anyone in the motor trade?

red_eye

Im after some advice, im thinking about selling cars, starting off at home one car at a time untill I have enough money to look for property.

I used to work for a garage so I have a few years experence, and having just completed a c&c level 3 repair and maintenance this is a good way to gain some more experence.

Were would I go apart from auction for cars to fix and sell on? just anything I should know/ look up on, tips and advice would be helpful.

Hammyman

Don't bother. Apart from the fact the neighbours are likely to complain and the council do you for unauthorised use, there's so many people doing it that the market is flooded. Its a hiding to nowhere with a lot of outlay and little return.

emmell

Ex motor trader here, as long as you don't think you are going to make a living out of the odd car here and there, it's very hard, you have to get your market right. We used to stick to cheap cars under £1000 which sold well round here we used to get asked to provide particular cars and source them. We would buy from Auction, but only Main Agent p/x's, we would either do the work ourselves or outsource it (which would cut profits no end). We also had good contacts with a lot of the local independent dealers and had a chance to cherry pick before they went to auction.
You will need Traders Insurance and Trade Plates, if you agree to take p/x you'll have a supply of 'other peoples rubbish' to work on as well. We all had jobs as well so the money we made went into buying more cars and valeting products and tools and paint etc, etc. So it was really a hobby but was run as a proper business with a business bank account, an account at the auctions, the tax man new about us, the council new about us. We had the facilities to display a maximum three cars at once with a notice board in a local business with photo's and descriptions of other vehicles stored in a local barn we used to rent.

We loved it, we spent all our spare time buying, repairing cleaning, demonstrating and selling. As most were cleaned in my garage locals would often pop in to see what new stock we had. I have sold runabouts to local police, planning officers and local council workers, the only problem we had was with one neighbour who spent more time watching what we were doing and ignoring what her hooligan sons were doing.

We did think about starting up again last year but we couldn't find the 'bargains' anymore. Most of the local independents are keeping their better p/x's and selling them on ebay and the auction fees are now horrendous on cheap cars. I wish you well but it will be hard.
ML.

Inactive

Agreed, forget it, every Tom, !!!!!! and Harriet is flogging cars these days, difficult to buy anything at realistic money, even more difficult to sell at a profit.

motorguy

emmell wrote: »

Ex motor trader here, as long as you don't think you are going to make a living out of the odd car here and there, it's very hard, you have to get your market right. We used to stick to cheap cars under £1000 which sold well round here we used to get asked to provide particular cars and source them. We would buy from Auction, but only Main Agent p/x's, we would either do the work ourselves or outsource it (which would cut profits no end). We also had good contacts with a lot of the local independent dealers and had a chance to cherry pick before they went to auction.
You will need Traders Insurance and Trade Plates, if you agree to take p/x you'll have a supply of 'other peoples rubbish' to work on as well. We all had jobs as well so the money we made went into buying more cars and valeting products and tools and paint etc, etc. So it was really a hobby but was run as a proper business with a business bank account, an account at the auctions, the tax man new about us, the council new about us. We had the facilities to display a maximum three cars at once with a notice board in a local business with photo's and descriptions of other vehicles stored in a local barn we used to rent.

We loved it, we spent all our spare time buying, repairing cleaning, demonstrating and selling. As most were cleaned in my garage locals would often pop in to see what new stock we had. I have sold runabouts to local police, planning officers and local council workers, the only problem we had was with one neighbour who spent more time watching what we were doing and ignoring what her hooligan sons were doing.

We did think about starting up again last year but we couldn't find the 'bargains' anymore. Most of the local independents are keeping their better p/x's and selling them on ebay and the auction fees are now horrendous on cheap cars. I wish you well but it will be hard.
ML.

Did exactly the same thing for years. I used to be able to buy at around £300-800 and get on average a £250 net profit. It was great.

Back at it now and its very very different. There seem to be a lot of people scrambling around to buy cars and take a wafer thin margin on them. AND most of them are staying under the radar and keeping their costs low, ie, no trade insurance, not declared to the tax man, advertising as private sales, no warranty, disposable mobile phone numbers, bogus addresses, etc. gumtree is rife with these people - if you pick a phone number out of an ad and then use that number as a search, I'm finding maybe 8 out of 10 cars for sale are by small time traders masquerading as private sellers - one advert i saw last night the guy had 'regretful sale' in the advert yet he'd 10 cars for sale in the last month!! I really dont see how these people expect to get away with it.

Then on the other side of it, theres so little face to face interaction. I used to have a 95% success rate of selling the car to the first person out to look at it. Nowadays you stick a car on at £2200 and you get a text from some monkey saying 'i'll give u a grand for it m8'

Also in our area - northern ireland - you just simply advertised in autotrader and that was it - now theres usedcarsni, autotrader, nicarfinder, itvcars, ebay motors, plus the 'freebies' - pistonheads, gumtree, etc.

A massive amount of effort for very very little return

cyclonebri1

If the council don't get you the taxman will.

peterbaker

I agree about upsetting the neighbours if nothing else - we have untaxed, crash-damaged and otherwise unwanted stock on our otherwise nicely kept neighbourhood at the moment. It is a real eyesore and to think that one or two neighbours are prepared to do this, face it out and effectively give good people the finger is nauseating.

It is clearly antisocial to impose your attempts at starting up a business to such an extent that it affects the tone of the whole neighbourhood.

Having said that, every street has cars lining it thesedays. Question is are they tidy, and in keeping? If you are a skilled engineer, have you thought about finding a niche? Classic cars for example? As long as you don't leave engines and oil stains laying in the street and keep it to one or two tidy hobby projects, can you make that work? Or if the outlay is too much on those types, maybe a few well chosen modern Classics of a make/model where you have particular knowledge to enable you to buy cheap and sell high?

pianeet

agree with all the others,once you take into account,your traders insurance(£1500)approx,trade plates ,fuel costs ,etc you will have to sell quite a few cars just to break even,if you work on the principle,of 1/3 profit in costs (prep,parts,)1/3 wages,warranty. 1/3 profit to reinvest,you should be ok.

about the only way you wil get a real decent buy nowadays is if you know a sales manager that likes back handers and is willing to write the car back.(and if you do find one can you let me know;)

Strider590

Until more people realise that stealerships are often more dishonest than "Fred's garage under the arches", this will never see the sort of profit you'd hope for.

The key to selling is to look flash and have a nice modern location/premises to sell from, it doesn't matter what the product is like. Most people are too stupid to look past the mask.

I do some IT work/sales from home, I build custom high performance gaming/graphics rigs with the absolute best quality parts I can get, these things will last over 6 years (even 10 years if you don't want all the latest games). People would still rather go to <PC shop> and buy some cheap Chinese built rubbish at a rip off price and which has to be replaced in 18 months because it suddenly goes up in a cloud of smoke.

roddydogs

Buy from Scottish Auctions, and sell Down South.

Hammyman

roddydogs wrote: »

Buy from Scottish Auctions, and sell Down South.

There's a good idea. Pay £200 less for a car and spend over £200 getting up there and getting it back.