There’s a good chance that buyers already know what your car is generally worth, give or take a few hundred dollars. With tools like the Kelley Blue Book (at kbb.com) anybody can type in the year, make and model of a vehicle along with the mileage and get an estimate of a cars’ worth. But you can sell your car for a few hundred bucks more (or less) than the blue book value. It all depends on how you present the ad, the car and yourself. Here are some methods to making sure you get the most amount of money when selling your used car.
Be Informed
You wouldn’t want to list your cars’ price thousands of dollars too high and turn off prospective buyers. So research the current value of your car at kbb.com, cars.com and eBay.com. Depending on the condition of your car and any extra features it may have, your car may be worth a bit more than what it’s listed for. So when you create your ad or answer phone calls, give a reasonable price so the person can negotiate with you, rather than just hanging up the phone.
Fix Your Car
People don’t want to hear about any problems the car is having. They do, however, want to hear about the recent tune-up, new tires and full maintenance done on the vehicle you just did. The prospective buyer is about to shell out thousands of dollars, possibly all their savings, which probably took them months to build up on this car. For all you know, this car is their very first car and is the biggest purchase of their life.
The last thing a car buyer wants to have is a vehicle that needs special attention later. So before you list your car for sale, have a mechanic take a look at it and make sure it’s in good condition. The buyer, if they’ve been reading this blog, is going to want to take it to a mechanic themselves so you might as well do it first.
Listing Your Car For Sale
There’s a buyer out there, now it’s just your job to reach them. There’s a wide variety of methods to selling your car. You can place an ad on Craigslist. You can put it up for auction on eBay. You can list it on cars.com. You can place ads on the classifieds of your local paper. You can even slap a for sale sign on your car.
What’s the correct method? The answer is all of them. Your goal is to have the most amount of eyeballs on your car as possible. If you want to get the most out of your car, you’re going to list it for a few hundred bucks more than it’s worth and hope someone bites.
