Used Car Price Guides

shinytop

I buy a 2nd hand car every 4-5 years and have been looking around recently. What’s the view on the accuracy of the online price guides? I’m looking at Parkers and Carguru. I quite like them and whether or not they are dead accurate, they give a good comparison between different deals. I particularly like the Carguru price history information. Whenever I’ve mentioned them to dealers before the reaction has been negative but then they go on to quote their own version. In theirs, the retail price for their car is invariably higher and the trade-in price for mine is lower. Funny that…
A couple of other observations. First, a lot of private sellers overprice their cars to the extent it’s not even worth calling. I wonder what they do eventually? Second, why do dealers have prices like £8978 and not the previously favoured £8999. One main dealer told me their prices change daily/weekly – is that right? (she made it sound a bit like Ryanair tickets).

foxy-stoat

Never looked at online guides - always looked at autotrader and ebay for a few weeks or months prior to buying - that way you can see the cars that have sat for weeks on end at dealers or private sellers....that means there is something wrong with it or its too expensive.

You can then search for the newest added (on ebay) and see when it gets listed - if its a cheap or low mileage compared to the rest of them or whatever you will know it and if it is a "good'un" or advertised cheap to sell quick you can get in there first.

I have seen some cars that I was interested in get sold a day or 2 after listing only to reappear on a dealer forecourt at £1000+ on top.

Private sellers who think their car is worth thousands more than a trader does (with no buying protection) are dreaming and normally get reduced once the phone doesn't ring for a week or so, if they are paying to advertise. If its on the free ads it may take a little longer.

Trade sellers have all sorts of odd numbers to make figures seem less than they actually are - I doubt the punters take any notice really - if its 7 grand car then advertising it for £6,981.85 wont make it sell any quicker, they may well change their prices weekly but thats up to them.

AdrianC

The clue is in their name. "Guides".

Yes, of course any trader is going to try to sell as high as possible and buy as low as possible. It's how they make their profit. Profit is why they get out of bed in the morning and go to work.

DrEskimo

The guides can be useful, but sometimes the system gets the model spec wrong based on the reg.

As foxy says, I spend an inordinate amount of time researching and keeping an eye on loads of different websites to try and find a good deal. Took me 6months to finally buy my recent purchase.

I tend to start with brand new and look at best discounted levels. This allows me to gauge the highest price and then start to look at how much I would want to save over and above that price for a used model, depending on model, spec, year and mileage. The it's about looking for dealers that price more competitively and looking at finance incentives that can lower the price further. I don't tend to get much more than £500 off the list price, but then I do only go after the well-priced ones to begin with, so finance deposit contributions are really the best way to get further money off (off course settling straight after).

Forums can be a better way to get a more reasonably priced private sale. As you say, I found that they were generally priced too high on the usual car selling websites.

shinytop

Thanks all, I've been looking on all the usual sites - eBay, Autotrader, etc., for the last month or so. It's quite a niche car I'm after so not that many around. You do get to know what's the right price after hours of staring at them. Of course that's the easy bit; the hard bit is finding the right car for the right price.