Beating depreciation?

hewhoisnotintheknow

terryya wrote: »

My ideal scenario would be to keep the 9 year old Clio we have but my wife wants something newer which is fair enough. This is just my way of trying to keep her sweet but also try to minimise the pain on the wallet.

buy her a new pair of shoes and a cheap private numberplate so she forgets the age of the car

cyclonebri1

There is one problem, whislt it maybe, or rather is possible to buy a car at auction and sell it next day at a profit, what you are proposing is different.

You will be buying a year old car with a 2 year waranty left on it, but by keeping it a year you will have halved the value of the waranty and doubled the age of the car. Just can't see you turning a profit on that, wouldn't loose as much as dealering tho'

terryya

I'm not expecting to make a profit, would be very pleased to break even and not too gutted if I end up losing a couple of hundred. Any more than this will be dissapointing but no more than I'd lose buying from a dealer.

I think I'll probably be looking at keeping about 6 months so there'll be more warranty and less time for car to devalue. Although I can see this maybe making people question why I'd sell so soon.

Mark_Hewitt

A friend of mine in South Africa does kind of this thing. He gets a good deal from his local dealer and buys a car new but at a significantly reduced price, then runs it for a year and trades it, and more often than not the discount he got equals the depreciation so he uses the money from the private sale to buy another car etc.

nomoneytoday

However, in the UK dealer margins x 2 (buy and sell car) plus depreciation would make it difficult to replicate the South African model.

The auction idea is fine, as long as you're mechanically minded. Dealers have sent stuff to the block when there is a big issue for example, or it may be simply overstock of a model on the other hand

AdrianHi

I know of someone who used to do this to manage his high mileage and still drive "interesting" cars.
He would haggle hard with main dealers to get the right price and then sell privately 6 to 9 months later. In 2 years he lost £3K in depreciation on cars like BMW 535d (when it first cam on the market), M3 CSL, Audi A4 RS4.
Have to know what your doing. He pulled out of the pattern before the credit crunch bit and used car values tumbled - there in lies the danger.
Pick newly release in demand cars and sell on before they fall out of fashion or pick the ones that loose a load up front.

terryya

Thanks for even more comments. I'm definitely going to go for it so will post results (if anybosy is remotely interested

I'm planning on going for the ones that have already lost a packet and then sees values level off significantly.

(57lbs in 7 months! - bloody hell that is impressive)

cyclonebri1

terryya wrote: »

Thanks for even more comments. I'm definitely going to go for it so will post results (if anybosy is remotely interested

I'm planning on going for the ones that have already lost a packet and then sees values level off significantly.

(57lbs in 7 months! - bloody hell that is impressive)

Of course it's worth a try, you may win on the other ha............

Just make sure you buy cars you can live with for a while, should you get stuck with the odd "lemon";);););););););).

I do actually have a little info that may be of use to you, but would have to be by PM only, :money:

terryya

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Of course it's worth a try, you may win on the other ha............

Just make sure you buy cars you can live with for a while, should you get stuck with the odd "lemon";);););););););).

I do actually have a little info that may be of use to you, but would have to be by PM only, :money:

I'm going in with my eyes open I think. I'm lucky enough to have a little money set aside that I can use for this and could live with it if I lose out (although obvioulsy this isn't part of the 'plan' ).

Any advice would be very gratefully accepted. I'm one of those people who don't really know anything about anything but are fairly good at finding things out - thank god for the t'int.:beer:

funky_snow

Sounds like you know what you're doing but one thing I would double check is the warranty exists. Some manufacturers don't transfer it to the second owner (not sure this is still the case), others are conditional on main dealer servicing, some are dealer rather than manufacturer warranties, others specifically exclude certain things - so don't rely on them without checking them out...