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Best way to sell a vehicle now days?

CT90RR

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Jp
I'm calling upon the collective wisdom gathered here.

What have ya'll found to be the best way to sell a vehicle recently? I'm talking about a late model car or truck specifically. We're selling my wife's car and my truck and it seems like I'm just not getting much traction.

Craigslist is so full of cars/trucks it seems it would be almost impossible to stand out from the crowd. Facebook has their marketplace, and it seems it would have most of the same issues as Craigslist...except for the potential for even stranger interactions.

What have you had good results with?

Thanks!
 
Have you checked at carmax? Depending on the make and model and how they sell in the area it can be a very competitive offer.

Mother in law was offered 4500 for her 02 Lexus is250 and she is a smoker. Those cars are super popular in Southern California.

Also I traded in my 2015 xterra. They gave me 28k i had bought it 2years before for about 31k.

Atleast worth a look since they will give you a free quote and you can get an idea of what you would need to make private sale to make it worth it to you.

Good luck. I've been trying to sell a can am spyder for a bit, people are weird.

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It's been a while, but I've always gotten stuff sold either through Craigslist or Autotrader.

It's not too difficult to stand out from the Craigslist crowd if you use proper English and take multiple good pictures of your vehicle.
 
It's been a while, but I've always gotten stuff sold either through Craigslist or Autotrader.

It's not too difficult to stand out from the Craigslist crowd if you use proper English and take multiple good pictures of your vehicle.

This.

When I was selling my car, I had multiple pictures of it, a good description of it (in proper English) with relevant information.

While I had a few "crap" calls, most were legit and I had it sold in 3 days (to the first guy that called actually).

The Carmax idea is not a bad idea either. At least give you a good idea what the value is.

You can also look into cars.com. It has a free option, but for like $50 you get a lot of pics and an included carfax report. I thing you get a better, more serious buyers there.
 
Park and sell lot, also lots of used car lots will consign your vehicle for you on their lot for a sales commision.
 
The last vehicle I sold was on this site.
Prior to that, a dealer made a reasonable offer on a Mazda CX7 I had in for service.

A private party rarely gets full dealer retail. There is potential restitution from a dealer if the vehicle goes lame. There is zero from a private party.

So be realistic about your asking price.
If you get an offer ... it's just an offer, not an insult. Just say no thank you.
Third, don't advertise your disdain for "low ballers" or "waste my time". A serious buyer will more than likely pass attempting to give you a reasonable offer. And you are selling a car ... so you have to invest time to try and sell.
 
Have you checked at carmax? Depending on the make and model and how they sell in the area it can be a very competitive offer.

Mother in law was offered 4500 for her 02 Lexus is250 and she is a smoker. Those cars are super popular in Southern California.

Also I traded in my 2015 xterra. They gave me 28k i had bought it 2years before for about 31k.

Atleast worth a look since they will give you a free quote and you can get an idea of what you would need to make private sale to make it worth it to you.

Good luck. I've been trying to sell a can am spyder for a bit, people are weird.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

X2. Also check with franchise (new car) dealers. Top $ given in today's market for used cars in good shape.
 
I Have always had good luck with Craigslist. Tried everything else and no luck.

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You only get top dollar for your trade when your buying a new car and paying top dollar.
 
Texas Direct Auto also gives better than average offers.


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Selling a late model car or motorcycle on your own is headache. With the low interest rate on new vehicles, most people who call on for-sale-by-owner are either low,low ballers or not credit worthy (as in could you carry the note for me)

I recently sold a one year old $45,000 (new) car with less than 10,000 miles for $31,000 after no luck on Craigslist/Facebook/Ebay/auto dealers/... I gave it to a friend who was well connected to the new immigrants/foreign students circle and he sold it for me for cash sale - I gave him $1,000 commission and I still came out ahead of the highest offer by the auto dealers.
 
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AutoTrader.com is awesome but cost $$$ ... other than that for free ads Craiglist.com still rules!

Texas Direct Auto - CarMax - Dealers are ok .... but you leave 3k + on the table.
 
Thank for the replies.

I've had my truck on Craigslst in Houston for 2+ weeks now. Only 1 call and they wanted to trade. The ad is well written, in english...with punctuation even! In the past Craigslist has worked really well. But the last few times it seems i've gotten less and less response.

My truck is the least expensive Chevrolet HD on there for its year. It does have a lot of miles, but not all that much more then many of the others. I have good pics...
Just a little baffled this time.
 
These folks say they will beat your carmax offer or pay you $100 if they can’t!
Might be worth a look:
https://www.givemethevin.com/


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My father-in-law works at Henna Chevrolet in Austin and they will give you $500 above Carmax quote (within 30 days). Its a very good deal considering Carmax quotes can be so competitive. To be honest though, I've never used it. We just use those "details" to negotiate better on our trade-in deal. If we can't get the dealer to do 'the better' then we would take it over to Henna...but have yet to need to.

Thanks
CJB
 
The problem is financing. Most people looking for a used car or new for that matter dont have 30 or 20 or even 10 thousand dollars in cash available to buy a car. Most people need it financed.
 
Thank for the replies.

I've had my truck on Craigslst in Houston for 2+ weeks now. Only 1 call and they wanted to trade. The ad is well written, in english...with punctuation even! In the past Craigslist has worked really well. But the last few times it seems i've gotten less and less response.

My truck is the least expensive Chevrolet HD on there for its year. It does have a lot of miles, but not all that much more then many of the others. I have good pics...
Just a little baffled this time.
Link to ad? Maybe we can help???
 
I'm calling upon the collective wisdom gathered here.

What have ya'll found to be the best way to sell a vehicle recently? I'm talking about a late model car or truck specifically. We're selling my wife's car and my truck and it seems like I'm just not getting much traction.

Craigslist is so full of cars/trucks it seems it would be almost impossible to stand out from the crowd. Facebook has their marketplace, and it seems it would have most of the same issues as Craigslist...except for the potential for even stranger interactions.

What have you had good results with?

Thanks!

Craigslist is easy, but you can't just have a run of the mill ad. You have to take and post pics that make the prospective buyer want the bike before they even arrive at your door. Secondly, you need to have a detailed description of your bike that's written eloquently to show you're an intelligent guy/gal, but nothing pompous or cut and paste from a dealer website either. Lastly, be excruciatingly honest about the bike.
 
Autotrader and Craigslist. In my experience, you get fewer but more serious contacts from Autotrader. It's been a few years since I used it; I think it was a one-time $40 fee.

With Craigslist, you definitely have to sort the wheat from the chaff, but I've had good success. What I do on items that don't sell quickly is repost the ad every Friday morning (for weekend lookers), and change up the ad & title at the same time, so that it doesn't look like the same ad a looker might have seen last week.
 
There is an auto repair shop in T-Dale on Hwy.79, he said I could park my boat there to sell for 75. bucks. Ask shops on buzzy roads in your area, maybe just on weekends. Pop a For Sale sign on it and when it sells give owner a 100 bucks. CL has too many squirrels for me.
 
Nada now links to www.autotrader.com with vehicles in your area. Nice feature.

For vehicles over the $10,000 range NADA values rule weather we like it or not. Vehicles are a dime a dozen where motorcycles are very location driven, I.e.the California market is flooded and we are not.
 
It took 2 months for me to sell my car on Craigslist, but it sold, for basically what I asked. I even gave the kid some free lessons on how to drive a clutch, lucky kid. I refreshed the ad every week like others have said. It's just a waiting game. You can't expect it to sell fast unless it is priced too cheap, there aren't a ton of people buying private party anymore..

Car max always offered me less than auction value for my cars...not a good deal for high mileage/old cars, because they don't keep them on the lot. But it serves as a useful lower bound in negotiation and my expectation...
 
In my experience, Carmax is great if you need to get rid of a junker, not so great if you have a good, solid car. I've talked to them a couple of times and gotten offers far below trade-in value for a good, low-mileage car. On the other hand, when my son-in-law's last-century Taurus with 200,000 miles on the odo decided to blow a head gasket in spectacular fashion, Carmax gave him $500 and took it off his hands, saving me from towing it to a junk yard. When the tranny in my '02 Altima (with 125K) started making seriously creepy noises, they gave me $1350. I was glad to see it gone.
 
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