Trouble selling car *ADVICE NEEDED*

bigadaj

As a diesel then surely low mileage is the issue, not high miles, and this one at ~7k a year looks in that area.

Bottom line it's not selling, price is too high, drop t if you want to sell.

parking_question_chap

Price is still too high imo

Looking at your competion using these parameters private sale, 5door, 2012, 1.6 diesel, London ish area you get the following cars

Yours 63k miles, 3 owners £4,995

White  100k miles 3 owners £3,650

Silver 98k miles 2 owners £3,549. This one has a years MOT and full service history
Blue 115k miles 1 owner £3,195

There was also a Grey cat D but these are hard to value so will ignore.

Look at the numbers. Your car is still overpriced. Granted its done less miles but it looks in worse condition and generally people in cities are not going to want skinny tyres. For me personally there is another big red flag. You have a part service history, alloys badly damaged and two number plates in terrible condition yet you state in the advert "The car has been looked after very well". That just implies that the seller is dishonest. It might not be the case I dont know but its the perception it will give. Just keep your advert objective.

A ford focus is an average run of the mill car. If somebody sees 18inch rims and a part service history it isnt going to fetch top money. Yes there are people in London who want 18s but they are rarely going to want them attached to a Focus diesel. If you really need to get a good price for the car try and swap the wheels for bog standard ford 16s and replace the plates.

At the current price I cant see you getting one phone call, let alone selling the thing. Oh and dust off the area behind the steering wheel too.

treeroy

A 9 year old diesel Focus should be £3,500-4,000 not £5,000, you are way overpriced. 

The wheels are neither here nor there in my opinion on an old car most people aren't going to care too much. I mean no one is buying an old diesel focus to show off their flash car, so understandable if you don't want to spend £200 doing the wheels cosmetically.
But why are your number plates broken? Makes it look like your car has been in a shunt in the front and shunt in the back (shunt sandwich?)

Number plates cost £20 and 10 minutes of your time in Halfords. Then another 10 minutes to put them on the car. If you cant even be bothered to do that, why should a car buyer be paying a premium for your car which has been "looked after very well"?

Also as a general point, autotrader adverts are not a great way of getting prices to sell a car at (nor is using its valuation tool which just takes its data from said adverts).
That is all they are. Adverts. Doesn't mean they actually sell at that price. It can become a vicious circle of people copying each other's prices because they saw someone else with that price. And then none of the cars sell. 

Better way of finding a car's current value is to look at Ebay. Spend a few days/weeks checking Ebay each day for similar cars to yours. Put some of them on Watch and find out what they actually sell for.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=focus+tdci&_sacat=0

forgotmyname

There was a Titanium X with leather and everything for £3500, looked promising from the outside but inside didnt look clean
so excluded that.

There was a 90k  (ish) one for low £3k, cannot find it now. Looked a good buy and it was obviously priced right, no longer listed.
Maybe similar to my car, they listed it late Saturday afternoon as they were closing, i spotted it Sunday and on their forecourt
Monday before they had opened. They said there had been lots of interest from their view counter. Didnt think to tell them all the
views were probably me. I spotted stuff fitted they didnt mention.

There maybe £4k damaged cars listed but there are also £5k+ cars advertised, does not mean they will sell for that much. Notice how
a lot of cars show the price as average/good etc etc. Nothing for yours. Its outside their expected price range.

This is what people want to pay for a 2012 Focus......   https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=focus+tdci&_sacat=0&Model%20Year=2012&_dcat=9844&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1

Dabz410

forgotmyname said:

There was a Titanium X with leather and everything for £3500, looked promising from the outside but inside didnt look clean
so excluded that.

There was a 90k  (ish) one for low £3k, cannot find it now. Looked a good buy and it was obviously priced right, no longer listed.
Maybe similar to my car, they listed it late Saturday afternoon as they were closing, i spotted it Sunday and on their forecourt
Monday before they had opened. They said there had been lots of interest from their view counter. Didnt think to tell them all the
views were probably me. I spotted stuff fitted they didnt mention.

There maybe £4k damaged cars listed but there are also £5k+ cars advertised, does not mean they will sell for that much. Notice how
a lot of cars show the price as average/good etc etc. Nothing for yours. Its outside their expected price range.

This is what people want to pay 

The price indicator is off because I paid for the ultimate package and its turned off not because it out of their expected price range. Haven't heard anything more ridiculous. Also if you cant prove that a 3k focus exists with 95k miles then im afraid as far as im concerned your lying.

[Deleted User]

Thread title
"Advice Needed"

Then OP rejects advice  

cymruchris

Plenty around 3k have sold - higher mileage yes - but some newer. If you still think yours is worth £5k - you’ll have a long wait to sell it. 

Brookside88

I recently tried to sell my 09 Kuga 2.0 tdci 72k miles - had lots of interest at £4,750 but most were time wasters. I was desperate to get rid of it so dropped to 4.2k but the woman who was interested ghosted me so I ended up calling a dealer who had a car I wanted to trade it in for and they gave me £4.5k trade in for it 
If you're looking to upgrade and trade it in you might be surprised at what you're offered by a dealer and you'll save yourself a lot of hassle

Dabz410

blueskinnedbeast said:

Thread title
"Advice Needed"

Then OP rejects advice  

No most of the advice has been great and have given thanks to those. I will implement the advice when I get more time over the weekend. However, some people are just giving straight-up terrible advice, like showing me 128k mile zetec focuses and telling me my car is worth around the same.... smh

photome

Dabz410 said:

Scrapit said:

I'm guessing when someone does comes to view it they walk away empty handed.

Gotta love dem trolls 

i cant believe your attitude, you came on for advice, people have given it, including myself ( obviously deemed not good enough tho) but you just want to shout everyone down.

why did you bother? if you know how much its worth, sell it for that....but guess what. you cant, which brings us back to the start