<p>My daughter is leaving the country for a year next week and needs to sell her car. She has placed an ad on Craig’s List but has had little response. She only wants to get the payoff amount, which is slightly less than the NADA retail value. Time is running out. Any ideas of how to sell a car quickly? We live in a really small town. Our daily newspaper does not have any “cars for sale” classified ads, so I don’t think it would be worth the money to advertise it there. Anyone have experience with CarMax?</p>
<p>I might add it is 2011 VW Jetta which she has had about 18 months. It is in excellent condition.</p>
<p>CarMax won’t give you as much as you can get in a private trade, but it’s easy to go there and get an offer. Even if you don’t take it, the CarMax offer is a nice baseline to figure out your bottom line price.</p>
<p>If you aren’t getting many hits on Craigslist, make the listing look better, lower your price, or put a better title on it so it gets more hits.</p>
<p>I suggest using Autotrader though. It seems like you’ll get a better price, and better people respond to the Autotrader ads than on Craigslist, where many people try to barter over the phone, spam you, or just in general waste your time.</p>
<p>What about mentioning it on FB? I just sold my car last week when a neighborhood friend announced on FB they were looking for a used vehicle. DD took a job several months ago that supplies her with a car so hers was just going to sit in the drive here at our house. She didn’t want to sell hers but suggested I sell mine and drive hers. I finally decided to do it. How 'bout posting an ad on the bulletin board at work? Post a bulletin at the grocery store, at a community college, etc. Just get the word out. Good luck!</p>
<p>I thought of Autotrader but wasn’t sure if it would be worth it. I don’t like Craig’s List at all. It seems the people shopping there really expect something for nothing. Does CarMax just offer the trade-in value? </p>
<p>I work in insurance and one of our customers just bought one exactly like it from a local dealer for $1000 more than her bottom price. How much is the markup on used cars? The new-car dealer where she bought it has some listed for $3000-$4000 more than she needs to get for it.</p>
<p>A word of caution. Be careful when allowing a test drive. We have a friend whose car was stolen on a test drive. Potential buyer pulled a gun, made owner get out of the car and drove off. He was found and prosecuted, but it was very a traumatic experience. I’d be uber careful. Sorry to be such a pessimist, but there are lots of crazies out there reading ads.</p>
<p>CarMax will first inspect your car inside and out and you will end up with the lowest offer possible. It is a good place to buy a used car but we def had a bad eperience with them. Our daughter had a brand new Toyota Venza that she got a bunch of dings on here and there from being inattentive. No accidents. We decided to trade it in but got the body work dealt with and painted. Cost us $9,000. We were shocked since it was just cosmetic. Then took it to CarMax all gussied up…and they devalued the car by half $20,000 because it had been repainted on so many panels they assume cars integrity had been compromised. We might have been better off bringing it to them WITH the dings.</p>
<p>Lots of people have suggested that I sell my 2003 Mustang and keep hers, but I don’t want to make payments. Plus my old car has not quite 70,000 miles on it and I’ve never had any trouble with it. And I look good in it. ;)</p>
<p>How much a car goes for falls into three categories: trade in, private sale, and dealer sale. Typically, the dealer will want to make a good amount of money on a car they take as a trade in. I’d say at least 20% is what they aim for, but I’ve seen cars listed for what must be twice what the dealer paid for it. Generally, using a dealer any time that you don’t absolutely have to (buying a new car) will result in a massive loss of money, whether you’re selling or buying a used vehicle.</p>
<p>Remember this, don’t talk more than you need to over the phone. If the vehicle really is in perfect condition, what you really want is to get the person to come look at it and drive it. Get them emotionally attached to the car and they’ll buy it.</p>
<p>To the Venza person, that body shop raped you on the price. $9000 is how much it would cost to repair one after a major collision (or more!), not dings and dents. And yes, when you repaint a car, it has a very good chance of devaluing it, so it’s a double whammy.</p>
<p>I’d keep the Mustang. They make fun, fairly reliable, easy to work on cars, and you won’t get that much for it anyways since the market for them is so flooded.</p>
<p>Oh, and if your car gets stolen, it’s really not a big deal as long as your insurance covers it. I let people test drive my cars alone. I just hand them the keys and tell them to come back in an hour or two, drive it to go get dinner or something. Never had a problem with it.</p>
Don’t have high expectations but you might want to contact that dealer and see if they’re willing to buy the car back from you. New car dealers make a significant part of their revenue on the used cars they sell and they’re sometimes looking for good models like hers. If you get the Carmax price, get this dealer price as well and you’ll at least have something to compare. </p>
<p>Also let it be known where you work and with your friends that this car is for sale. Word spreads that way and sometimes someone will know someone looking for a good slightly used car.</p>
<p>I’ve used Autotrader to sell cars and did fine with it but that was a long time ago - before Craigslist. I’ve never tried to sell on Craigslist.</p>
<p>That is probably the problem. She is probably asking too high a price. The trade-in value at a dealer will be some thousands of dollars less than retail price. Private party sale prices will be somewhere in between, but still significantly less than the retail price.</p>
<p>She will likely need to come up with a few thousand dollars to pay off the loan when selling the car for a realistic trade-in or private party price.</p>
<p>My understanding is that your daughter’s car will need to be in near-perfect condition in order to receive an offer from CarMax. BUT, the good news is that due to the devastating storm Sandy, used cars are in short supply & in high demand.</p>
<p>P.S. I doubt that CarMax would offer anywhere near NADA retail value–which is close to her payoff amount. That’s what CarMax would sell the car for.</p>
<p>Then get ready for truckloads from Staten Island & the New Jersey shore. Let’s put that promise to a test. And, yes, flood cars get reconditioned & resold in various parts of the country.</p>
<p>^^ They also say they only sell about half of them - the rest, that they say aren’t up to their standard after they do their inspection, are auctioned off to other dealers. I wouldn’t expect this would apply to a car with a salvage title.</p>
<p>Hopefully most of the flooded cars will end up truly scrapped but I know some can sometimes get resold. A good rule - don’t buy a car with a salvage title and inspect the car closely and have that done by a decent mechanic unless qualified yourself.</p>
<p>The OP’s D’s car probably is in near perfect condition since it’s only a year and a half old - unless she thrashed it somehow.</p>
<p>Definitely agree with not buying anything except clean title cars. Even if it was repaired perfectly, it’s very hard to sell them and it takes a huge amount off the resale value.</p>
<p>Some ideas of things to mention in an ad,
Clean title
Low mileage
Any options
Trim level
Gas mileage if it’s good
If you have receipts for maintenance, say so
How much longer the warranty period is</p>
<p>It would be good to mention that you’re not selling because you don’t like the car, but that she’s leaving and you don’t need the extra car. A lot of people sell their cars because they are having a lot of repairs or getting poor gas mileage, so it’s just another way to differentiate yourself in the ad from all the other cars on the market.</p>
<p>The car wouldn’t happen to be the diesel or high performance model would it? That’d be more good stuff to stress in an ad.</p>