Hey all, So I have read through a lot of posts here about people who want to buy a new car, and trade their old one in. I spent many years working in a dealership, doing everything from sales to F&I so I thought I would post some tips to help people out. KBB is crap. Thats right. Crap. It may have been somewhat good, at some time a long time ago, but it is useless. Not as useless as edmunds but still pretty useless. All kbb is, is an advertising website just like edmunds, and they bring people in to look at their ads under the guise of providing meaningful information. That's how they make their money, by selling ad space on their website. There is absolutely no dealer in the country that uses kbb to appraise a car. If they say they do, they are just saying that to a) get you in the door, and b) keep the illusion going that you have control. They don't want to come out and say that kbb is shit, because they don't want to insult one of the few things that keeps customers thinking they have an upper hand. If they put an add in the paper, and it says something like "120% of kbb trade in value on your trade" this falls under option "a" from before, it is to get you in the door. So what am I supposed to do, Mr. Paranoia? Well you need to do 2 things. 1. Go to Galves: Better than Kelley Blue Book for used car values! and get your trade in value. Galves publishes a set of books on a monthly basis that dealerships subscribe to and this is what they will use to appraise your trade. It will cost you something like 8 bucks to get access to it for a week, but it is worth it. They continuously monitor auction results as well as other data, like the impact of fuel prices on suv's, and this is the holy grail if you will for dealer trade appraisals. 2. Go on websites such as New Cars, Used Cars - Find Cars at AutoTrader.com and see what a car like yours is retailing for. Ignore private party sales. Used car sales is a huge profit center for the dealership, so they will want to pay as little as possible for your car, so they can turn it for as much as possible. There is usually a minimum of $2000 in markup or more between what a dealer "owns" a used car for and what they are trying to sell it for. Rember, going to the dealership is just like going to Vegas. The house always wins. But you can minimize your losses. I hope this helps the prospective buyers out there.
Thanks for the insight. Although after a few times through the gauntlet this things become quite evident, sadly.
Its hard to play this game too well, for me anyway, because even though you have all the data, if all the dealers lowball you for the same $2000 spread you don't get anywhere. Eg in my case, I had 4 trade in offers within $500 and couldn't get them to budge, even though it should have been higher.
When I first started checking, I was armed with a print-out from Galves, since I already knew KBB and NADA were out the window. Before producing it, the dealers tried to low ball me even more than the Galves prices.
My dealership went from $16K to $20K for my 2009 Escape Hybrid/41K miles in the space of 10 minutes as I thanked them for the offer and made for the door. I think that was a fair offer. Could I have gotten $22K selling it myself? Maybe but after weeks of craigslist, emails, phone calls, test rides, bank issues...lot of work and a lot of time. And the craigslist prices were about the same as the dealer offered me for no hassles. Key seemed to be know what your car is worth by looking at craigslist and seeing what similar cars are selling for in your area. And be ready to buy a car, that is what motivates the dealer to give you a deal. You need to take one off the lot for them.
if you can sell it on your own, better of to go that route. I have only sold two, but both were after being insulted by low ball quotes. there's some heplful sites out there to help novices...
