Articles > Selling Guide > 5. How much to ask

5. How much to ask

An easy way to find out how much your car is worth is to buy a price guide such as the Parker's Guide which is available in most news agents. This will have a listing for your exact make and model, and it will show you how much your car is worth in poor and average condition… and how much it could be worth in very good condition.
This will help you make up your mind as to how much money you want to spend on putting value back into your car.

For list and details of car price guides, visit our links page

The best way to sell your car, without any doubt, is through AutoTrader.co.uk - so we recommend you look at thier web site and do a national search for cars that a the same model as yours with similar mileage. Search for private sales but if there are one one or two on there, then look at trade sales as well. Then pick three of four which are close to yours, then just be brave and give them a quick call and say 'I hope you don't mind me calling, but I am selling my car and was wondering what sort of response you have had for yours' and just see what they say, you will be surprised, most people will help. They might tell you that they haven't had any calls, or they might say that they could have sold their car three times over! From this, you will be able to gauge how to price your car. Just a few calls could save you weeks.

   You should now have an idea of how much cars like yours are worth, but bare in mind that this guide will help you to write an attention grabbing advert, and advise you how to maximise the value of your car.

DO NOT OVER-PRICE YOUR CAR!
Now that this guide has been running a couple of years and our customers are using it, the biggest mistake we see them making is over pricing... they take the approach that "it only takes one idiot" and they have made themselves a few hundred extra pounds. But it very seldom happens that way.

Buyers will spend far longer and look at more cars than you will, and have a much better idea of what price they should be paying. So you would have to be extremely lucky to find a muggins. If you price your car too high you will just put people off.

Take a look at a similar car a year older than yours, then see the price difference and divide it by twelve - this will give you some idea of how much your car devalues every month. House prices always go up, but you need you need a different set of tactics for selling cars which always go down. If your car is overpriced and you don't sell it after a month, it's even more overpriced the next month. As time rolls by you are losing money, so price it right and sell quick.

ADDITION: A lot of people claim success for selling on eBay, but we still wouldn't recommend it. We wouldn't advise against it either, but it's worth remembering that eBay is just an auction - Auctions seldom get you the highest price, because the mindset of people buying at auctions is to get a bargain, where as people shopping at AutoTrader are setting out to buy a certain car, and get the most car they can for their budget.

If you are savvy about eBay, you can get more money, especially if two people get into a bidding war. Whatever you do, make sure you set the reserve price to a price you would be happy with. It's better to not make a sale and go again than sell too cheap.

Furthermore, there are still problems with fraud and other payment issues on eBay. We have recently had problems with people who simply just can't figure out how PayPal works... make sure you do, especially regarding credit card payments.

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