Sell your car yourself: Tips From The Pros

Sell your car privately and make more money

Selling your car yourself can sometimes be frustrating because of no-show buyers and low-ball offers from bargain hunters. However, if you focus on how much more you’ll get by selling your car yourself versus trading it in, you’ll find it’s well worth your while. Selling your car privately requires careful planning and execution. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you successfully sell your car.

Prepare Your Car for Sale

• Clean and Detail— First impressions matter—a lot! A clean car always sells faster and nets you more cash. Most used car buyers don’t know how to inspect a car’s mechanical systems, but they sure know what a clean car looks like! So get rid of the garbage, vacuum, and clean the interior with upholstery and carpet shampoo, including door panels. After cleaning, coat all plastic surfaces with a vinyl protectant.

Clean around the door jambs and sills—that extra attention to detail pays off. Next, clean all the junk out of the truck and vacuum it. If your floor mats show wear, toss them and buy a new cheap set. Nobody wants your old, torn, grungy floor mats.

Wax the exterior so it shines!— Then, move on to the exterior. Wash and wax the exterior, paying special attention to the wheels to remove all the brown brake dust. Check the condition of your headlights. If they’re cloudy, buy a headlight restoration kit and polish them back into shape.

Clean under the hood— I’ve written an article on how to clean your engine and under-hood areas. Find that engine cleaning story here. Buyers expect this.

• Do the Maintenance Items and Minor Repairs— If potential buyers know anything about maintaining a vehicle, they’ll head right for the engine compartment. They’ll check the dipstick to see if the oil looks clean. They’ll check the condition of the drive belts and filters. So get your oil changed. Replace worn belts. Install a new engine air filter and cabin air filter.

Check and top off the transmission fluid, power steering fluid, and coolant. Fix any minor issues that could deter buyers. This includes replacing worn-out tires, fixing burned-out light bulbs, and addressing other visible problems.

• Measure your tires

Measure your tire tread depth. If you’ve got good tires, emphasize that in your ad.

Buy a tire tread depth gauge at any auto parts store and measure the tread depth of each tire. Most new tires measure around 10/32”, and the minimum depth is 2/32.” If yours are 4/32” or less, you’ll probably get some pushback from the buyer.

So, you may make more money by buying a cheap set of tires and adding that to your ad as a selling point: BRAND NEW TIRES go a long way towards closing the deal.

Take great pictures

Park the car on or near a grassy area. Shoot images from the front, back, and sides.  Then, shoot interior images showing the newly cleaned seats and carpet. Get a shot of the clean trunk. If you’ve got good tire tread, shoot one image showing the deep tread depth. Finish with an underhood shot (if you’ve cleaned it).

Blur your license plate numbers before you post these online!

Get a Carfax

Buyers will want to know if the vehicle has been in an accident. You must tell the truth. A Carfax report is a selling point, so pay the $15 and list the report in your ad.

AVOID THIS SCAM— Many buyers ask you to provide a car report from sources other than Carfax. This is a scam. These are fake pay-sites designed to capture your credit card information. The instant a potential buyer asks for a report from one of these services, you’re on notice that you’re dealing with a scammer. Stop communication with the person and move on to a legit buyer.

How to price your car

You will always make more money by selling your car to a private party versus trading it in or selling it to a car dealer like Carvana or CarMax.

To get the value of your car, go to edmunds.com, kbb.com, and nada.com and enter your vehicle information to get its current value. KBB.com and edmunds.com both will tell you what the private party price is.

• Retail price is what your car would sell for on a car dealer’s lot. You will never get that as a private seller
• Trade-in price is what the dealer might give you if you trade it in on a new car.
• Private party price is often halfway between retail and trade-in, but not always.

Here’s an example of pricing for a 2015 Subaru Forester with 120,000 miles from Edmunds.com and KBB.com

Private Party pricing on a 2015 Subaru Forester from edmunds.com

Private party pricing from KBB.com for the same vehicle.

The selling price depends on the condition of your vehicle. Sellers often over-rate the condition of their vehicles. Most cars fall into the average category. However, if you’re convinced your car is in better shape, list it for the “Good” price. The “Outstanding” price is for showroom condition. That means no dings, scratches, stains, etc.

Where to sell your car — best places to list it for sale

Start with a free listing on the Facebook marketplace. Then, place an ad on Craigslist. Don’t pay to list your car on sites like CarSoup or Autotrader because, in my opinion, they don’t work as well as Facebook and Craigslist.

Also— Put FOR SALE signs in the windows and park it in a shopping center parking lot for several hours as day during peak shopping times.

Be prepared for the screwball phone calls

Here’s a sampling of the crazy calls you can expect:

• “I saw your car (listing), will you take $2,000 less?” Answer: No.
• “How low will you go?”Answer: Come see the car and test drive it. If you like it, make an offer.
• “What color is it?” (even though you listed the color in the post
• “Does it run?” (even though you said it’s in excellent condition)

Don’t be surprised by those questions. Just answer and ask, “Are you interested in seeing the car?”

Follow these rules on how to negotiate the price with the buyer

Rule #1:  Never negotiate the price of the car on the phone before the buyer has seen it. NEVER. If you come down in price on the phone, you’re signaling you’re desperate. Once the buyer shows up in person and test drives the car, they’ll start the negotiations from the lower phone price and try to drive you down even more. If a caller offers you a price on the phone before seeing the vehicle, just say, “I’d be happy to discuss your offer once you’ve seen and test-driven the vehicle.” Don’t back down from that.

Rule #2: Negotiate from the top down, not the bottom up. You list the car for $15,500, and the buyer offers you $13,000. You counteroffer at $15,200. Make the seller raise their offer to come up to your price. Drop your price in only $300 increments.

If the buyer wants a pre-purchase inspection

Sellers always fear that the inspection will result in thousands of repairs and that the buyer will start the negotiation again. However, if you say no to the inspection, the buyer will be even more suspicious that you’re hiding something. So, say yes to the inspection subject to the terms listed below. Then, expect that the shop will find items that need attention. After all, it’s a used car. As long as the inspection shows minor repairs, there’s no need to reduce the price. If they find major items, you will have to adjust the price.

Insist on these terms for an inspection

1)  The buyer makes arrangements with a licensed shop* within a 10-mile radius of your place. That’s the farthest you should be willing to drive to deliver the car to the shop.
2) The buyer meets you at the shop and pays the shop up-front for the inspection. I’ve seen too many buyers get the inspection report and then walk away, refuse to pay, and stick you with the inspection bill.
3) If the shop finds items that need repair or replacement, and their findings are legit, you may have to renegotiate the price.

• It has to be a licensed shop. You don’t want to let some fly-by-night friend get your car, swap out your catalytic converter with a straight pipe, and come up with a list of bogus repairs.

How to complete the sale of your car

This used to be easy in the past because you’d get paid in cash or cashier’s check. But these days, you can’t rely on a cashier’s check unless you call the bank and confirm that the check is real before you head to the DMV. To confirm the check, Do NOT call the phone number on the check. Instead, look up the bank’s phone number on their website. Counterfeit cashier’s checks and counterfeit cash are hard to spot. It takes a bit more time and effort, but if you want to ensure you’re getting a clean deal, accompany the buyer to their bank and witness the cash withdrawal or the cashier’s check production. Then, accompany the buyer to the nearest DMV title office to officially transfer the title.

Read this post on how to not get screwed when collecting the money

©, 2016 Rick Muscoplat

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