Tips for selling privately

annieoburns

I have 'good' car, one careful driver, low mileage, regularly serviced etc. It will be 5 years old in few months and 19,000 kms.

Where best to place adverts for Dublin area? which papers and maybe online?

Or is it a lost cause and I should just trade in?

Alanstrainor

What's the car? Spec? Engine? colour etc

All the usual ones like:
http://www.adverts.ie
http://www.donedeal.ie
http://www.buyandsell.ie/
http://www.carzone.ie (Although that one is relatively expensive.)

There's loads of others, you should get more money for it privately, it's always better to be a cash buyer, rather than walking into a dealership with a car to trade in.

You will 99% of the time get more for it privately, if you can wait for the right buyer, that's why dealer's give f all for cars, they are effectively charging interest on the time they will have the car sitting in their yard. Carzone and donedeal.ie would be the kiddies me thinks. Wash it, maybe wax it, few nice pics and a detailed advert coupled with a realistic asking price and a willingness to drop a grand off that price and you'll sell her (after a few weeks, maybe a month).

bookerboy

Compare the prices to similar cars on www.carzone.ie
Price your car towards the most expensive/middle priced and leave room to reduce your asking price.
Don't put it on www.dondeal.ie or www.bendunne.com or you will recieve silly offers from every cream cracker in the country looking to buy things for nothing.
Newspapers are a waste of time.Too expensive and few calls.
Have a clear ad in the window of your car at all times.You never know when someone will spot it.
Try for a while to sell privately as you will be in a better position when buying for cash next time round.
What are you selling and what is your ballpark asking price?

squod

Have you considered car auctions? Attracts as many silly folk as carzone does who are willing to pay way over the odds for average motors.

annieoburns

Thanks for all the responses. You confirm what I felt about newspaper ads... very poor response last time and generated more interest from trade magazines looking for your ad business rather than bothered about whether they sold your car. All previous cars I have sold by word of mouth. Apart from poor value, I suppose I am sentimental and like to see the 'old dear' off to a good home

By the way it (she!) is a Megane hatch, 1.4, high spec with fancy wheels, air con, leather seats, champagne colour, NCT to April '11. Depressing to see so many cars on carzone but good for ideas on value.

Why sell? I have kept all prevous cars til older. Just thought more sellable if younger and miss my Renault dealer now closed who looked after me well.

EPM

If it's not giving trouble I'd keep it. Some Meganes can be problematic and as a result people tend to avoid them and so they are priced accordingly. Sounds like a nice spec

Rylan

A 05 one of those should be a pretty saleable car if it is in good condition and you have it priced right. Carzone is probably the best to use but also the most expensive. Think the spec you have is called the Monaco spec.

neilthefunkeone

Make sure you provide loads of pics, detailed description. list everything in it..

So many ads with one side on pic of a manky dirty car taken with a camera phone..

Use the free sites as much as possible.. Carzone is expensive and i dont think its as good as the other above mentioned sites...

Quigs Snr

On Sunday at 6:01pm I put my 99 Bora up on Donedeal. Cheapest similar model was about 2k on Carzone, but they had better engines than my 1.4, and had electric windows etc... whereas mine did not. Mine also had a few minor issues e.g. central locking problems, so I put it in for 1350. The car had plenty of NCT left.

I took the ad down just before 8pm after receiving 17 calls, 2 texts and 2 emails about it. At that point I had a guy outside my door who had driven 45 miles and just took the car on the spot for asking.

Moral of the story, for the right price you will have no trouble selling a car (particularly a good brand, with a small engine and a bit of NCT). If you want a quick sale like I did, just figure out what the lowest prices out there are and put in a price you would be willing to accept.

I was offered 500 for the car as a trade in by the way against a 09 Mondeo.

Rylan

Similar story as above with someone i know. Listed car at 10am on a sunday morning. Had a phonecall by 10:10 from a person who came down straight away and bought it there and then.

Mc Love

Stuck an ad in the Limerick Post when i sold my car before. Got loads of calls so I would recommend a local paper.

Carzone is a waste. Never even got one call.

Will probably be selling my car soon, so might put an ad on adverts