. He tried to say kbb is for the west coast and nada is for the east. He then went and got some print outs of auctions with my year imp. I quickly pointed out the auctions printout was for the west coast and two out of the three where in salty states like Michigan. And he tried to tax on tags and title work (think that was another 3k) so a 17k truck was going to cost me 26k. I laughed and offered to call my bank to see what they could do. I got a loan for 17k but he didn't want to deal with me anymore so I walked away. And that's something you have to do is walk away and let them chase you with a better offer

[Monkey Uncle]

For larger sums of money, a cashiers check from a bank would be better (in my opinion) than a wad of cash.

Cashier's checks can be faked pretty easily.  Although I've never done this, I've seen the suggestion of meeting the prospective buyer in the parking lot of their bank.  That way they can just go in and get the cash, and the transaction takes place in a pretty secure environment.  And if you need to notarize the title transfer, the bank can probably take care of that for you.

[75gmck25]

You also need to know your market.
I had a black 2005 Mustang GT convertible that I tried selling through autotrader.  It was a daily driver in great condition, but had about 65k miles on it, compared to the weekend-only 2005 convertibles that only had 20-25k miles on them.  Most folks were not interested at all because there were so many comparable year cars with much lower mileage. And I think it would have been even more complicated for most buyers because the price would have been outside the available cash range for most folks.

My bank had a program where they would push your car info out to the local dealers and see if any of them were interested in purchasing it directly.  I got a reasonable offer (but near wholesale) from a local GM dealer and they just cut me a check.  I didn't get the best price, but I got the cash right away.

Bruce