Selling/Trade-in of old car

orionmoo

Hello,

I will be purchasing a new car in March (currently on order), and my current car will form part of the deposit.

How have people overcome the hurdle of selling their old car when purchasing new, as obviously it is fairly difficult to advertise your car for sale when you don't know when it would actually be available for sure and you don't know what the final mileage on it will be!

I have been offered £3,250 as trade in value, webuyanycar have said £3,750 as a today price but based on March's expected mileage. Similar cars to my current one (make, model, mileage, age) are currently going on auto trader for £5,500-£6,000 however.

Would people go for a car ad that says available March, expected mileage to be xx,xxx, unable to give firm date yet.

Would it perhaps be better to take out a loan of £3,250 to cover that portion of the new car deposit, then I could freely list my old car privately and the sale of that could pay off this loan and the rest is money in my bank rather than the dealership's profit? If it sold quickly enough it would only be 56 day's interest payable on the loan. However I'd have the issue of paying out for insurance on two cars...

Hope this all makes sense, any thoughts on what action may be best would be helpful!

- Take the £3,250 / potential ~£3,750
- List car privately and hope a nice enough buyer comes along willing to wait
- Take loan that can be paid off in full when old car sells and get some money back in the bank.

(Please no comments on why are you getting a new car etc etc. This is a question on optimising cash through a sale or trade in not spending £8,000 on a used car v finance on a new car!)

Thanks

PCMcGarry

Private sale will always get you the best return. However isn't your deal on the new car based on your trade in?

straighttalker

Are you able to manage without a car if you sell you current one now? If so, I'd suggest taking some decent photos and getting your car advertised within the next few weeks or maybe in February once people have got over their Xmas debt hangover.

I'd pitch the figure at somewhere between the trade in/WBAC value and the retail values on AT. Perhaps around the £4750 mark?

Selling a car can take weeks so if you start now, you could be sitting on a nice little pile of cash by the time the new car arrives.

orionmoo

Hi thanks for quick responses.

The finance quote simply lists the deposit amount (including contribution). How that's made up (all cash, cash/part-ex) is up to me as far as I am aware, however I will email the dealership and clarify.

I need a car for work both commuting and my line of work means I can be called out of the office at shorts notice in an "incident response" type role so need the car for business travel too. As such, the swap from old to new needs to be within the space of a few days. That's why I thought of the loan idea.
Doing the MSE loan eligibility checker, I worked out that a 56 day minimum interest payment would be £20-40 (depending on provider), which if it means I manage to get an extra £1,000 - £1,500 for my old car would be worth it!

Rover_Driver

orionmoo wrote: »

I have been offered £3,250 as trade in value, webuyanycar have said £3,750 as a today price but based on March's expected mileage.

Don't expect £3,750 from webuyanycar, when you take it to be checked and they reduce their offer to cover all the scuffs etc. they find.

bowlhead99

People will only want to come and look at your car and consider buying it if they can have it now. So if you are going to put it up for sale now for over £4k, it needs to actually be available now.

So you can either:

- make it available now and get a stop-gap solution of a £500 old banger to fill the gap for a few weeks until your new car is ready and then sell that off later on your own, non-hurried timeline; or

- make it available now and use public transport or a rental car or a borrowed car to cover your transport needs until the new car's available; or

- keep using it up until your new car's pretty much ready, use loan finance (or cheap credit card balance transfer) to provide funds to get you into your new car, and then sell it off in your own time later.

If you are going to wait until after you have the new car to sell your old car you're right you'll need two insurance policies if you want to keep your old car insured (you'll get much more interest in it if someone coming to buy privately off you can go out for a legal test drive). However the overlap period will not be very long so will not be very expensive in the grand scheme of things.

The amount you can get privately will be quite a bit more than you would get from a dealer tradein or WBAC type of arrangement because they have to be able to sell your car on for a profit and take the risk that they are buying a lemon. If you sell it yourself to the end customer, you will keep the profit for yourself.

Of course, in some cases the agreed trade in price is a competitive one as the dealers sometimes want to give you more for your car instead of giving a big discount on the new one you're buying. But if WBAC are offering more and the autotrader prices are quite a bit higher, you're probably not in that situation and the £3250 should be quite beatable.

Of course, the poster above is right in saying that WBAC will probably reduce their offer when they see it in the flesh and say take it or leave it, knowing most people who are considering using them can't be bothered with the hassle of going elsewhere.

And if the prices you are looking at on autotrader are at £5500-6000, but are dealer prices, you should not expect to get that price yourself privately when not selling your car with a warranty and consumer protection etc. But somewhere between the autotrader prices and the WBAC price should be achievable for a relatively quick sale, nearer the time you want to do it - especially as peoples wallets relax after tightening their belts for January after the Christmas festivities.

orionmoo

bowlhead99 wrote: »

People will only want to come and look at your car and consider buying it if they can have it now. So if you are going to put it up for sale now for over £4k, it needs to actually be available now.

So you can either:

- make it available now and get a stop-gap solution of a £500 old banger to fill the gap for a few weeks until your new car is ready and then sell that off later on your own, non-hurried timeline; or

- make it available now and use public transport or a rental car or a borrowed car to cover your transport needs until the new car's available; or

- keep using it up until your new car's pretty much ready, use loan finance (or cheap credit card balance transfer) to provide funds to get you into your new car, and then sell it off in your own time later.

If you are going to wait until after you have the new car to sell your old car you're right you'll need two insurance policies if you want to keep your old car insured (you'll get much more interest in it if someone coming to buy privately off you can go out for a legal test drive). However the overlap period will not be very long so will not be very expensive in the grand scheme of things.

The amount you can get privately will be quite a bit more than you would get from a dealer tradein or WBAC type of arrangement because they have to be able to sell your car on for a profit and take the risk that they are buying a lemon. If you sell it yourself to the end customer, you will keep the profit for yourself.

Of course, in some cases the agreed trade in price is a competitive one as the dealers sometimes want to give you more for your car instead of giving a big discount on the new one you're buying. But if WBAC are offering more and the autotrader prices are quite a bit higher, you're probably not in that situation and the £3250 should be quite beatable.

Of course, the poster above is right in saying that WBAC will probably reduce their offer when they see it in the flesh and say take it or leave it, knowing most people who are considering using them can't be bothered with the hassle of going elsewhere.

And if the prices you are looking at on autotrader are at £5500-6000, but are dealer prices, you should not expect to get that price yourself privately when not selling your car with a warranty and consumer protection etc. But somewhere between the autotrader prices and the WBAC price should be achievable for a relatively quick sale, nearer the time you want to do it - especially as peoples wallets relax after tightening their belts for January after the Christmas festivities.

Thanks for the reply, a good in-depth response :cool:

I'll go back through the AT results tonight and see what is private and what is dealer and see if I can come up with a more firm private sale price

knightstyle

We sold privately a couple of weeks after getting our nearly new car. The shortfall was made up by paying with a credit card, giving about 6 weeks interest free to pay it.

walwyn1978

I'd go for loan/credit card for the £3250 and look to sell the car privately after the purchase of the new car TBH. Even if you end up getting less than the AT price for the older car, you'll pay off the loan in full and any interest and have a bit for yourself. If you went on CC then shifted the balance onto one of those no-interest-for-balance-transfer ones it would give you more time to sell the car privately too without costing you interest?

F1F93

You're assuming you need to insurance policies if you sell privately. Give your insurers a ring and explain the situation, and they may agree to keep your old car insured for free/very little for a couple of weeks while it is sold.

bigjl

One point to consider when selling privately is the new owner being the kind of buyer that will come back and moan about every little thing.

Basically wanting to buy used but has the expectations of a new car buyer.

The thread where the seller lost a court case over a gearbox issue that was disclosed at point of sale being relevant.

If you want to use WBAC type place the consider WeWantAnyCar.

I used them last summer and their after inspection price was more than the WBAC online price. And that was after the car was rear ended the day before the Appt. WWAC sent pictures to the dealer they were selling the car to, very minor bumper damage that would likely SMART repair.

This was likely to be a popular model for retail sale though, Black 116D on a 60 plate with full BMW History and mint bodywork for age/mileage. Just the bumper damage and a few tiny scratches on a wing and some stone chips.

All said and done there is something to be said for peace of mind.

I have said it before Inthink more and more people are selling via these car buying sites to avoid hastle with tyre kickers and I know my rights private buyers.