The dealer would want to make a profit both ways (on the sale then the buyback), so I’d guess at least 10% loss plus taxes and fees on the initial purchase. So maybe closer to 20% overall.
I math it out in my head like this. Totally made up numbers but seems superficially reasonable to me:
20k for the car
1.6k taxes (8% ballpark)
$500 fees (doc fees, tags, etc)
18k buyback
Total out of pocket: 4.1k
Plus 3 months of insurance.
You can look up car pricing estimates for dealer retail (ask) and trade in prices (bid). The difference is what you lose in the round trip transaction if the value of the car otherwise remains the same (though obviously there will be some effect on value due to age, mileage, and condition over the time one has the car, as well as additional costs related to sales taxes, registration, insurance, etc.).
Unless time is short I would actually drive. D took her car from CA almost to the east coast last summer and it was a great drive, stopping at national parks and visiting friends on the way. And it was nice to spend a few days with her sharing the driving (she had plenty of time so took a week over it). But we are used to long drives, she would drive from SF to SLC for college on her own in a day, and drove from SF to Portland for an internship the year before (both about 11 hours). And we drove from SF to Texas for the eclipse last month. If you don’t have time to drive both ways, you could always ship the car back for about $1000 one way.
I shipped a car from D’s college last year (Maine to Chicagoland, around 1,000 miles) and it cost $1,200. Sounds like OP would be shipping the car 2,500 miles, so likely to cost quite a bit more than $1K.
Well, after considering a zillion options, the end result is that my son is renting a car from Hertz using the AAA plan where they don’t impose a hefty surcharge for being under age 25. The rental is actually broken into two parts to take advantage of different time-based promotions, and it’s costing the same or less as any of the other possibilities.
Did your son get his car situation figured out?
I know someone who bought a used car for 3 months for the same reason and sold it for what he paid.
My niece is 10 hours away and driving here tomorrow for her internship. My sister was worried about her driving alone, so she is flying out my dd19 today to drive with her, and paying her (my daughter has a 40 hour unpaid clinical, fortunately she’s a great cleaner/organizer so I hired her to do jobs around the house).
no we have not… we can’t drive one out and back because the timing is too tight… I’m going to ask around randomly on some forums and sites I participate in (I guess here too!) hoping to find someone that will privately rent to us…
When does he start?
I am seeing deals from hertz in San Diego for under $800 for the month of June. If that’s of interest, make sure to check both Airport and non-airport locations as sometime one is better and sometimes another is. You might also want to check LA area locations as they might be cheaper, but of course then he would have to drive from LA to San Diego.
Also, he would have to join AAA and use the AAA CDP code to get these rates.
I did find this site which gets good reviews and specifically addresses young drivers:
That’s awesome!
thank you - I see those too - and no young driver fee… those are a great lead for me, much appreciated!!
this is great too! thanks so much. I went from no leads to two, which is great because we were getting stressed about the whole thing
Good luck!
We ended up breaking the rental into two parts (month of June and then also July through August) because we got much better rates that way. So it might be worth playing with end dates just to see.
Also, for some reason, the June rates were cheaper not at the airport but the other dates were much cheaper at the airport (this is upstate New York, though — not San Diego).
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