Selling your car doesn’t have to be a complicated process (we promise it isn’t as scary as it sounds). Here are 8 steps to selling your car on your own efficiently and safely!
1. Name your price
Just how much is your car worth? You don’t want to have to go back and re-advertise your car because you’ve missed the mark on your selling point. Or worse, sell it for far less than you could have gotten for it.
You can head online to a site like Value Your Car to calculate the retail value of your car based on the year, model, or any issues the car has. This will help guide your decision and gain an accurate understanding of how much you should sell for.
You can also look through online marketplaces and find out what other sellers are asking for cars like yours. It’s a good idea to boost your price a little to make room for negotiation – this way you can lower your cost if necessary but still sell it for a profitable price
2. Get your paperwork sorted
Next, it’s time to get organised! You can’t just sell a car like you would sell a second-hand pair of golf clubs. It needs to be more official than that. Here are the documents you need to get ready:
- title
- bill of sale
- notice of transfer and release of liability
- vehicle history report, and
- warranty documents.
Without all of these in order, you won’t be able to legitimately sell your car and you could get into a bit of trouble of this process it not followed properly.
3. Spruce her up
Do you know what doesn’t sell very well? A messy, crumb-riddled, dusty vehicle. You’re trying to make your car as appealing as possible. The interior and the exterior need to be in tip-top shape, so make sure you’re:
- waxing and washing the exterior; including your tyres
- vacuuming the floors, mats, and seats, and
- fix minor issues like low fluid levels or broken indicators.
It’s better to fix these things before selling your car as you can ask for a higher price.
4. Advertise the sale
Now it’s time to get your car out there!
Long gone are the days of printing a flyer and sticking it to your local library noticeboard. You can reach a wider audience of buyers by posting your car online.
That being said, you can reach buyers by including as many advertisements as possible. You could stick a flyer on the back window of your car — you never know who just might be interested.
For online advertisements, take a lot of good pictures to paint a clear picture of your car. If you have a blurry, singular photo of your car chances of getting a serious offer might not happen.
You’ve worked hard on your car clean-up (hopefully) so why not show her off? Take pictures from all angles including the interior. Be sure to include your asking prices, recent repairs or upgrades, current mileage, and accident history in your advertisement the more detailed your description, the better.
5. Prepare for meet-ups
You’re going to have to include an in-person meet-up to secure the sale. This part is all about keeping yourself safe from potential scammers or thieves. Before meeting in person, have a chat on the phone. This way you’ll get a good feeling about their motives.
Ask the person for their full names and a form of identification. This isn’t to scare you it’s to make sure that you aren’t meeting up with a person that will do you any harm. Your car is a valuable item and you never know what people have in mind.
Agree on a form of payment. Preferably, cash is the way to go. This way you avoid EFTs that never come through or cheques that bounce.
6. Test drive and vehicle inspection
Test drives should be reserved for serious buyers only. Just because somebody has come for a meeting with you, that doesn’t mean they need to drive your car right away.
Once you know they’re definitely interested, you can organise a test drive. We recommend that this is conducted in a public space and that you have somebody else with you. You don’t want them to drive your car on their own (for obvious reasons) and you may not want to be alone in the car with a stranger. Safety first, peeps!
This is also the time to make your final sales pitch on the car. Remind the potential buyer of all the elements that brought them to the meeting in the first place
7. Price negotiation
Now, for the fun part. If you’ve set the price of your car a little higher than the going rate, you can accept some lower offers. However, you need to have the lowest possible price in mind and be strong enough to walk away if the potential buyer won’t meet that price. Trust us, you’ll find a buyer out there who is willing to pay the right price.
Bear in mind that down payments or monthly installments are a big no-no.
Once your car is signed, sealed, and delivered congratulations are in order!
- in this stage you will:
- complete your bill of sale
- fill out a release of liability form
- sign over the title, and
- hand over the keys.
And that’s basically how you sell your car on your own. Good luck with your car selling journey, and don’t forget to get, affordable car insurance, on your newest set of wheels.
Yours in affordable car insurance,
Oneplan