Private vs trade

[Deleted User]

My father knowing a lot about the motor trade will often advise to look for private cars for sale rather than dealers. 
However on my searches this rules out a massive amount of cars.
I know dealers charge more but don't they also offer warranties, breakdown etc?
I am generally referring to cars 1-3k so the lower end of the market.
Any views welcome. 

flaneurs_lobster

Get your father to find a car for you.

DE_612183

If you are looking for a car 1-3k I'm not sure what sort of warranty you expect, or if you'd actually get one.

DullGreyGuy

[Deleted User] said:

My father knowing a lot about the motor trade will often advise to look for private cars for sale rather than dealers. 
However on my searches this rules out a massive amount of cars.
I know dealers charge more but don't they also offer warranties, breakdown etc?
I am generally referring to cars 1-3k so the lower end of the market.
Any views welcome. 

You have consumer rights with a dealer but that comes at a price. Only you can decide if that is a price worth paying, especially as you'll see lots of threads on here from people who bought a lemon from a dealer then struggled to get them to accept its their responsibility. 

If you know what to look for you can certainly get a better deal with a private purchase but do you know if a slight knocking sound from the engine compartment is something thats a cheap fix or the sign of a major flaw? Can your father help you check the vehicle over? 

CliveOfIndia

It's always something of a gamble.  Of course you have some small amount of comeback against a dealer, none against a private seller.  A private sale is always going to be cheaper than a dealer, all other things being equal, because of this.

Over my many years of owning cars I've bought both privately and from traders - and I've had some absolute gems from private sellers.  I'm no mechanic, but I do know enough to have a reasonably good idea whether there are any major problems with a car.  If you know nothing at all about mechanics, and don't have a friend who knows something, then admittedly it can be more of a risk.  For a little more peace of mind you can get the car checked by the RAC or AA - but that comes at a cost.

[Deleted User] said:

I am generally referring to cars 1-3k so the lower end of the market.

At that price point, there are two things to bear in mind.  Firstly, you need to budget for repairs (in addition to routine maintenance and wear & tear, which even a brand new car would need).  Hopefully you'll only be faced with relatively minor repairs, but it's pretty much guaranteed that you'll need some repairs at some point.

Secondly, if you buy a £1000 car from a dealer, that's a £600 car with £400 of profit on it (those figures are plucked out of the air, but hopefully you get the gist of it).  So why not buy an equivalent car privately for £600 and stick the other £400 into savings to cover repairs ?

If you do buy privately, it's well worth doing an HPI check to make sure the car's not on finance or is an insurance write-off.  Yes, it's another cost, but well worth it.  Most dealers will have done their own HPI check, to cover themselves if nothing else - they should have no qualms about showing you proof of this if you ask.

Just my opinions, but hopefully they're of some help.

paul_c123

You won't get much from a dealer at 1-3k, and there will be a decent amount of private sale cars. Also a dealer car will be at the expensive end, because they need to hold back some money for comebacks etc and their profit margin. So I'd go private with that amount of money and just keep back say £300-500 as a fund for possible repairs.

If it were £20k, you'd see the opposite.

Sovereign_Hunter_999

I always try to go with trade, i've seen too many horror stories from private sales

born_again

1 to 3K. If it's got 12 months MOT then thats about as good as it gets. Anything less, then odds on someone has shifted it due to last MOT & work required for next one.

So 

https://www.gov.uk/check-mot-history

Is a must to see what advisories have been on it the last few MOT's. Your dad can then advise further 👍

jimjames

Sovereign_Hunter_999 said:

I always try to go with trade, i've seen too many horror stories from private sales

For£1k-3k? It's hardly the area of the market where decent traders will be working so I'd say it's far more likely to have a horror story from those than private. 

Herzlos

A £3k car from a dealer will be a £1500 trade-in with a bit of cleaning up, since the dealer needs to make some money. It may come with a warranty but it'll be virtually useless given the age of the car. 

At that end of the market it's arguable better to buy private because you can see the original state of the car, talk to the actual owner of the car and get an idea of how well it's looked after. 

But you need to be careful here as well because at that end of the market there's a pretty significant chance the seller is a dealer pretending to be a private seller to avoid any warranty or business tax. Tell-tale signs are that they can't meet you at the V5 address, or some story about how they bought it for the wife but she doesn't like it, or it's being sold on behalf of an uncle who's out of the country. Those cars are best avoided.

Mildly_Miffed

[Deleted User] said:

My father knowing a lot about the motor trade will often advise to look for private cars for sale rather than dealers. 
However on my searches this rules out a massive amount of cars.
I know dealers charge more but don't they also offer warranties, breakdown etc?
I am generally referring to cars 1-3k so the lower end of the market.
Any views welcome. 

At that end of the market, I'd avoid the trade like the plague, tbh.

Forget any consumer rights comeback - it's all tempered by reasonable expectations for goods of that age/price/apparent condition. The reasonable expectation is that any £1-3k car is one big bill from being scrapped.

Forget any warranty - they're all tempered by excluding wear and tear. Any issue on a car of that age can be deemed due to wear and tear.

So you've got a car that's being retailed at the top end of your budget, £3k. Now subtract from the dealer's costs in buying it, transporting it, cleaning it and sorting any minor quick-win issues, financing it, allocating a portion of his site and staff costs... just to have it sat there waiting for a buyer. He can only have paid buttons for it, in order to hope for any kind of profit.
As you get lower down your budget, most of those costs don't change.