What is My Car Worth
what is my car worth? People ask me this question all the time, the short answer is that there is NO single source guide can tell you exactly the car’s value! I bet you take your car to 3 dealers and they will quote you 3 difference prices, and sometimes the difference within thousands of dollars. Surprised? In this page we will explore various methods to find out how much is your car’s worth both wholesale and retail. By the time you finished reading, you can apply those method and start to research on used cars values and prices. Please note: the information contains in this page is for U.S used car markets. If you are Canadian, please refer to Canadian Used Car Values, as well as Canadian Used Car Pricing Guide What is my car worth on blue book Check out the bluebook value of your car, this is the most common way as well as the most confusing way to find out the values of any used vehicles. There are two leading publications that you need to get familiar with: Kelley Blue Book (often misspell as Kelly bluebook) and Nada Used Car Prices or Nada Orange Book. Kelly bluebook has been very successful marketing their brand online since the Internet ever been invented. They are so popular that people would think their pricing guide is the bible. Just how accurate is KBB? Why should you trust or follow their pricing guide? In a nut shell, Kelly bluebook tends to quote lower than actual trade in value, and higher than real retail value. It is very in favor of the car dealers both wholesale and retail wise. Now let’s look at Nada Orange Book. Did you know that credit unions rely on Nada Book heavily to establish the loan value for used car financing? Here's the tip!If you are planning to trade in your vehicle, make sure you check the Nada Used Car Prices. Nada Guide will always offer you more dollars for your trade than KBB. If you look at private party classified ads, you will see lots of people are selling below Kelly bluebook or below KBB, which explains why Kelly bluebook might be just higher than the actual retail price. By all means, do check out the value of your vehicle with those two books and write down the prices on a piece of paper as your guideline. Ask dealer what is my car worth If you can’t get exactly what you want in terms of dollar amount but very close to, you might want to settle for “less” and get on with your life. That’s the attitude for people want to sell their car to the dealer, and get on with their life. If that’s what you wanted, make sure you visit your local CarMax Store CarMax is known for their “we will buy your car even you don’t buy us” business practice. You might find people over there are friendly and eager to help. They will tell you what is the car worth – wholesale value, and they are prepared to cut you a check and buy from you on the spot. You might also see some curbstoners that advertise to buy “any cars at any conditions”. A curbstoner is someone buying and selling cars without legally registering the car in their name. Curbstoning is illegal and many people curbstone cars as a business. These people might just pay you a little bit higher than your local dealer does. Review their offers and compare it with CarMax cash price. What is my car worth on eBay A car’s eBay value is somewhere in between wholesale value and private party price. I have Another Page explains more in details about eBay Motors and why you should look into that both buying and selling used vehicles By researching on completed listings (completed auctions), you will get a sense of how much the vehicle is sold for and how much is the demand (how many people are bidding on the vehicle). eBay Motors sell just about any kind of cars, trucks and SUVs, but not every type of vehicle sell well on eBay. In fact, damaged cars, rebuilt status or salvaged cars sell really well on eBay. High end, exotic cars consistently perform well on eBay Motors. On the other hand, daily driver or not so difficult to find vehicles do NOT bring top dollars on eBay. So you would have to justify the value accordingly. Research on Private Sales This method can be time consuming but you will gain great experience in the process. What you need to do is visit your local library and pull out the Sunday Newspaper for the previous month or maybe two month. Write down all the information about the car and the asking price. The selling price will most likely $500 - $1,500 less than the asking price. Make a few phone calls and ask if the car was sold. If so, kindly explain to the seller that you are interested in buying the car and ask how much is the vehicle sold for.Write down the numbers and that’s the market price for the car. If you prefer doing it online, you can go to autotrader.com or check out your local Craigslist.org site under Cars and Trucks sections and go from there. Market Sets the Price! Another not so common way to figure out what is my car worth is to list your car for sale and put a price tag on. See what kind of response you get. This is called "test the water". If you get lots of calls, you might be asking for less than what is worth. If you get no calls at all, you might be asking too much for the car or the demand is very low. From there, you can adjust the price and modify your ad. Valuation Variables affect Car's Worth I have made a list of most Common Used Car Valuation Variables to help you understand how used car dealers appraise used vehicles, should you decided to trade it in. More importantly you will understand what factors can and will negatively affect car’s value, what to look for when buying cars and lastly how to use those factors to negotiate for a better price when buying. So make sure you read the page before leaving your house to buy another car, the information is truly based on my years of day in day out appraisal experience, and you don’t get to see this kind of information anywhere else. In Conclusion I hope those exercises can help you find the answer to "what is my car worth" question. In reality, we don’t always get what we hope for, so we might have to sacrifice or settle for less. A pricing guide is JUST a guide. It is not absolute truth. If you ask a dealer what is my car worth, they will tell you that a car is worth only what someone will pay for it. That’s why black book beats every other book out there on the market. The auction reports record exactly what vehicle is sold for how much. It doesn't matter how much higher a person asking for a vehicle, your local market will always tell you what is my car worth in terms of private party price. At any given time, there will be people either selling their cars low because they need money, or asking too much for what is worth. With the tools available and research methods mentioned above, anyone can become a savvy buyer or seller for used cars. Return from What Is My Car Worth to Used Car Values
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