Selling Your Trade In Car

March 10, 2022

Learning how to deal with my Trade In Car is a valuable skill that has been extremely valuable.

The reason most people hate buying and selling cars is that they see it as quite confrontational.

When I have no facts to rely upon it is in truth simply the confrontational path I end up going down.

Once this happens it all goes bad generally speaking and I end up arguing price simply based on dollars.

This is because Car salesmen are well versed and well trained to deal with confrontation.

Preparing to Sell my Trade In Car

There are several steps I always take to make this process both go smoother and to get the most money in my pocket.

First I need to know what is the make and model of my car.

Are their upgrades that increase its value ?

Leather Seats and Air conditioning are just 2 things that make the car worth more.

Next I check the carfax status of my car and the mileage.

I need to know that because if the car has had a serious accident it devalues what I can ask.

Or at least what I may end up getting paid.

Next I need to check all my maintenance records for the car.

As long as I have kept all the records for things like oil changes and repairs it demonstrates that the vehicle was taken car of.

Finally I need to make a list of problems with the car.

Are their any strange noises or obvious repairs needed ?

Once I have all this I can research the value of my car on various websites.

Now I can set my asking price.

This will be above what my bottom line is and its important to be reasonable here.

If you are way over priced then you will get far less inquiries.

Use the price range from the websites as a guide for the range you can use here.

For example if my car is worth $15K to $12K then I have a $3K range.

I feel my car is worth $14K but even with the $3K range I need to be careful if I price it over the top end.

I look for a reason for the higher price.

I have AC and the car has been well maintained.

So now I set my ask price at $16K

I never sell a car without knowing what my bottom line will be.

Without this I let money slip away by accepting a price that is unreasonably low.

Alternately I could also be unreasonably ridgid in my ask price and loose out.